Translation and Discursive Identity

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Translation and Discursive IdentityAuthor(s): Clem RobynsSource: Poetics Today, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 405-428Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773316

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Translation nd Discursive dentityClem Robyns

Comparative Literature, K.U. Leuven

Abstract For any target discourse, translation, as a confrontation with thenonidentical, is a potential threat to its own identity. Via a broad definitionof translation as "discursive migration," this paper discusses the possible waysin which a discourse may react to the intrusion of alien discursive elements.Two basic questions function as guidelines: Does a discursive practice acknowl-edge the otherness of intruding elements? And, does it allow their intrusionwithouttransforming hem according to target codes? Thus, four prototypicalstances (imperialist, defensive, trans-discursive, and defective) are extensivelydiscussed. Finally, this framework is applied to the conflicts characterizing theidentity construction of translation studies as a discipline in itself.

Any discourse (re)produces its own borderlines and thus defines itsown specificity with respect to other discourses. This implies that iden-tity is always a dynamic concept, a fragile equilibrium. Translation(in the traditional sense), as an explicit confrontation with "alien"discourses, is only the most conspicuous instance of the continuousconflicts which characterize the construction of identity. Although thetranslation problem has already been formulated in these terms by cer-tain scholars (e.g., Even-Zohar 1990),1 the monolithic and static con-cepts of "text," "language," and "translation"itself that still dominate1. In the field of sociolinguistics,similarframeworkshave been developed by UrielWeinreich (see, e.g., Weinreich 1966 [1953], on bilingualism and linguistic inter-ference) and by Joshua A. Fishman(see, e.g., Fishman 1989, on ethnicity), amongothers.PoeticsToday15:3 (Fall 1994). Copyright? 1994 byThe PorterInstitute for Poeticsand Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/94/$2.50.


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406 PoeticsToday 15:3translation studies seriously hamper discussion. Therefore, in order tostudy the role that translation plays in the dynamics of self-definition,the focus of attention has to be shifted from individual texts or lin-guistic features in translation (however "contextualized" the analysismay be) to interference between discourses and discursive structuresand strategies. In this paper, which is only a first attempt to developthe theoretical framework of a larger research project, I would liketo discuss the ways in which a discourse may deal with the problemof discursive interference, as manifested in both translation strategiesand the positions taken toward translation itself.

1. Translationand DiscursiveSelf-DefinitionA discourse-or to use a term which also encompasses the individualand institutional extratextual factors, a discursive practice-definesitself in relation, or rather in opposition, to other discourses. (Thesame goes for "cultures," which may be seen as large, systemic con-glomerates of discursive practices.) If we define a discourse as a setof messages viewed by their producers or receivers as linked becausethey rely partly on a common set of norms, the awareness of suchcommon codes is possible only via confrontation with their absence,namely, with other discourses.Thus the dynamics of discursive self-definition imply continuouscontact between discourses. Moreover, those relations are never rela-tions of equality since they never exist in an isolated form: the complexweb of relationships created by the superposition of political, eco-nomic, scientific, artistic, literary, and other discourses makes a perfectsymbiosis between any two discursive practices seem hardly more thanan idealistic construct.

The unequal character of interdiscursive relations, that is to say, thefact that the construction of identity is linked to unequal power rela-tions, implies that identity construction can be seen as ideological: inestablishing its identity, a discursive practice constructs, reproduces, orsubverts social interests and power relations. Two remarks may clarifythis thesis. First, the very fact that, within a culture or discursive prac-tice, there is an awareness of a common identity implies that there hasalso been a striving toward preservation of this identity, toward self-preservation by the discourse.2 If identity is constructed in oppositionto the alien, interferences imply loss of autonomy and thereby loss ofidentity. Secondly, the shared conventions on which identity is based2. In "The Notion of System," Dirk De Geest (1992) links the central/peripheralposition of systemic elements to their role in systemic unity: elements interfer-ing with other systems tend to be relegated to a marginal position. De Geest alsoproposes a Greimassian "square of normativity," which allows us to describe thenormative status of (imported) elements.


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Robyns * Translationand Identity 407are often implicit. In order to make the internal functioning of a dis-course possible, certain basic rules and meanings underlying its pro-duction are generally taken for granted by the participants. This struc-tured (but plural and dynamic) whole of presuppositions is what wecall "doxa."Just as the presupposition of a linguistic utterance ("Whendid you stop beating your wife?") cannot be contested (unlike the de-notation) without contesting the situation of communication itself, thedoxa of a given discourse cannot be contested (thereby making it ex-plicit, while its efficiency lies in its implicitness) without contesting theself-evident legitimacy of the discourse and its producers.3Still, this is precisely one possible function of translation. It intro-duces discursive elements from other discourses and, therefore, bydefinition is a potential code violation. The simple fact that a text iswritten in something other than the common language is already aradical challenge to the conventions of a target discourse.4 Since theawareness of common norms constitutes the basis for discursive self-definition, the intrusion of alien, convention-violating elements is apotential threat. Therefore, every discourse is continually forced todetermine its position(s) toward such alien elements, hence towardtranslation. Different reactions are possible here, and these will bedetermined in accordance with the internal and external systemic re-lations characterizing the discursive practice in question. In this paper,I want to discuss four types of attitudes toward translation which maycharacterize a discursive practice.In order to study translation as the "intrusion of the alien," it isuseful, even necessary, to redefine the notion of "translation" itself.First of all, translation clearly cannot be seen in isolation from non-translation. In other words, both the exclusion of alien elements andtheir acceptance in their original form, both the "faithful" translationand the complete transformation of a text or textual element, have tobe seen as translation strategies. To put it in an extreme way: trans-lation may be anything between literal repetition (which, in practice,does not exist) and intertextuality, in the broadest sense. Secondly,since "cultures" and "literatures" are merely specific types of discur-sive practice, there is no reason to restrict the concept of translation tothe transfer of texts or textual elements between languages (cultures,3. I don't see "doxa" as a "structural unconscious" determining a discourse and itsproducers. The ideological function of doxa lies in its hegemonic character: itsimplicitness and self-evidence. But if doxa by definition excludes contradiction,that doesn't mean that it cannot be contradicted.4. Unless, of course, nobody can identify the linguistic codes of a certain alien text(because nobody knows the script or the language). However, even though thereis no linguistic code violation (because no alternative is offered), the text can stillfunction as an alien object.


