Translation Theory as Historical Problem-Solving

Recent calls for non-Western translation theories raise the more basic question of where Western thought comes from and how it is historically conditioned. Here we take the view that the way we translate, and the way we think about translation, depends on the problems we are trying to solve. This means that different problems can give rise to different theories, so Western problems might have given rise to Western theories. More important, this means that when we confront past theories, we should ask what specific problems they were trying to solve, without assuming any homogeneous stock of universal answers. And when we engage in our own theorizing, be it non-Western or simply effective, we should be aware of what specific problems we are trying to solve.\n\tThis perspective allows some provocative correlations like the following: “equivalence” was most needed when Europe and Canada decided to depend on translation for their multilingual laws; “dynamic equivalence” was about selling Christianity to illiterate communities; “Skopos theory” expressed the aspirations of a professional segment of technical translators that sought greater social recognition and pay, as well as university departments that sought independence; “Descriptive Translation Studies” was seeking the survival of smaller cultures within the West; “foreignization” responded to the Germanic privileging of language, to the French search for opening to the other, and to a well-intentioned call for American intellectuals to seem international in the absence of foreign-language competence; and “non-western” theory is a functional simulacrum designed to oppose some of these new Western theories to apparently old Western theories, in the spirit of an ageing but still hungry modernism. \n\tThese correlations should not be seen in a deterministic light. Once you have a problem to solve, the ideas you use to solve it can come from anywhere. So we should be aware of not just our own problems, but also of what others have done with theirs. And this in turn should answer the question of whether we need Eastern or Western ideas, or simply ideas that can help solve the problems we face.\n\tNeedless to say, the priority we give to problem-solving is Western.

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