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Enlarging translation and enlightening

the field: an interview with professor
Maria Tymoczko
ab

Wendi Yang
a

School of Foreign Languages, Central South University,

Changsha, China
b

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua

University, Beijing, China
Published online: 12 Nov 2014.

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To cite this article: Wendi Yang (2014) Enlarging translation and enlightening the field: an
interview with professor Maria Tymoczko, Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 1:3,
222-230, DOI: 10.1080/23306343.2014.975440
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Asia Pacic Translation and Intercultural Studies, 2014

Vol. 1, No. 3, 222230, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23306343.2014.975440

Enlarging translation and enlightening the eld: an interview with

professor Maria Tymoczko
Wendi Yanga,b*

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 2014.1:222-230.

a
School of Foreign Languages, Central South University, Changsha, China; bDepartment of
Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Maria Tymoczko is a professor of comparative literature, specializing in translation studies, medieval studies, and Irish literature. Her books The Irish Ulysses (California,
1994) and Translation in a Postcolonial Context (St. Jerome, 1999) have won prizes from
the American Conference for Irish Studies. Other full-length studies include Enlarging
Translation, Empowering Translators (St. Jerome, 2007), and Neuroscience and Translation (forthcoming). She has edited several volumes, including Translation and Power
(with Edwin Gentzler, 2002), Language and Tradition in Ireland (with Colin Ireland,
2003), and Translation, Resistance, Activism (Massachusetts, 2010). She has held grants
from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the
American Council of Learned Societies, has served as President of the Celtic Studies
Association of North America, and has been a member of the Executive Committee of
the American Conference for Irish Studies.
Maria Tymoczko is against the Eurocentrism or Western-centrism in translation studies, trying to internationalize translation studies as a eld of study like mathematics or physics,
calling for the contributions of various countries. This interview was done after Wendi Yang
had audited Professor Maria Tymoczkos two graduate courses in translation studies at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, during his stay there as a visiting scholar. The
questions discussed include the status quo of translation studies, research methodology,
current trends, the relationship between translation studies, literary and cultural studies, the
imbalance in theory studies between Eurocentric cultures and the teaching of translation
studies, and more. As Wendi Yang is from China, special attention was also given to the
translation studies in China.

Yang:

Tymoczko:

Since the 1970s when translation studies was established as an independent

discipline, it has developed in an explosive manner, especially with the
irreversible trend of globalization. It has experienced the cultural turn, the
political turn, the social turn, and so on. It seems that it has incorporated
more and more disciplines into itself and has far surpassed its rst concerns
of linguistic and textual elements. So would you please dene translation
studies as a discipline in the new era? What facets is it supposed to
include? Can you give a complete picture of this eld?
What does it incorporate as a discipline at the moment? And really I dont
think that any of the areas you mention has been dropped out. What weve

*Email: irwinyangster@126.com
This interview was recorded and transcribed by Wendi Yang and then proofread by Maria
Tymoczko. This is the abridged version due to the space of the journal.
2014 Taylor & Francis

Asia Pacic Translation and Intercultural Studies

223

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 2014.1:222-230.

discovered, really since World War II, I think, is that what used to be
thought of as relatively easy, namely translating, actually has many more
facets than we knew. This eld develops by somebody saying look, we
havent talked about this aspect of translation and then writing a book
about it. We have come to realize that translation is a very, very complex
process, more complex than we thought. Thus, I dont think that linguistics
and textual approaches are lessened for the working translators that have to
deal with issues. They are always present. But at the same time, knowing
about the cultural aspects, politics, and ideology of translation is important,
even for a working translator.

Im writing a book right now on neuroscience and translation, which really hasnt been
written about much. I think once that book comes out, that will be yet another consideration that people will begin to think about when they think about translation studies. I
think that translation studies is an open-ended eld, the way literature is. In literary
studies we have new forms of the literature. As cultures move closer, we realize that
Oh, they have text types that we dont have and so on. Similar things happen in translation studies. I think that as with many elds, translation studies will continue to grow
and become more and more complex.
Yang:
Tymoczko:

The many turns are actually the new developments, but this does not mean
that we ignore other things.
I dont think that means you can ignore the other things beyond linguistics.
For example, I think there was a point in translation studies when I wrote
the paper Ideology and the position of the translator: in what sense is a
translator in between? (Tymoczko 2003) where the translators stand was
seen as in between. I argued against that view. There was also, earlier
even, another point where there was a division between linguistic scholars
and cultural studies scholars, and I wrote the paper titled Connecting the
two innite orders: research methods in translation studies (Tymoczko
2002), arguing against that split. That paper was a presentation to the First
International Conference on Research Methods at the University of
Manchester. The reason I picked that topic is because at that time there
were very contentious people who were interested in the big picture, the
politics of translation, ideological questions, and cultural studies questions.
And some scholars were proposing that was the real center of translation
studies and that we should stop thinking about linguistics and the microscopic particulars of the text, because that was so old-fashioned and contributed nothing. So I wrote that paper.