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408 PoeticsToday 15:3literatures). So translation can be redefined as "the migration andtransformation of discursive elements between different discourses."Each of those discourses can be described as occupying a position in alarger system and as forming a system in itself.5This "scholarly definition" is a working hypothesis, like any defini-tion formulated by other "people in the culture." I use my concept oftranslation not as an exclusive tool for classification, but as a convenienthypothesis and in full consciousness of its historicity. The historicalcontext here is, of course, the questioning (which, unfortunately, hasn'tyet become generalized in translation studies) of the essentialistic andreductive concepts of "text," "subject,"and especially "literature."In order to pin down the positions that a given discourse may as-sume toward "alien migration," three basic aspects have to be takeninto account. First of all, what is the position and function of theconcept of translation, or of "the alien" in general, in the varioussubdiscourses of a discursive system? Is it discussed at all? Is it seenas a problem and, if so, what type of problem? Which dichotomiesare used to characterize it, and which rhetorical devices? The sec-ond aspect is the selection and distribution of imported elements:Does a discourse allow intrusion, and from which other discourses?Finally, translational strategies have to be analyzed: How and to whatextent are the alien discursive elements adapted to the implicit andexplicit rules of the target discourse? In combination, these three as-pects should allow us to describe some basic attitudes characterizing adiscursive practice. My examples will be chosen from various types ofdiscourse (literary, academic, linguistic-cultural, nationalist-political,and cinematographic) in order to show that similar mechanisms are atwork within different discourses that are usually treated in isolation.

2. Meeting the Alien:Some BasicAttitudesIn order to describe four main attitudes toward discursive migra-tion, I would like to propose two basic criteria. First, does a discur-sive practice acknowledge he otherness of (potentially) intruding ele-ments from other discourses? Does it explicitly oppose itself to "theother"? Secondly, does a discursive practice allow the intrusion ofcode-violating elements without ransforminghem according to the tar-get codes? An attitude in which otherness is denied and transformedmay be called imperialist,while one in which otherness is acknowl-edged but still transformed may be called defensive.A trans-discursive5. See Robyns (1992) and Lambert and Robyns (in press) for a more elaboratediscussion of this topic. A similar option has been suggested by Itamar Even-Zohar(1981), but his proposal doesn't seem to have had any influence in the field oftranslation studies.


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Robyns *Translationand Identity 409discourse neither radically opposes itself to other discourses nor re-fuses their intrusion, while a defectivediscourse stimulates the intru-sion of alien elements that are explicitly acknowledged as such. Bothdefensive and defective attitudes can be called reactive,since they ex-plicitly react against either the presence or the absence of discursivemigrations and will therefore thematize translation.Clearly, these types are generalizations: neither a taxonomy noreven a methodological scheme, they should be seen as coordinates forresearch into specific, complex situations. Indeed, no discourse willever correspond exactly to a single type. It is obvious that in the casesof trans-discursive and defective attitudes, the end result would be atotal loss of autonomy. In any case, migrations are normally partial:only a limited number of codes will be called into question. (The forceof the reaction will depend on the central or marginal position of thecontested norms for the self-definition of the target discourse.) Norwill any discourse ever reflect only one attitude: like any model domi-nating a given discourse at a given moment, these basic attitudes can(and will) be contested and eventually replaced by other ones. Veryoften, as some of my examples will show, the coexistence of variousattitudes within the same discourse is itself a function of discursiveinterference. Finally, it is important to emphasize that only very rarely(if ever) will a specific attitude dominate a whole culture. As the Quebe-cois case (see section 2.2) shows especially clearly, attitudes toward thesame foreign culture can differ widely, depending on the positions ofthe specific discourses, institutions, and individuals comprising bothcultures-another argument for studying target discourses instead ofcultures.62. 1. The mperialisttandAn imperialist attitude toward the other is characterized by a para-doxical claim of, on the one hand, the irreducible specificity of one'sown identity and, on the other hand, the universality of its values.This claim is an elaboration of the way in which canonical languageis legitimized, according to Marc Angenot (1989: 135): "Son ideologieimmanente veut que la langue canonique soit une 'forme' universelle,adaptable a n'importe quel contenu" [Its immanent ideology demandsthat the canonical language be seen as a universal "form," adaptableto any content].7 All kinds of recuperative strategies are called uponto hide the internal contradictions of this type of doctrine.As one example, I want to discuss the legitimized French political/6. For a similar argument, see Annie Brisset (1988a). However, see also Brisset(1990), where a rather monolithic concept of "Quebecois culture" is articulated.7. All translations of quotations are mine unless otherwise indicated.


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410 PoeticsToday 15:3linguistic/cultural ideology of the universality of the French language(implying, of course, the culture and the nation). In centralist France,where the minister of cultural affairs is one of the main actors on thecultural scene, this has been a state matter for many centuries, andit still is. The following statements were recently made by BernardAubert, head of the Department of Linguistic and Educational Co-operation of the French foreign affairs ministry, in an interview withthe magazine Le Franfais dans le monde(Pecheur 1990: 26-27):

Soyonsserieux.EnFrance,vous le savezbien, lapolitique inguistiqueexte-rieure se pense, se negocie, se publieaux plus hauts sommetsde 1'Etat....La diffusion de la langue fran;aisea l'etrangerresteune prioritenationaleet les budgetsqui lui sont affectesne baissentpas.[Letus be serious.In France,asyouwellknow, he external inguisticpolicyis conceived,negotiated,and made publicat the highestlevelsof the State.The diffusion of the Frenchlanguageabroadremainsa nationalpriority,and its budgetswill not be reduced.]The ideology of the universality of the French language which legiti-mizes this policy is still rarely questioned at the institutional level: the"Secretariat a la francophonie," created in 1986, sees its task as basedon the assumption that "la vocation de la francophonie est de ten-dre a l'universel" [the mission of the Francophone world is to strivefor universality] (Pecheur 1986a: 23). Marc Angenot (1989: 268) de-scribes exactly the same way of thinking as having prevailed in Francein 1889: "Les doctrinaires, les philosophes veulent bien disserter surl'Espece humaine, mais cette humanite n'est qu'un avatar abstrait dela culture francaise, du bourgeois francais" [The doctrinairians, thephilosophers readily dwell on the human species, but this humanityis only an abstract incarnation of the French culture, of the Frenchbourgeois].Of course, the universality of a language has to be based on "uni-versal criteria." These are provided by Michel Bruguiere, an executiveof the High Committee of the French Language, in the Symposiumvolume of the EncyclopaediaUniversalis.8No doubts remain: "II n'enreste pas moins que les langues ne sont pas egales entre elles, et quetoute politique doit tenir compte de six parametres obliges" [Still, lan-guages are not equal, and every policy has to take into account sixobligatory parameters] (Bruguiere 1985: 1019b). Of those six criteria,8. The factthatsucha textappearsn a Frenchencyclopediaalling tself"uni-versal" is eloquent enough. Actually, the Symposiumolume is worth a study initself.The encyclopedia,whichpresents tselfas incontestable nowledge,never-theless ncludes hisvolumeasa kindof survey f thecurrentdebates.Meanwhile,the creditfor analyzing he phenomenon f the encyclopedia s an overviewoflegitimized ulturaliteracygoesto StefWauters1991).


