The moving text: Localization, translation, and

Book reviews Anthony Pym. The moving text: Localization, translation, and distribution. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004. xviii + 220 pp. ISBN 90-272-1655-X (Eur.) € 85; 1-58811-508-9 (US) $ 102. [Benjamins Translation Library, 49.] Reviewed by Brian Mossop (Toronto) The first six of this book’s nine chapters rework the author’s 1992 Translation and text transfer (TTT) in the light of the advent of the localization industry. Pym extends the industry’s poorly theorized concepts of internationalization and localization, and contrasts the result with the model of translation developed in Translation Studies. The topic is set within a broad framework of intercultural communication; indeed, readers might benefit from a look at the author’s “Propositions on cross-cultural communication and translation” (Pym 2004). Chapter 1 concerns Pym’s foundational concept: distribution. Physical textual objects move from one place/time to another. Before or after their arrival, they may or may not be adjusted to the new place/time, and this may be done to varying degrees, within or between languages. The adjustments if any have the effect of maintaining, extending or diminishing distribution. For example, some people in the new location will be excluded if discourse suitable for specialized readers is not adjusted intralingually for lay readers. Interlingual translation is thus seen as a possible response to distribution. The process of making adjustments is Pym’s generalization of the industry’s notion of ‘localization’, where a ‘locale’ is a particular market for which a product has to be adjusted, e.g. users of Word in a certain part of Latin America. With distribution as the basic notion, attention shifts away from the traditional relationship of source and target texts: “a localized text is not called on to represent any previous text; it is instead part of one and the same process of constant material distribution, which starts in one culture and may continue in many others” (p. 5). The idea of the moving text does fall short of complete generality since it does not seem to fit oral translation (despite occasional references to conference and dialogue interpreting). In oral, it is not texts that move but speakers with their vocal cords: a Turkish-speaking immigrant appears in a German courtroom.

Target 17:2 (2005), 363–395. issn 0924–1884 / e-issn 1569–9986 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

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In Chapter 2, Pym expands the industry’s notion of ‘internationalization’ — the creation of material which is neutral with respect to local conventions. Rather than ‘translating’ the US date 12.11.03 into British 11.12.03, the program is written in a neutral form (say ‘Y03M12D11’). In an expanded sense, examples of internationalized text would be the interlingua phase in Machine Translation, the internationally agreed concepts underlying a multilingual terminology database, and pre-translational glosses for Bible translators. Somewhat confusingly, Pym speaks of the internationalized text as sometimes arising through removal of local features from a source text, and sometimes as itself an original — texts written in controlled language for example; these are surely different processes. Pym proceeds to contrast two models: the ‘bilateral translation’ model, where a text with its own SL receivers is turned into a text for TL receivers; and on the other hand the multilingual localization model, where an ST which has no receivers is internationalized, and the result — also receiverless — is turned into a series of local versions, including one in the original SL. Internationalized texts tend to be in English, but since they exist only during the production phase, not during the reception (post-localization) phase, it can simultaneously be true that more and more is written in English and yet ever more translations are produced in other languages. On the other hand, UNESCO statistics on book publishing suggest several asymmetries: big locales have a lot of translation from their language, while small locales have a lot of translation into their language; the more books that are published in a language, the more are translated from it; the fewer books published in a language, the larger the proportion of them which are translations. Pym says that internationalization/localization can be expected to accentuate these tendencies: the bigger locales will have their material internationalized; the smaller locales will receive more localized material. Another difficulty is that globalizing culture spreads under the cloak of linguistic difference: “Using Microsoft in Catalan is not the same as using Microsoft in English, but in both cases the mode of operation is more Microsoft than anything else” (p. 47). This calls to mind the debates in Quebec since the 1970s about the merits of using translation from English rather than original writing in French; it has been argued that translating into ‘authentic’ French creates a cloak for making ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ideas pass into Quebec culture. Chapter 3 takes the discussion of translational equivalence in TTT and contrasts it with internationalization-based equivalence. The original notion in Translation Studies was that lingua-cultural elements at sentence or subsentence level could be mapped into functionally equivalent elements of the TL,