It was a funny occasion, because the paper begins with Galileo. At rst, people
looked like they were interested, but when I went on and on talking about Galileo, the
person who was moderating my session began to look quite impatient with me. Until
the moment where I say that
if there had been somebody in Galileos era, who said no, no, we should only use the telescope, the microscope is of no use. Or vice versa. From our point of view, we would have
thought they were ridiculous. And that is the position we are now in translation studies.

When I spoke that sentence, suddenly the whole audience went quiet, because they
knew about those debates. They were ongoing in the eld. After that conference, we
didnt hear anymore about we should exclude linguistics, the real translation studies is
cultural studies or politics.

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W. Yang

Yang:

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 2014.1:222-230.

Tymoczko:

Sometimes I think that it is like translation in literary studies or cultural

studies. Scholars in these studies often talk about translation without specic examples.
Exactly. Whether we pick a functionalist approach or a particular type of
textual approach, or whether we have a political intent, when we actually
sit down and translate, it is word by word, phrase by phrase. So we make
our choices, but our big pragmatic goal is always implemented in terms of
specic words and specic textual choices.

The intersection of the macro-level and the micro-level is seen in descriptive studies,
such as the essay youve done on the translation of Zhong Yong for my course. Looking
at the various words you examine, tian, for example, and then you realize oh, this
choice to translate it one way as opposed to another is not innocent. There is a program
behind it. So we know how to integrate the micro and macro in talking about products,
but I think we havent quite gured out yet where that intersection is when we talk
about the process of translating. I think thats one of the very early things that translation studies came upon. We nd it in the works of James Holmes, who says that there
are different branches of translation studies and that we can talk about the process and
also the products (Holmes 1978).
Yang:
Tymoczko:

Yang:
Tymoczko:

Yang:
Tymoczko:

There is another issue. For people outside of this eld, they take translation
simply as linguistic transformation.
They do. We have to continuously educate them. We can show people that
translation, as seen in the titles of my books, goes way beyond the simple
choice of words. Its connected with internationalism, with diversity, with
social justice, all those large things. We have to continuously get that message out to people who arent in this eld.
It is quite interdisciplinary. Then what do you think are the problems that
exist in the current translation studies?
I dont know exactly, but there are a few problems I see. I think we need
to have more training in the natural sciences for people who teach translation studies, because I think people dont have a very good idea of theory,
also dont have a good idea of how to make an argument convincing. I
think if we have more training in things like mathematics, scientic
inquiry, experiments, and lab reports, we would have a more robust set of
discourses abstractly.
Yes, it is really important for the translators, because most of them are
from the liberal arts, and lack some background of sciences.
Yes, so they often dont know how to evaluate, say, Venutis discourses, or
all the various people weve talked about in my courses. They dont know
how to analyze the argument, to ask what is the point here?, what
doesnt work?, what research needs to be done? So I would say that is
a problem.

Another problem is that there are still people in the eld, who have important positions in our universities all around the world, who really still just operate at the linguistic level. For example, in Estonia some people think that translation studies should just
be about training translators and that the history of translation and the politics of translation should be part of the history department or something like that. I think that comes
from a mentality where people havent even read James Holmess article which we discussed, which is now 45 years old.

Asia Pacic Translation and Intercultural Studies

Yang:

Tymoczko:

Yang:

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 2014.1:222-230.

Tymoczko:

Yang:

Tymoczko:

225

I think we also have this problem in China, especially among the graduate
students in the program of Masters for Translation and Interpreting, who
focuses on the practice and touches only a little bit of theory. Maybe that
is a wrong direction. They should know something about theory.
Yes, they should. About the history of translation as well. I know that
some of the students that were in the two classes that you took were out of
patience with me, because we read a lot of books and articles that were
written some while ago. I think some students only want to read things that
are absolutely current, going on right now. But it seems to me that understanding the history of a eld is important for understanding the growth of
ideas.
Yes, I nd those readings really valuable, through which I got an insight
into the history of translation studies. And those articles are classic, you
cannot afford to ignore them.
Absolutely, particularly if you are going to be a teacher. But even if you
are not a teacher, the articles are valuable. If we look at Jakobsons argument, you can say anything in any language, for example, you could say
to a translator that you really can say anything that is said in your source
text. It just might take you a very long time and might be very awkward
prose. So you have to choose whether you are going to preserve all of the
semantic meaning or whether there are some other values, say, to have
happy readers. I think we can even talk some of those articles with students who are basically oriented towards pragmatics. You can teach them
something with the early translation studies literature, if you see what I
mean.
It is held that there are mainly three trends at present in translation studies.
The rst is the application of social theories, the second is associated with
World Literature, in which translation is taken as the means for the internalization of literary relationships, and the third concerns the politics,
emphasizing the politics and ideology of the translation practice. What do
you think of this?
Now there is a very wide eld of social theories that are being looked at,
including Norman Faircloughs book Language and Power (Fairclough
1996). Social theory is very important to many things that are being
written.