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Robyns * Translationand Identity 411three could already be found in Rivarol's L'Universalitede la languefranfaise, published over 200 years ago: the "variete humaine," the"diffusion pedagogique," and the "richesse litteraire." The other threeare number of speakers, geographical distribution, and technologicalimpact. Bruguiere does try to apply these criteria in an "objective"way, by quantifying them. However, it is interesting to see how the re-cuperative strategies and timeless metaphors pop up. Indeed, Frenchranks lower in number of speakers than Chinese and English, amongothers, but since Hindi and Bengali also have more speakers, "sansrepresenter sur le plan international une reelle concurrence" [with-out offering any real competition on an international scale] (ibid.), theimplication is that the importance of this criterion should not be over-estimated. In any case, the second criterion, geographical distribution,is used to explain why French doesn't meet the first one: French iswell represented all over the world, "seule lAsie, reservoirde l'humanite,manque au tableau" [only Asia, the reservoir of mankind, is missingfrom the picture] (ibid.); the emphasis is mine, the derogatory con-notation Bruguiere's. Et cetera. Assigning one, two, or three pointsto every major language for each criterion allows Bruguiere to estab-lish a "hit parade" of international languages: French finishes second,after English. In short, "l'espace d'expression francaise doit etre ...presente au reste du monde pour ce qu'il est, c'est-a-dire un abrege dumonde" [the French-speaking sphere must be presented to the rest ofthe world the way it is: a summary of the world] (ibid.: 1022a). Quoderat demonstrandum.

How, then, is this doctrine of universality made congruent with theclaim of cultural specificity? Several basic strategies can be combinedhere. The main one is to deny "the other" the status of a "valid cul-ture": "only our culture is universally human." The other is reducedto a barbarian or an exotic curiosity. According to Angenot (1989:279), such a position prevailed in France in 1889: "Ce qui est universel,c'est l'6vidence de l'inferiorite des peuples exotiques, de la superio-rite de l'Europe et singulierement de la France, foyer de civilisation"[What is universal is the self-evident inferiority of the exotic peoples,the superiority of Europe and especially of France, the seat of civiliza-tion]. This attitude is not only taken toward Africa and Asia, but, forinstance, toward Germany as well (ibid.: 137).

Today, Brugui&re (1985: 1021a-b) produces an only slightly weak-ened version of this reasoning: "Une situation de conflit, en effet,serait d'abord absurde: le francais est a ce point implante en Francequ'il ne saurait subir la moindre concurrence de la part du corse, dubasque ou du breton" [Indeed, a situation of conflict would first of allbe absurd: French is so well-established in France that it couldn't pos-sibly meet with even the weakest competition from Corsican, Basque,


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412 PoeticsToday 15:3or Breton]. In matters of "foreign policy," this superiority complexnaturally leads France to assume the role of "cultural guide" for themore primitive people. In the words of historian Gustave Lanson(1923: 1): "Elle [France] a ete le guide qui, d'un geste, entrainait lespeuples vers les routes de l'avenir, tenant le flambeau vers lequel setournent les autres nations, inquietes de la direction a suivre" [SheFrancel has been the guide who, with a single gesture, has drawnotherl peoples along the roads to the future, bearing the torch forother nations, who are concerned about what direction to take].And today? Today, the department headed by Bernard Aubert seesits "vocation" as maintaining a "positive influence on the institutionalcontext in which French is taught in other countries" (Pecheur 1990:27). To give another example: the two illustrations for Bruguiere'sarticle in the EncyclopaediaUniversalis(Bruguiere 1985: 1022, 1023)nicely suggest the "civilizing force" of French culture. Both are photo-graphs of the entrance to a similarly modern concrete building. Bothbuildings are "Centres culturels francais." In both pictures youngpeople hang around, some entering or leaving the building. In onepicture, however, the youngsters are white; in the other, they're black.The first photograph was shot in Paris, the second in ... Brazzaville.As to "internal policy," an assumption of superiority leads to anunscrupulous assimilation of the alien elements-an assimilation thateffectively denies their specificity. After describing how "we" con-structed "our Middle Ages" out of Latin, Celtic, and Germanic ele-ments, "our Renaissance" out of Latin, Italian, and Greek components,all culminating in "our great classical age," Lanson (1923: 441) can'tavoid the conclusion that "la puissance d'assimilation d'une nation,et particulierement de notre nation, est incroyable" [the assimilat-ing power of a nation, and especially of our nation, is incredible].Bruguiere (1985: 1024) goes even further:

En definitive,toute langueest de naturebiologique.Certainesespeces ani-males ou vegetales se preserventseulement dans tel ou tel climat ....D'autres s'adaptent, prosperent sous diverses latitudes. ... La languefran:aisea derriereelle presd'unmillenaired'adaptations uccessives.[Ultimately,every language has a biologicalnature. Certain animal andvegetable species surviveonly in such-and-sucha climate. Others adaptthemselves,prosperingin variousclimates.The French anguagehas gonethroughalmosta millenniumof successiveadaptations.]If a culture attains universality by combining specificity with the as-similation of otherness, this suggests a strong teleological movement.Other nations are seen as prehistorical resources for the inevitabledevelopment toward perfection of the French culture. So it is not bychance that Mitterand calls the French language "cet arbre superbe

