Locating the ‘missing link’? Not quite
Translation and Identity
Michael Cronin
Routledge:London and
New
York,
2006.
Translation
Studies scholar Michael Cronin’s recent book Translation and Identity is set against the
background of contemporary world, based on certain assumptions, and
demands the readers to share them as they sail through the book. Some
of these assumptions are that that we are living in a globalised
world; today identity has taken centre stage of various political
struggles and is the important category with which we make sense of
the contemporary world; in the globalised context it is difficult for
the formation and continuance of a particular identity; identity is
primarily formed around languages and issues arising out of the
question of identity lead to extremely violent conflicts. It is in
this assumed context that Cronin tries to situate translation as the
‘missing link’ between the ‘local’ and ‘global’, and according to him,
`[translation] must be at the centre of any attempt to think about the
question of identity in human society.’ He also entrusts translators
and thinkers about translation the obligation, `to engage with debates
about how in our century we are to find ways to live together in our
households and in our cities and in our world.’
This
rather jargon-free and small book which runs to 166 pages is divided
into four chapters. In the first chapter, Translation and the new
cosmopolitan, Cronin
advances a new concept of cosmopolitanism, ‘micro-cosmopolitanism’
which is a ‘cosmopolitanism from below’, and is sensitive to and
recognises `differences’ within the local/particular not as
essentialist but as fluid. Conceptualising the translation phenomenon
as ‘global hybrid’ and ‘mutable mobile’, Cronin views the history of
translation as essentially transnational. Further he argues for the
centrality of literature and translation to think about any cultural
policy for a transnational institution like the European
Union.
Cronin’s
appeal here to include literary translations in the national curriculum
and to consider translation as a phenomenon happening ‘within the
language’ deserves attention, but his rather conclusive statement on the
history of translation that ‘that historical research into translation
points to whether at a microscopic or macroscopic level in many
instances it is the permanent quantum duality of the cultural experience
that is the norm rather than homogenous national or imperial continuum
occasionally disrupted by foreign adventures,’ (p. 26) is problematic
precisely because it neglects the fact that translation was instrumental
in perpetuating colonial power (Niranjana 1992). And he alludes to the
romantic ‘small is beautiful’ view to look at ‘local’ as small, equal
and ideal units in a rush to push the ‘micro-cosmopolitan’
concept.
Chapter
2, Translation and migration,
is an attempt to
look at the phenomenon of migration in the contemporary society as
translation, and migrants as ‘translated beings’. Here Cronin advances
the concept of interculturalism as against multiculturalism which
according to him can be achieved through translation accommodation
rather than translation assimilation, the former being an instance
where the migrant retains her or his source culture/language as they
translate themselves into the target culture/language. The notion of
conceiving translation as intrinsic rather than extrinsic echoes some
of the points already made in chapter 1. The last part of the chapter
deals with the limitations of the notion of citizenship as laid out by
the ideals of liberal democracy in the contemporary world and tries to
show how translation can be used to address this dilemma.
One
of the major limitations of the arguments made in this chapter which
deals with the issue of migration is that the author, quite comfortably,
completely ignores the very mobile/migratory nature of capital itself,
which is the most striking feature of globalisation.
Perhaps
the most interesting part of the book is chapter 3, Interpreting identity, which deals with the
notion of interpretation as translation. Here the author tries to
explore the ‘aspects of identity in the practice of interpreting’. The
practice of interpretation, being more of an oral act demands not just
the audibility but also the visibility of the interpreters making them
what Cronin calls ‘embodied agents’. Cronin provides some interesting
historical and present-day accounts of violent conflicts where the
interpreters’ role is not just crucial but often becomes fatal for
themselves due to the question of identity of the interpreter, as, in
the author’s words, ‘the message and the messenger become
one’.
But
here Cronin hopelessly falls back on the works of Shakespeare in an
attempt to ‘track an intra-textual translation presence’, which is to
look at what literary texts have to say about translation, in the
context of `the practice of translation and interpreting in sixteenth-
and early seventeenth century England and Ireland.’ The point of
contention here is not about looking at translation in this way, which
itself is illuminating, but Shakespeare as a source, or context. Maybe
we should look for new literary sources and sites to talk about
translation with the help of .
In
the final chapter, The future of
diversity, Cronin advocates a ‘negentropic translational
perspective’ towards culture which is concerned with ‘the way in which
translation contributes to and fosters the persistence and development
of diversity’. There is a recurrent argument here for ‘diversality’
and diversity within the ‘local’ by invoking the notions of
‘micro-cosmopolitanism’ and ‘bottom up localisation’ and the vitality
of translation to make sense of the contemporary world.
Elsewhere in this chapter
Cronin takes a look at the contemporary Indian scenario, drawing on
the work of Francesca Orsini, where in spite of the rich literary
traditions of its various regional languages, they face ‘pressure’
from English in India. The author does it to show how being ‘bereft of
translators or opportunities for translation can affect the wider
“literariness” of a language’ even though it has huge number of users
and rich literary tradition. The author stops his investigation there
and refuses to move further to find why there is a situation which is
‘bereft of translators and less opportunities for translations’, and
whenever he does he conveniently blames it on the
nation-state.
In Cronin’s own words, ‘one of the recurrent themes of
[this book] is the constant interaction between global and local’ and
he tries to locate translation at the centre of this interaction as
the ‘missing link’ between the two. But throughout the book, the
author appears to be obsessed with ‘local’ and almost neglects and
refuses to engage with the ‘global’, the major blind spot of this book
is this.
The
persuasiveness of Cronin’s argument for the centrality he seeks for
translation to grapple with the question of identity, one of the most
contentious issues of contemporary society, can at best be considered as
a strategy to draw the attention of both the public and academia into
translation, a much neglected but nevertheless a fascinating and
promising area of study.
Reference
Niranjana, T. 1992 Siting Translation: History, Post
structuralism, and the Colonial Context
Berkeley,
Calif.:
University of
California Press.
Reviewed
by
Ashokan Nambiar C.
Central Institute of Indian Languages,Mysore
Email: asknbr@gmail.com
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The Author 2006
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