A View from Academia

By Bilal M. Ayasrah- London *

* N.B This article regards translation and interpretation as two sides of the same coin; any reference to translation, translating and translators ipso facto involves reference to interpretation, interpreting and interpreters.

As I sketched in my last article published in Ammon News a couple of weeks or so ago, “Truth is the Main Victim of War,” which resonates with the age-old aphorism: “truth is the first real casualty of wars”. In this article, I argue that language in wartime is also victimized in a variety of ways to serve specific goals for the sake of specific individuals and groups.

Perhaps the most notable form of this victimization, to begin with, is the act of translating precisely the translator’s conscious choices and preferences which are not obligatory, unnecessary and, in fact, avoidable. Worded differently, translators themselves, not the practise per se, are accused of this amoral attitude.

What do those professionals actually do to be labeled as “perpetrators” in this illegal behaviour? What drives them to act as such? What are the motives behind the translators' faltering in rendering accurately? Are there challenges, hurdles and stumbling blocks that hinder a professional practise, hobble a quality rendition and impede a sound product?

Translators in time of war impact their intended audiences and steer their attitudes in perceiving realities by way of using a multitude of manipulative tools in a positive or a negative light to demonize their rival parties and threaten their face. They usually opt for mollifying language and utilize a wide range of strategies employed in the construction of reality.

Those strategies, inter alia, include reframing, de-contextualization, over/under-lexicalization, passivization, nominalization, thematization, euphemization, permutations and circumlocutions in order to serve a wide range of purposes: to propagandize their malign intentions, glamorize their flagitious products, legitimize their pernicious choices, promote their malicious agendas and hide the grim reality of their sordid deeds.

Wartime translators have become part and parcel of political armed conflicts, military operations and even national security! Not for nothing did the former American president George W. Bush (before a number of university presidents in America early 2006) call for mobilizing translators in a bid "to shore up national security" under a "new federal program called the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI)!". Not for nothing are translators targeted and killed, like any other security element, before, during and after the conflict.

To me, words rather than swords, pens rather than guns, are the roots of wars and the major actors in fuelling conflicts and changing realities on the ground that they are socially and politically produced. They have admittedly become weapons of mass destruction, persuasion and deception.

This triadic face of the practise unequivocally finds its clearest expression in language via a sizeable number of translational strategies, as delineated at length above. Thus, wartime translators participate in shaping, exacerbating and even placating the conflict? In other words, they play a lead role in conflict causation, escalation and resolution. They can wage wars and they can negotiate peace.

Translation is undoubtedly an ethical activity that involves in its very essence such values as honesty, impartiality and transparency. It is traditionally viewed (and views itself) as an act of faithful reflection and truthful reproduction that renders a text of one language into a new "equivalent" text in another by way of honestly decoding the meaning of the former and re-encoding this meaning into the latter.

It is conventionally reckoned that the ultimate goal of this activity is the achievement of a "natural" product, one which reads as if original. This has given rise to the thorny issue of equivalence on the ground that equivalence defines translation, and translation, in turn, defines equivalence.

The question of equivalence, however, has been quite problematic and controversial; it has been the central issue in the theory of translation on which theorists seem to have agreed to disagree. This controversy doubles up and even multiplies in wartime. That is to say, the achievement of “optimal” equivalence becomes more intricate and polemic during politically charged contexts.

The main label that winnows what a translation is and what a translation is not is the principle of faithfulness (also known as fidelity). This moral value intrinsically indicates sincerity and complete compliance with the language’s linguistic, stylistic not to mention cultural conventions.

Compliance with those conventions, however, does not (and should not) strip translators of their creative touches. Translation, in the final analysis, is not only a code-switching process; it is a creative practise that involves aesthetical aspects. Not only do tight shoes help you walk straight, they also help you dance well.

Translations in conflictual times are done purposely; with an intention in mind. Translators, as Hermans put it, “do not just mechanically respond to nods and winks, they also act with intent”. In other words, translators’ voices and stances are not outside the text into which they are translating.

The role of translators comes to the fore here and should be closely questionable and taken on board. Are they “bridge-builders”, “loyal brokers” and ‘mediators’, or conversely, are they dishonest actors, mercenary elements and intervenient agents? To what extents are their political affiliations and ideological instincts present inside their finished product? To what extent do they undress their subjective masks, off their personal touches and distance themselves from that product, most notably in politically motivated situations and ideologically laden contexts?

Translation prominent scholar, Professor Mona Baker, who has single-handedly provided the fuel that has driven this investigation in very many ways- too numerous to count, voluminously draws on the choices and preferences that translators usually opt for during the act of translating. She believes that translators, being humans, have different loyalties which govern their translational behaviour. These loyalties, conflicting in her words, result from the fact that translators have a wide range of identities. Baker succinctly states that “a translator's behaviour is often the result of conflicting loyalties, sympathies and priorities- precisely because a translator, like any human being, does not have just one identity but many”.

Translators of conflictual events are (and choose to be) involved in the events emotionally and politically. Moreover, they draw the targeted readership’s sympathy and political support and invite them to be involved as well. Ideally, translators are trustworthy agents who act transparently on behalf of text producers simply because they are not dealing with their own properties rather with somebody else’s. That is, they are entrusted to act trustworthily; without any kind of involvement or interference, be it small or big.

But, unfortunately, wartime translators usually opt for a myriad of strategies and innumerable manipulative tools, which takes the text receiver to a different world and, above all, breaches professional norms, acknowledged constants and prevailing conventions.

In conclusion, should translators come up with beautiful or faithful products? In other words, which value should win out in the end of the day: beauty or faithfulness? Can both be attained and, if so, to what extent? Do languages behave similarly? I think we are in a dilemma here oscillating between “faithless beauty” and “beautiful faithlessness”. With some reservations, I really wonder whether the Russian essayist, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, was right to argue that “translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful”.

* Bilal Ayasrah is a researcher based in London. His current interests are media and the Arab Spring. He contributed this article to Ammon News English.