qui plonge ses racinesdans toutes les cultures du monde" [that superb


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Robyns * Translationand Identity 413tree that has its roots in all the cultures of the world] (quoted inPecheur 1986b: 27 [my emphasis]), nor that Lanson (1923: 442) canpredict that "nos descendants . . . sauront retrouver le visage de laFrance eternelle. Ayons confiance" [our descendants will be able torecognize the face of eternal France. Let us have faith].Let me note in passing that, as a consequence of the identificationlanguage = nation = culture, even foreign Francophone texts canfunction as "alien" elements. Indeed, in his article "Notre litteraturenon pas lue, mais vue par les Francais," Paul Dirkx (1990) describesthe attitude of French textbooks and of the NouvelleRevuefran(aise crit-ics toward Belgian Francophone literature. He detects similar strate-gies of, on the one hand, occulting the foreign nationality of highlyvalued texts and, on the other hand, emphasizing the "exotic," evenprimitive, features of "typically Belgian" texts. In both cases the alientexts are seen as contributions to "the admirable development of ourFrench literature."I have discussed at length the legitimizing rhetoric of an imperial-ist attitude toward the alien without mentioning translation in thestrictest sense. One reason for this is that in an imperialist doctrinethe role of translation will not be strongly emphasized, although thatdoesn't preclude its being deployed as a discursive strategy. Still, theunquestioned "assimilation policy" makes it clear how translation willbe seen. First of all, it has to be denied an innovative function. Im-ported elements are not allowed to dominate the target discourse, butmust be integrated through transformation. Translation is also seenas transparency: because of the universality of the target discourse,the understanding of the other can never be a problem. An extremeexample of this ideology is the following statement made by Fichte in1807, during one of his Addresses o theGermanNation: "Hence the Ger-man ... can always be superior to the foreigner and understand himfully, even better than the foreigner understands himself.... On theother hand, there is no doubt that he [the foreigner] will leave what isgenuinely German untranslated" (quoted and translated by Edwards1985: 26).In translations of canonized literature, the "transformative stand"has, of course, been problematic since Romanticism and l'Art pourl'Art imposed the doctrine of the unique literary text as "irreducibleotherness." However, it is clear that in practice translation strategies,even of canonized literature, do not correspond entirely to this offi-cial doctrine. A telling example is the first French translation of MilanKundera's novel Zert (1967), La Plaisanterie (Kundera 1968). In anafterword to the second translation (Kundera 1985), on which he him-self worked, Kundera writes that he became suspicious of the first


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414 PoeticsToday 15:3translation when ajournalist questioned him about the "baroque" lan-guage of his novel. When Kundera checked the translation, he found,among dozens of other embellishments, a sentence that meant "the skywas blue" in the original translated as "sous un ciel de pervenche, octo-bre hissait son pavois fastueux" [under an azure sky, October raisedits magnificent banners] (ibid.: 460).In more popular fiction, transformative strategies are even morefrequent. Again, they are linked to larger discourse structures. To givejust one example, during the last few decades, slang, or "argot,"has be-come more or less "officialized" in France and thus has yielded to thestrict language requirements of that country. This means that Frenchslang, in order to become generally "accepted," first has to shed anypossible regional or foreign connotations. Just as in Anglo-Americanliterature, slang has become acceptable in French literature. However,in French translations, Anglo-American slang comes into conflict withboth the norms of "official French slang" and the very strong liter-ary requirement of grammatically correct usage. French translatorsthus face some problems. First of all, any regional connotations inthe American original (especially expressions characteristic of the U.S.South) disappear. Secondly, while characters in the original texts mayoften use ungrammatical constructions, this almost never occurs in theFrench versions. And finally, all of the slang terms used in the Frenchtranslations are part of a repertoire of exclusively French "standardargot" which can be found in any standard dictionary. So it is clearthat the translation strategies applied to argot must be integrated witha general policy of recuperation of "the popular" by standard French,including the prohibition on references to specific regions or subcul-tures.

This type of strategy corresponds to what Even-Zohar (1990: 50)calls the generally "secondary" (i.e., conformist, non-innovative) posi-tion of translated texts in the French literary system. As I have triedto demonstrate, this discursive strategy has to be integrated with anoverall attitude toward translation and "the alien" within a discursivesystem.2.2. The Defensive StandPower relations can change, of course, and otherness, instead of beingassimilated, denigrated, and hidden, can intrude as such. Generally(i.e., if the target discourse doesn't take a defective stand [see section2.4]), such intrusions provoke defensive reactions. This is certainly thecase with today's dominant political doctrine concerning the Frenchlanguage, especially when it is considered as language and thus iso-lated from the (still triumphalist) propaganda about French culturein general. Terms such as "state of emergency" are used to decry the


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Robyns * Translationand Identity 415"Americanization" of French (Pecheur 1986b: 27), and the need fora "popular front" to launch the "reconquest" is emphasized (Pecheur1986a: 23). In Quebec, the situation is more complicated, as we shallsee. The dominant Quebecois nationalist doctrine not only presentsthe Quebecois language as threatened by the English-speaking Cana-dian majority, but also emphasizes the "cultural identity crisis" causedby the cultural dominance of France. Therefore, defensive reactionswork in two directions.How should we characterize a defensive stand toward the intrusionof alien discursive elements? (For a more detailed study of defensivediscourse on the French language, see Robyns [in press].) First, a senseof threat to one's own identity, of alienation, is expressed. In the wordsof the Quebecois translator Jacques Poisson (1977: 287): "S'il est vraiqu'une langue de civilisation suppose un minimum de consensus chezses usagers, detruire la possibilite de ce consensus par l'arbitraire dela traduction et, surtout, de la traductionalisation,9 c'est ... l'essencede la deculturation" [If it is true that a language of civilization impliesa minimal consensus among its users, (then}destroying the possibilityof this consensus by the arbitrariness of translation, and especiallytranslationalization, is the essence of deculturation]. In such a situa-tion, claims of universality are no longer possible, for "the nationalistideology does not tolerate Quebec French being 'international.' Theuse of this qualifier is revealing: multiculturalismand transculturalismare negative values, and thus must be fought" (Brisset 1989: 13). Whatwill be claimed is the inviolable specificity of one's own discourse. Re-vealing in this respect, for instance, is the complaint by Rene Etiemble(one of the main French "language purists") that, as a result of the"Americanization" of French advertising, "words have lost their mean-ing" (Etiemble 1985: 107). The implication here is that a specifically"French meaning" has always been attached to a specifically Frenchword, but that this natural bond has been ruptured by the intrusionof what is not specifically French.A discourse characterized by a defensive posture enhances its speci-ficity by heavily emphasizing the otherness of the "alien" discourse.What is interesting here is a general tendency in Quebec (mentionedin Brisset 1988b: 105), especially in French-Canadian radio and tele-vision, to anglicize all foreign names, whatever their origin may be.Since the English-Canadian community is the main representative ofthe threatening alien in Quebec, this tendency suggests an attempt tounify all possible "aliens" under one heading.The threatening intrusion of the alien discourse is often charac-9. For Poisson: nontransformative translation.


