Translation: between the universal and the local

Abstract

Translation, in every historical period and in every geographical
area, involves three related practices: an interpretive act in which
the translator applies formal and thematic interpretants to
transform the source text into the translated text; the construction
of a network of intertextual relations through the application of
interpretants, which create relations to the source text and culture
as well as the receiving language and culture; and the establishment,
through these practices, of an ethical attitude towards the
source text and culture, whereby the translation preserves or
challenges the cultural and social statu quo in the receiving
situation. To preserve is to reinforce the current hierarchy of
linguistic and cultural values; to challenge is to register linguistic
and cultural differences by upsetting that hierarchy so as to
signal a respect for the source text and culture. These points are
developed through two case studies, one involving Livius
Andronicus’s Latin translation of the Homeric Odyssey, the other
involving two English versions of Seneca’s play, Oedipus, one
by the scholar E. F. Watling, the other by the poet Ted Hughes.