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though not necessarily preserving lexicosyntactic structure (i.e. one could write ‘idiomatically’). Then, says Pym, among TS theorists and some translators, the concept of equivalence fell from grace as the quantity of weakly authored (anonymous institutional) texts grew. These source texts were not stable; they were regularly amended and thus had no set authorial meaning to be preserved. As a result, translations came to be assessed not in terms of correspondence to the source text but as new texts produced to serve new purposes. However the concept of equivalence was not abandoned by outsiders, so translators have had to proclaim equivalence as an operational fiction to preserve clients’ trust. And now the localization industry is reinforcing the traditional concept by sending translators sentences removed from their software/ Web page contexts. Equivalence in localization differs from equivalence in bilateral translation because the internationalized ‘source’ texts exist in a neutral technical space that has its own supranational techno-culture. As a result there is no problem of lack of fit between a whole SL culture and a whole TL culture; a set of pre-given equivalents can be used. Bilateral translators, on the contrary, cannot go from SL text to some neutral translingual, transcultural thought and then to TL. Instead they have to invent more-or-less workable wordings for each individual case. Missing from this chapter — presumably as a result of ‘localizing’ the book for a post-Cold War readership — is the discussion in TTT of the Marxist concepts of use value and exchange value: economic value that does not pre-exist but is rather created through exchange is comparable to translators creating equivalents rather than using pre-given equivalents. Chapters 4 and 5 are largely repeats of TTT, with only passing mention of localization. They deal with what Pym sees as the two defining features of texts which are accepted as translations: first-person displacement, i.e. the voice addressing the reader, the “I”, is not the translator; and quantitative similarity between source and translation, i.e. additions/subtractions are not permitted. Though interesting in themselves, these chapters are somewhat out of place because they talk about the effect of the completed translation on the reader, whereas most of the book concerns production processes — distribution, internationalization, etc. First-person displacement, it may be noted, is not peculiar to translation: it is a feature of direct quotation (of which translation can be seen as an instance). Indeed, quotation is the very epitome of ‘moving text’: the quoter takes material from another time/place and fits it into the current situation. Chapter 6 is about resistance to distribution, which is what makes localization/translation necessary. Pym says that the greater the distance of

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distribution, the more likely the text cannot be made to work in the target locale; resistance can then be overcome only by radical re-writing, though as he interestingly points out, this is rather easy because TL readers have only a very limited knowledge of the remote SL culture, knowledge which might otherwise conflict with the rewriting. Conversely, the more a text (for example, a novel) explains its context, the more distributable it is. Pym rightly denounces the cliché that the most resistant items are words for cultural entities that don’t exist in the target culture, as well as the cliché that specialized texts are harder to translate than non-specialized ones. The real difficulty is the ordinary word that has multiple connotations in several domains of the source culture. A function of internationalization is to remove such multiply embedded elements, thus easing distribution but at the same time dehumanizing the text. Chapter 7 updates the author’s “Translation as a transaction cost” (Pym 1995). Pym defines cooperation among the parties to communication as the attainment of mutual benefits. He says it’s harder to achieve cooperation in cross-cultural communication because of lower trust. Extra effort is thus required, and this entails costs, which ought to be less than projected benefits. Pym proposes a simple model for quantifying the costs and benefits of various approaches, notably bilateral translation, internationalization + localization, and language-learning. All other things being equal, language learning is less costly than translation when parties will be engaging in long-term communication. Unfortunately, as Pym might have mentioned, most people will learn a language only if there is a short-term benefit. I found myself smiling as I read this passage because I have enjoyed the benefit of a 30-year career as a French-to-English translator precisely because the overwhelming majority of English-Canadians who live outside Quebec (93%) have not been motivated to learn French! Chapters 8 and 9 shift from an analytical to a critical mode, taking up themes found in Pym’s most recent articles (see his website). Chapter 8 is about the segmentation of the market for cross-cultural language workers and the resulting reduced mobility across such professions as translator, localizer, language teacher and ESL reviser. Within the localization industry, there is division between engineers and translators, with the former in control and the latter reduced, through the workings of software/web page translation technology, to rendering isolated sentences, with the result that they lose a sense of the overall discursive purpose of a text. One of Pym’s best points in this book is that while translation theorists and schools can emphasize macrotextual features like discursive purpose, the crucial question is whether some institution in the professional world exists to defend such an approach. Pym suggests developing

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a cross-professional identity based on an awareness of how the key issues in cross-cultural communicators throughout history have been largely the same. He gives various historical examples of how translators have overcome mistrust and achieved authority. However he then makes the very debatable suggestion that the aim of a cross-cultural communication profession should not be to render “static meaning” but to direct clients’ wishes, ST meanings and readers’ capacities in order to serve the aim of cross-cultural cooperation (p. 177). What is one to make of this? No doubt it is fine for a dialogue interpreter to gloss over a perhaps unintended insult by one of the parties to a conversation in order to preserve cooperation, but is it alright to deliberately mistranslate key ideas in, say, translations of history books in order to create harmony among nations? Pym asserts (p. 179) that “linguistic mediation is only worthwhile if it can promote long-term cooperation between cultures”. This seems to assume that the basic problem in the world is misunderstanding among cultures; Pym imagines a profession committed to the idea that “cross-cultural cooperation is the way to solve the world’s problems” (p. 181). However some might say the basic problem in the world is the unequal distribution of wealth, power and knowledge within individual societies where haves and have-nots have no problems communicating. In this view, translation is simply — as I believe — a highly useful service to individuals (the patient can understand what the doctor is saying). But it is only useful if it is accurate. In this regard, it might have been beneficial to learn what Pym thinks about Nida, who was talking about ‘localizing’ the Bible back in the 1960s. Nida described investigating the characteristics of the future readers as being “like market research, in which the response of the public to the product is tested” (Nida 1969: 163). His approach was precisely about allowing distribution of the Biblical text to continue, with new readers as full participants. However he made a distinction between local aspects that could be changed during translation (the lamb of god could be replaced with the pig of god) and on the other hand the central message about how one should live, which could not be adjusted. Nida was in tune here with the ethic of professional non-literary translators: one must be faithful to the central message. Pym never mentions accuracy, perhaps because of his aversion to the notion of source-text intention. It’s true that we can only ever interpret people’s words, never enter their minds, and therefore understanding is very often imperfect or uncertain. Some interpretations can nevertheless be known to be wrong, and they cannot be used simply because they might promote cooperation. Is Pym really suggesting this? His words allow for this possibility (even if he didn’t intend it!).