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416 PoeticsToday 15:3terized as an "invasion." Philippe de Saint-Robert, for instance, inhis 1985 preface to the official French Guidedes motsnouveaux, statesthat a language has to defend itself against "the semantic invasion"(quoted in Calvet 1986: 25). This invasion makes the target discoursedependent on the intruding discourse: "il peut se developper un colo-nialisme culturel, par traduction interposee" [a cultural colonialismcan be established via translation] (Robert Dubuc and Jacques Mau-rais, quoted in Simon 1990: 216). Etiemble (1985: 108a) cries out:"La France colonisee, colonisee par le babelien!" [France colonized byBabelian!]. This "colonization" causes a weakening, a degeneration ofthe threatened discourse: "Tout ce que celle-ci renferme d'idioma-tique . .. tend a devenir connaissance passive" [Each of its {the tar-get language's} idiomatic aspects tends to become passive knowledge](Poisson 1977: 285). Ultimately, this leads to a corresponding degen-eration among the language's producers: "Comment ne comprend-onpas que l'on ne peut pas sans peril mortel pour l'esprit et les moeurslaisser le libre-echange regir les rapports entre toutes les langues?"[How is it possible not to understand that you cannot let free exchangerule the relations among all the languages without mortally imperilingmind and morality?] (Etiemble 1985: 107a).When this sense of threat is born out of a frustrated feeling ofsuperiority, and especially when "representatives" of the invading cul-ture (or of any alien group) exist within the threatened culture, itwill generally lead to racist reactions. Thus the same rhetoric willbe used against both foreign discursive elements and foreign people.While Philippe de Saint-Robert declares war against the "semantic"invaders, Figaro magazine publishes articles on the invasion of immi-grant workers, and the novelist Jean Raspail writes about the forth-coming "invasion of France and the Western world by the spear-heads of the third world masses" (quoted in Pucheu 1985: 15). Analmost explicit incitement to racism is the link made by an illustra-tion for Etiemble's EncyclopaediaUniversalisarticle on the "corruption"of French by the intrusion of foreign languages. In the backgroundof this photograph is a billboard advertising "Un autre big boy. Thenew brand of fast food. Ouverture bientot," while pictured in theforeground is a black immigrant worker (Etiemble 1985: 108).In this context, translation can only be viewed in a negative light:"Le brouillage de la langue d'arrivee, envahie [!] par les habitudes etles automatismes de la langue de depart, entraine un appauvrissementdes moyens d'expression et, en consequence, un amoindrissement cul-turel, une deculturation" [The disruption of the target language, in-vaded by the usages and idioms of the source language, causes an im-poverishment of the means of expression and, consequently, a culturaldiminishment, a deculturation] (Poisson 1977: 285). Two plausible re-


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Robyns * Translationand Identity 417actions can be imagined here. First, conscious, explicit attempts canbe made to keep alien elements out. Such reactions, even legislativeones, have occurred in France since the beginning of the eighties: "[I1faut] imposer ... a la presse de parler, d'ecrire correctement; inter-dire partout aux publicitaires . .. de massacrer expres les languesmaternelles.... II faut exiger des mesures dirigistes" [The press mustbe compelled to speak and write correctly; advertisers everywheremust be forbidden to deliberately massacre their mother tongues. Wehave to demand stringent measures] (Etiemble 1985: 107b). The otherreaction entails transforming the alien elements in accordance withthe conventions of the target discourse so as to preserve its identity.This is what has happened in Quebec. However, the situation there isquite complex. The official political-administrative threatening alienis English-dominated Canada. Since France is no political threat toQuebecois autonomy, Quebec's administrative language can be bor-rowed from the official French of France, making it possible to "keepout" the official English discourse.In literature, however, the other is not only English-speakingCanada, but also culturally dominant France (Brisset 1988b: 93). Interms of literary fiction, Quebecois identity doesn't seem to be wellenough developed to take a defensive stance. Therefore, translationsof novels are presented as a way to supplement Quebecois literature(Simon 1989: 80), that is, the limited cultural repertoire forces thispart of the system to take a defective tand.The theatre system, on the contrary, does employ a distinctivelyQuebecois feature: the local variant of French, or "Joual,"10whichis a spoken language and therefore appropriate to the theatre (Bris-set 1989: 10). Thus, while the English-Canadian "intruder" is keptout (almost no English-Canadian plays are performed in the Quebe-cois theatre [Brisset 1988a: 12]), texts from France are transformedthrough the use of a specific sociolect (Brisset 1988b: 100).Thus, the analysis of the Quebecois attitude toward discursive mi-gration shows that a "common threat" to the different discourses con-stituting a system doesn't necessarily mean that these discourses sharethe same attitude toward this threat.2.3. The Trans-Discursive tandWithout completely losing sight of its specificity, a discursive practicecan consider itself explicitly as a part of a larger discursive domain:Wie in Europaeen reele taalgemeenschapwil bevorderen,die samengaatmet de vele nationale talen wierbestaansrechtniet meer bewezen hoeft te10. As Brisset (1988b, 1989, 1990) makes clear, the necessity of opposing Que-bec to France by means of Joual even leads to the creation of "fake"differencesbetween French andJoual in the Quebecois theatre.


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418 PoeticsToday 15:3worden,zou er goed aan doen zich niet vast te pinnen op de aanvaardingvan een enkele Cultuurtaalmet een grote c, met al het taalpuritanisme nhet culturele elitismedat een dergelijkekeuze insluit.[In order to promotein Europea reallinguisticcommunity,whichcoexistswith the many nationallanguageswhose right to exist doesn't have to beprovedanymore, t would be wise not to stickto theacceptanceof one singlelanguageof Culturewitha capitalC, withall the linguisticpuritanismandculturalelitismthat this choiceimplies.] (Frijhoff1988:728)

This is the attitude prevailing in (though not really dominating) the"progressive" part of today's Flemish-Dutch culture. (Actually, the firstbasic option of this attitude is to stop separating "Flemish"and "Dutch"culture.) In this case, specificity is not heavily emphasized (anymore),but is seen from a more pragmatic viewpoint. Thus, when Frijhoffdraws a parallel in the following passage between the "corruption"(the relativizing quotation marks are his) of Latin in the late MiddleAges and the situation of Dutch today, he clearly doesn't considerthe Dutch language a value to be protected in its own right, distinctfrom the requirements of efficient communication: "Was deze 'verbas-tering' in zekere zin niet de prijs die moest betaald worden voor eensterkere penetratie en de bevordering van een grotere bruikbaarheidals internationale contact en cultuurtaal?" [Was not this "corruption"in a certain sense the price that had to be paid for a stronger pene-tration and a greater utility as a language of international contactand culture?] (ibid.: 724). A trans-discursive doctrine doesn't explicitlyconsider imported elements "other" or "alien," let alone "threaten-ing." Both foreign discursive elements and those of "local production"are seen as equal contributions to a common goal. To quote Frijhoffagain: "Is het Europese Amerikaans van thans, juist door onze idio-men te besmetten, niet bezig zich de status van nieuwe lingua francate verwerven, tamelijk los van zijn Britse zowel als Amerikaanse oor-sprong?" [Is today's European American, precisely by contaminatingour idioms, not on its way to attaining the status of a new linguafranca,and this quite independently from its British as well as its Americanorigin?] (ibid.: 728).Thus, in the Dutch magazine OnzeTaal(Our Language), J. J. Bakker(1987: 73) gives, in a very detached manner, a list of "respectable rea-sons" to allow the intrusion of foreign (especially English) words inDutch communication, such as the absence of an appropriate Dutchterm, the quest for variety, the need for a brief term, the imitation of asuccessful metaphor, and so forth. The only (common) norm seems tobe efficient communication, and the only reprehensible way of dealingwith foreign terms is their gratuitous use-precisely because this blursunderstanding.Often, such an attitude is a reaction against what is seen as "unfruit-