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In Chapter 9, Pym argues that cross-cultural mediators should not only promote cooperation but also humanize relations, in the sense of ‘putting a face’ on texts and creating texts that address readers as full participants in cultures, including techno-cultures (technical texts for general audiences should help them learn to become software makers rather than remain passive users). The localization industry does go some distance in this direction, putting familiar local features on faceless internationalized text, but it falls short because its technology chops text up. A sense of linear coherence and a sense of “I” addressing “you” are lost as a result of highlighting for processing by the translator those passages which are new (as opposed to those available in translation memory), and sending out portions of a job to several different translators. Pym notes that the text types handled in the localization industry (e.g. on-line help files) lend themselves to chopping since they are not normally read in linear fashion, though one might point out that this is hardly new: bureaucratic manuals, which have been translated for decades, are not read linearly either. He also notes that technical discourse tends to be impersonal, avoiding a rhetoric of ‘I addressing you’, but again this is hardly a recent development. As for parceling out a single text to several translators, this was happening 30 years ago in big translating institutions. In short, the localization industry is simply exacerbating old problems. The book ends on a gloomy note: the translation part of localization projects tends toward reproduction of ST features rather than orientation to the ‘you’, the reader of the translation; and the non-translators who run projects are pre-occupied with doing whatever is necessary to get the text to market by a certain deadline. Pym wants the industry to learn from Translation Studies and from the wisdom of traditional (bilateral) translators. “Localization projects could accord translators greater scope for decision-making than is currently the norm” (p. 198). This unfortunately sounds like a timid lament by a weak supplicant wringing his hands and making polite criticisms to the localization superpower. I am not confident I understood the argument in Chapter 9. Indeed, there were passages throughout the book which I found too dense, or obscure even after several readings. I sometimes wanted an example, instead of being left to tease out meaning. Pym seems to want the reader to ‘participate’ in constructing the argument, but when I read a work of theory, I don’t want to feel like I’m juggling the clues of a murder mystery. I would have preferred him to convey his argument more explicitly, as he does in his “Propositions on cross-cultural communication and translation” article, though this would have required much more reworking of TTT.

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Despite these criticisms, I would reiterate Andrew Chesterman’s words reviewing TTT (1994): provocative in that it compels response; mine ranged from emphatic agreement, delight and ahaa, to puzzlement and occasional irritation.

References Chesterman, Andrew. 1994. Review of Pym 1992. Target 6:1. 95–97. Nida, Eugene A. 1969. The theory and practice of translation. Leiden: E.J. Brill Pym, Anthony. 1992. Translation and text transfer. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Pym, Anthony. 1995. “Translation as a transaction cost”. Meta 40:4. 594–605. Pym, Anthony. 2004. “Propositions on cross-cultural communication and translation”. Target 16:1. 1–28.

 Louise Brunette, Georges Bastin, Isabelle Hemlin and Heather Clarke, eds. The critical link 3 : Interpreters in the community. Selected papers from the third international conference on interpreting in legal, health and social services settings, Montréal, Québec, Canada 22–26 May 2001. Amsterdam/Philadelphia : John Benjamins, 2003. xii + 359 pp. ISBN 90-272-1652-5 (Eur.) € 99 ; 1-58811-454-6 (US) $ 99. [Benjamins Translation Library, 46.] Reviewed by Ivana Čeňková (Prague) Ceux qui suivent de près les publications dédiées à l’interprétation en milieu social savent qu’au cours de ces quelques dernières années The critical Link 1 et The Critical Link 2 sont parus chez John Benjamins et que ces recueils contiennent une sélection de communications présentées aux conférences du même nom à Geneva Park en 1995 et à Vancouver en 1998. En 2001, la troisième conférence des interprètes en milieu social s’est tenue à Montréal. Elle a vu la profession s’affirmer, se spécialiser et présenter ses premiers résultats. Les interprètes commencent à effectuer des enquêtes sur le terrain, à mener des recherches empiriques et à se pencher sur des aspects spécifiques de leur travail, également en interaction avec d’autres professionnels. L’interprétation en milieu social ne se contente plus d’apprendre, désormais elle contribue à enrichir le débat sur les langues, la communication et la traductologie (L. Brunette et al. 2003 : 5). The critical link 3 a démontré l’importance de la recherche tout en poursuivant la réflexion sur les questions d’éthique et en réaffirmant