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Robyns * Translationand Identity 419ful provincialism": the local production is not really considered defec-tive, but is expected to reach beyond its local context. This attitudecan be observed, for instance, in the Flemish and Dutch film indus-try today (and, indeed, in many European film industries). It is cer-tainly not the case that contemporary films simply imitate foreign (say,American) models. They try, rather, to combine local elements withsome sort of "international film language." Critics displaying the sameattitude don't consider these films to be imitations, but present themas the contributions of a smaller film industry to a larger, internationalone. Still, this attitude may lead to the disavowal or neglect of local fea-tures and products. In such a case, we are no longer witnessing a localdiscursive practice establishing its position within a larger entity, buta larger, hegemonic discourse ignoring or denigrating local practices.The trans-discursive doctrine then becomes an imperialist one.Again, the type of reaction seems to depend on the position of agiven discourse within larger structures. Thus it should not surpriseus that recently one of the most extreme "internationalist" proposalsimaginable was made with respect to Dutch universities. The Dutcheducation minister, Jo Ritzen, suggested that English be made the pri-mary language of The Netherlands' universities. In our terms, thiswould imply cutting off Dutch scientific discourse from local "discur-sive practices" and merging it completely with an international struc-ture. It is not so much the proposal itself which is significant as thereactions to it of the Dutch opinion makers and public. Commentatorsin the country's two main newspapers, Volkskrantnd NRC Handelsblad,expressed themselves as cautiously favorable, as did some universityadministrators (Schrauwers 1990: 23). The editors of Onze Taal con-demned the initiative, but not on the basis of any presumed primacy ofthe Dutch language; rather, they warned that certain discourse typeswould disappear from the system, causing a subsequent split betweenthe country's intellectual elites and the general public (Redactie OnzeTaal 1990: 24). However, even this relatively moderate position wascriticized by one of the magazine's readers (Roessingh 1990: 76).Meanwhile, a similar debate has been going on in Flanders. Al-though quite inconsistent with actual practice, the official positionthere is against the use of English in universities. This reaction is,again, a function of the superimposition of discourses: one of the firstand foremost claims of Flemish nationalism (which is kept alive bythe universities, among other institutions, for financial reasons andas a consequence of institutional inertia) was the people's right to beeducated in their own language.As indicated earlier, a trans-discursive attitude is in se problematic.Every discursive practice tends to establish its autonomy by creatingcorresponding institutions, and a trans-discursive doctrine, by ques-


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420 PoeticsToday 15:3tioning the boundaries, is by definition a threat to the existence ofthose institutions and thereby to order and stability. It will thereforeprovoke defensive reactions, which usually take the form of purism,that is, attempts to absolutize the conventions of the threatened dis-course.11A second relativizing comment to be made on the "internationalism"of the Flemish-Dutch linguistic doctrine has to do with interferencefrom another discourse: that of the broadcast media. Indeed, if moreand more criticism can be made of the "corruption" of the Dutch lan-guage, it is largely due to the defensive position into which intellectualdiscourse as a whole has been forced by the mass media. Intellectualelites (not only in the Low Countries, but anywhere in the Westernworld12), whose position is entirely legitimized by appeal to the age-old authority of literate discourse as social discourse-maker, now seetheir dominance threatened by the growing influence of media dis-course, which they do not dominate and have never learned to dealwith.13 As I have already indicated, there is probably no better incen-tive for treating age-old conventions as absolute than a threat to thedominant position of age-old institutions legitimized by them.2.4. The Defective StandFinally, a discursive practice may acknowledge that it lacks the neces-sary components for renewing itself, for adapting to a changing socialcontext. It will then take a "defective" position, turning to "alien"discourses and importing discursive elements from them (see Even-Zohar 1978: 18).14 Since this immigration is seen as an enrichmentof the target discourse, these discursive elements will generally be ex-plicitly introduced as alien. Since the target discourse's repertoire isseen as insufficient, the imported elements will not be transformed inaccordance with target-discourse conventions. Translation, then, willbe viewed positively.It is this attitude which has completely determined the evolutionof the literary subsystem of the detective novel in postwar France.11. See, for instance, Arno Schrauwers (1986: 66), in Onze Taal, and the almostimmediate rebuttal by A. J. Onstenk (1986: 130-31), who exposes the internalcontradictions of purist discourse.12. For instance, in the United States, E. D. Hirsch has attempted to establish anofficially sanctioned American canon of "cultural literacy." In this case, the threatto literate discourse posed by the mass media is reinforced by the threat to whiteintellectual dominance posed by the (belated and already eroding) legitimation ofethnic minority discourses.13. For a more extended discussion of intellectuals' defensive reactions towardmass-media culture, see Robyns (1991).14. I prefer the term "defective" to "weak" or "dependent," which Even-Zoharcurrently uses.


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Robyns* Translationand Identity 421Again, the position accorded such a subsystem is a function of theinteraction among various discourses. Before the Second World War,the French detective novel constituted a rather weak system: it hada very limited tradition (mainly the late nineteenth-century feuilleton[serial story] author Emile Gaboriau and Maurice Leblanc, the creatorof Arsene Lupin) and an equally limited contemporary production.Most detective novels were imported from Britain and were publishedin the Le Masque series, whose major authors were Agatha Christieand Patricia Wentworth.If the local production succeeded in maintaining any autonomy, itwas due solely to the French-speaking Belgian Georges Simenon, whototally dominated the genre. He integrated the whodunit formula withthe French bourgeois novel of the early twentieth century and therebysucceeded in staking out an ambiguous position between detectivenovels and "serious" fiction. In his novels and those of his epigones,the mystery took a backseat to melodrama, psychologism, and solidpetit-bourgeois values and lifestyles. Functioning as a prototype of theFrench entre-deux-guerresetective novelist, Simenon would remain foryears the favorite butt of attacks by a new generation of hard-boiledFrench writers. As late as 1973, the Magazinelitteraire ummarized theperiod before and immediately after the Second World War in thefollowing polemic terms:

La France?Silence ...Simenon (Georges)regne. Depuis les annees 30. II produit. Du fini. Ducousu main. A la virgule.Unerationannuellede Simenon.Simenon roman.Simenon Maigret.... Du comestible,du surgele.... Des bourgeois quiproduisentpour les bourgeoisen se rassurant.[France?Silence ...Simenon (Georges) reigns. Since the thirties. He produces.Craftmanship.Polished. To the comma. An annual ration of Simenon. Simenon novel.SimenonMaigret.Edible,deep-frozen.Bourgeoisproduction orbourgeoistranquilizing.] (Ysmal1973:25)Meanwhile, the Anglo-American detective novel was undergoingprofound changes: the dominant model of the British whodunit was(violently) attacked by American authors, such as Dashiell Hammettand Raymond Chandler. For the American reader of the 1920s and1930s, in a country haunted by organized crime and institutional-ized corruption, murders in the libraries of peaceful English countryhouses had obviously lost their appeal. Hence the appearance of thehard-boiled detective novel, which would gradually relegate the mys-tery to the background in order to emphasize violent action scenes.Some of those novels (by Hammett and Raoul Whitfield) had beentranslated in France during the 1930s. However, they were excludedfrom the genre of the detective novel by being published (with little


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422 PoeticsToday 15:3success) in the collection Chefsd'oeuvredu Romand'Aventures.Thus theautonomy of the French "literary" detective novel was preserved.This fragile (because static) equilibrium was shattered after the war.The image of the United States as the victor in the war and the pro-tector of Western Europe, as well as its economic influence throughthe Marshall Plan (1947) and its cultural domination via control of themedia (with the European print and broadcast media systems still tobe reestablished), led to an unprecedented vogue of "buying Ameri-can." The local governments attempted to curtail this influence. Forinstance, after the war, France (like Italy and Spain) imposed importquotas on American films while heavily subsidizing the local film in-dustry. In 1949, a censorship law on comic strips was passed in France.Although officially aimed at the moral protection of youngsters, it wasclearly tailored to American imports. However, these measures hadan effect only in areas where France could fall back on a solid localtradition.This was not the case with the detective novel. Supported by theparallel development of film noir, the genre took an extremely defec-tive stance toward Anglo-American imports. As Marcel Duhamel, thecreator of the new but highly influential SerieNoire, made clear in his1947 introduction to the first issues of his series, the new models to beopposed to the Simenon tradition were British and American: "Nousavons fait appel aux grands specialistes du roman policier mouve-mente: Burnett, James Cain, Hadley Chase, Peter Cheyney, HoraceMcCoy, Dashiell Hammett, Don Tracy, Raoul Whitfield, etc." [We haveappealed to the great specialists of the hard-boiled detective novel: ... ](quoted in Dupuy 1974: 43-44). The shift of models couldn't havebeen more radical. To quote Duhamel again: "L'amateurd'enigmes ala Sherlock Holmes n'y trouvera pas souvent son compte.... I1restede l'action, de l'angoisse, de la violence-sous toutes ses formes et par-ticulierement les plus honnies-du tabassage et du massacre" [Thedevotee of Sherlock Holmes enigmas won't very often find anythingto suit him. What remains is action, fear, violence-in all its forms andespecially the most infamous ones-brawls and massacres] (ibid.). Asstated above, a defective stand treats imports from other discoursesas enrichment and therefore emphasizes their alien character. Withrespect to the detective novel, an extreme form of the defective stanceoccurred: the French product denied its local character and presenteditself as translated. Thus the Minuit series, created in 1941, publishedonly pseudo-translations. Its directors, Louis Daquin and Louis Cha-vance, took the pen names Lewis MacDackin (!), Irving Ford, and JackRiver. Some authors, such as Leo Malet and Jean Meckert, who wouldlater become two of the main exponents of the French roman noir,started out as "Americans." Likewise, San-Antonio, who would later


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Robyns * Translationand Identity 423monopolize the parody of the hard-boiled detective novel, publishedhis first novels in 1947 under the pseudonym "Kill Him."Translation dominated the genre until the late 1960s: 75 percentof the Serie Noire novels were translated. That translation was viewedpositively is hardly surprising, since the target discourse no longer hadits own models to oppose to the imported texts. It also meant thattranslations could only be "faithful" to the original (i.e., to the hard-boiled model's features), as there was simply no alternative. It wouldtake French authors almost two decades to develop a distinctly Frenchversion of the hard-boiled novel: the roman noir. Gradually, the num-ber of translations dropped (especially in new collections), and theimported texts were, as is normally the case in France, once againadapted.15 In the 1970s, another shift of models occurred (roman noirbecame neo-polar),but this time it was initiated by the local product.So, in 1973, the editors of the Magazine litterairecould look back onthe history of the detective novel and conclude:

IIest ne en Angleterreau XVIIIe siecle,mais,dans lAmeriquedes anneestrente, il est reapparu,transforme.... Ce roman noir est venu chez nous,traduitpar la SerieNoire.Puisdes auteursfrancais 'ontcompris,repris,etnous expliquent, avec l'humourdu roman noir, ce qu'est,d'une certainemaniere,la Franced'aujourd'hui.[It wasborn in Englandin the eighteenth century,but, in the America ofthe thirties, it reappeared,transformed.This romannoir has come to us,translatedby the SerieNoire.Then Frenchauthors,havingunderstood andadaptedit, explainedto us, with the humorof the romannoir,whatis, in acertainsense, today'sFrance.] (Redaction1973: 10)Although it fit into a general sociocultural tendency of the postwarperiod, the defective attitude of the French detective novel genre was

mainly motivated by intrasystemic needs. This is not a necessary condi-tion: a specific superposition of discourses can also cause a shift towarda defective stand. Wolfgang Bauer (1964) describes how the Commu-nist takeover in China, based on a total rejection of the political/social/cultural system, forced the entire "market of symbolic goods" to takea defective stance toward the Soviet Union from the late 1940s to theend of the 1950s. (This meant, of course, that the Chinese culturalsystem was simultaneously forced to take a trans-discursive stance withrespect to the overall sociopolitical discourse.) An enormous trans-lation apparatus was developed, with thousands of translations (andretranslations!) of Russian texts produced in every field from litera-ture to the natural sciences and engineering (ibid.: 6-12). The defec-tive stand toward the Soviet Union even determined the selection of15. For a more detailed study of translation strategies in this period, see Robyns(1990).


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424 PoeticsToday 15:3Western authors to be translated into Chinese, as Bauer clearly dem-onstrates (ibid.: 22-26). He quotes a 1959 group statement by ChineseCommunist scholars: "In promoting the wide establishment of Social-ism the literature of the most advanced Soviet Socialism and Realismfits best to our intellectual education and our continuously increasingneed for cultural borrowing" (ibid.: 18).It would be difficult to find a more telling demonstration of some ofthe main hypotheses put forward in this paper: the explicit acknowl-edgment of "enrichment" via discursive immigration as typical of thedefective stand; the importance of power relations between discur-sive practices; the need to study discourses instead of texts, let aloneexclusively literary texts.

3. By Way of ConclusionIf we expand the notion of translation to include the migration andtransformation of discursive elements, if we stop limiting our studiesto (literary) texts, if we see interdiscursive power relations as the mainfactor in determining whether translation will be considered a "threat"to discursive autonomy and identity, then we cannot avoid raising thesame questions about our own discourse. For one thing, applying thesame approach to both our research topic and our own discourse maysave us from the illusion of "neutral science" and, at the same time,allow us to meet what I consider one of the basic criteria for con-temporary cultural sciences: the maximal thematizing of historical-contextual factors with respect to both the object and the subject ofdiscourse.More specifically, however, the phenomenon of identity construc-tion seems particularly important within the field of translationstudies. Indeed, the unity and identity of this "semi-autonomous(inter-)discipline" (Toury and Lambert 1989: 1) is not at all self-evident. Many recent attempts have been made to integrate the vari-ous approaches: books such as Mary Snell-Hornby's (1988) Transla-tion Studies:An IntegratedApproach; ournals such as Target(foundedin 1989); and conference proceedings such as TranslationStudies:TheState of the Art (Van Leuven-Zwart and Naaijkens 1991). Still, theheterogeneity of those publications reveals precisely the constructedcharacter of the so-called discipline. Three branches of the humani-ties form the basis of this construct: linguistics, translator training, andcomparative literature. All three have been competing for a hegemonicposition in the field and have often taken a more or less "imperialis-tic" stance toward each other. Thus Snell-Hornby (1988) appropriatesvarious approaches and concepts without ever transcending the pur-pose of vocational training in translation-perhaps in reaction to thetendency among many translation scholars to reject the possibility of


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Robyns * Translationand Identity 425a science of translation didactics. Similarly, in their introduction toTranslation,Historyand Culture,editors Bassnett and Lefevere (1990:ix) claim to be addressing translation in general, but then immediatelyand implicitly restrict "translation" to literary translation. Thus the"cultural turn" advocated in this volume often appears to be instead anattempt to impose the models of literary translation on the disciplineas a whole.On the other hand, the lack of a distinct identity for the "discipline"of translation studies has often led to a defective attitude toward otherdisciplines, with concepts and models thus being imported from vari-ous other discourses.16 However, because of the need to preserve theproblematic autonomy of translation studies, these borrowings havealways been partial. For instance, the introduction of the sociologicalconcept of "norm" by Gideon Toury (1978) has undoubtedly had adecisive influence on the field, but most scholars-out of a firm de-termination to restrict translation to a binary relationship betweentexts-have ignored the social-institutional aspects of the concept.More recently, such sociocritical notions as "discourse" have been im-ported (e.g., by Annie Brisset, among others), but again at the expenseof their institutional aspect.So it appears that the postulated unity and autonomy of translationstudies is based on a specific "doxa" and reinforced by institutionalfactors, such as translation teaching programs, although it is a doxathat severely restricts the questions that may be raised. Indeed, theonly common ground for linguists, students of comparative literature,and translation teachers seems to be the (interlinguistically) translatedtext. Therefore, the existence of a unified discipline demands that allother aspects (i.e., other cultural/discursive interference, discourse ontranslation, institutional factors, etc.) be relegated to a "context" towhich appeals may be made a posteriori in order to explain something,but which can never be an actual object of study.I hope to have demonstrated here that such reductivism is unten-able: one cannot distinguish translation from other forms of "discur-sive migration," translation strategies from discourse on translationand the "alien," or textual procedures from institutional strategies.From this point of view, "translation studies" would proceed as follows:starting from the provisional identification of a discursive practice, wewould study the ways in which that discourse constructs its identity, itsposition relative to other discourses, the various types of interferencebetween them, the ways in which it (or any of its participants) dealswith interference, and the relations between those attitudes and the16. A similar diagnosis has been made by Roda P. Roberts (1988) and by DirkDelabastita (1991).


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426 PoeticsToday 15:3social-institutional positions of their advocates. This "trans-discursive"doctrine (which was already formulated in 1981 by Even-Zohar in his"Call for Transfer Theory") does not seek to be another "theory oftranslation"; on the contrary, it questions the very possibility of anindependent heory or discipline of translation.

References and Related WorksAngenot, Marc1989 1889: Un etat du discourssocial (Quebec: Le Pr6ambule).Bakker,J. J.1987 "Tien redenen," Onze Taal 56(6): 73.Bassnett, Susan, and Andre Lefevere, eds.

1990 Translation, History and Culture (London/New York: Pinter).Bauer, Wolfgang1964 Western Literature and Translation Work n Communist China (Frankfurt/Ber-lin: Alfred Metzner).Brisset, Annie1988a "Le Public et son traducteur: Profil id6ologique de la traduction au Que-bec," TTR 1(2): 11-18.1988b "Translation and Parody: Quebec Theatre in the Making," Canadian Lit-erature 117: 92-106.1989 "In Search of a Target Language: The Politics of Theatre Translation inQuebec," Target 1(1): 9-27.1990 Sociocritiquede la traduction: Theatre et alterite au Quebec (1968-1988) (Que-bec: Le Pr6ambule).

Bruguiere, Michel1985 "Langue et culture francaises: Les Elements d'une politique interna-tionale," in Encyclopaedia Universalis,Symposium,1018-24 (Paris: EncyclopaediaUniversalis S.A.).Calvet, Louis-Jean1986 "Le Francais dans tous ses etats," Le Francais dans le monde 203: 24-25.De Geest, Dirk1992 "The Notion of'System': Its Theoretical Importance and Its Methodologi-cal Implications for a Functionalist Translation Theory," in Geschichte,System,Literarische Ubersetzung/Histories,Systems,LiteraryTranslations, edited by HaraldKittel, 32-45 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt).Delabastita, Dirk1991 "A False Opposition in Translation Studies: Theoretical versus/and His-torical Approaches," Target 3(2): 137-52.Dirkx, Paul1990 "Notre litterature non pas lue, mais vue par les Francais," in Les Relations lit-terairesfranco-belges de 1914 i 1940, edited by Robert Frickx, 13-27 (Brussels:VUB Press).

Dupuy, Josee1974 Le Roman policier (Paris: Larousse).Edwards, John1985 Language, Societyand Identity (Oxford/New York: Basil Blackwell).Etiemble, Rene1985 "Le Babelien," in Encyclopaedia Universalis, Symposium, 105-9 (Paris: Ency-clopaedia Universalis S.A.).


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Robyns * Translationand Identity 427Even-Zohar, Itamar1978 Papers in Historical Poetics (Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and

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Translation and Discursive Identity

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