The second trend, the world literature people, is a new development in translation
that is about 10 years old or so. Its associated with David Damrosch, who teaches at
Harvard, but there is a whole group at Princeton, too and in many other places also.
Ive been having a hard time understanding this group of people, because they, in
their articles, dont cite any of the people or almost none of the people who have made
important contributions to the development of translation studies. That makes me very
irritated. If you call yourself a translation studies specialist, you should do the homework and read the kind of articles I have my students read. But listening to the lecture
at Smith College this spring made me realize that many actually are not interested in
translation as a phenomenon, what they are interested in is how they can use translation
as a way of understanding literature. By contrast, I use literature such as earlier Irish literature as a tool to understand translation. They go in a different direction. Because of
that and because so many of them are basically poststructuralists, they dont cite people
like Quine, or Jakobson, or Lefevere, or Even-Zohar, or any of the functionalists in
Germany. What they cite over and over again is Benjamin. Many read that article
wrongly, seeing it in terms of poststructuralism. Not many people in the eld of translation studies are totally poststructuralists, for in the end you need to say something about
the process of translation, and that means word for word, sentence for sentence, dealing

226

W. Yang

with the text in a very nitty-gritty way. I think the world literature group hasnt fully
integrated themselves into translation studies as a discipline as I see it.
Yang:
Tymoczko:

That means they just do it on a macro-level.

Exactly, but some of them are really trying to do their homework.

Now politics as the third area you are proposing are some of the growing edges
right now, but I think that other pieces of translation studies are still being carried along:
linguistics, aesthetics, and questions of style, for example.

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 2014.1:222-230.

Yang:
Tymoczko:

What are the general research methodologies as far as the current translation studies is concerned? How can we achieve a balance between micro
level and the macro level?
You know my theory about the macro- and micro-levels of research, both
being necessary in translation studies, but we have other tools as well.
There are many databases now, where you can look at texts or where people are interrogating a corpus or a body of evidence that gives access to
the big picture. But again you access the material at the micro-levels of the
text. That is certainly an interesting approach, though Ive written a critique
of that line of research. I dont know if youve read my essay in Sara
Laviosas book Computerized corpora and the future of translation studies
(Tymoczko 1998). It addresses some of the questions about how you actually construct a corpus and how you can construct a corpus and make some
assumptions that dont actually hold. So this, again, would be an area
where we need some very serious scientic engagement so you can access
data effectively.

I think there are various ways to balance the two levels, but I think that if people
think that translation studies is only one or only the other, they are very wrong. But
there are all kinds of ways to balance research in between.
Yang:
Tymoczko:
Yang:

Tymoczko:

Yang:
Tymoczko:

So translation is a kind of in-betweenness.

Well, translation studies is in between, even though translators are not.
For the present theories in this eld are mainly from Western countries.
The voices of other countries are seldom heard or they just follow the West
and do some proof or application. This situation will cause a kind of
imbalance or impedance to the development of TS as a discipline. Do you
have any suggestions about how to change this situation?
This is really an interesting question. I am right now in a quarrel with
some people, Europeans in particular. At present the Europeans in translation studies have a huge amount of money for research because of the
European Union. The European Commission is the largest employer of
translators in the world and has very strict rules about how to translate. As
a consequence of the importance of translation in the EU, right now translation studies is booming in Europe, but many scholars are basically doing
their research to implement the concerns of the European Union. The
grants are usually for fairly practical application or results that are applicable to translation in EU. People engaged in such research are not always
very open to considering the fact that translation has very different goals,
methods, histories, and problems outside of Europe, including here in the
United States.
So they just focus on their countries in the EU.
Yes, and often they do this without any self-consciousness. Its like the
world before Columbus. People just thought of their domain as the world.
Many scholars are very enclosed. I have to say that I value tremendous

Asia Pacic Translation and Intercultural Studies

227

numbers of these colleagues of mine, but I do sometimes get exasperated

with their lack of interest in the international scope of the eld. Not all
Europeans are like this. Of course, theres a good number of colleagues in
Europe who would say exactly what I just said.

I think there is a problem whether mental enclosure happens in the European Union
or in China. This idea of only doing our own thing and thinking our domain is the
world is very short-sighted. Our world in translation studies changes every day because
of technology, because of new economic mutual interests, and because of political
developments. We all have to think about the world and about what we are doing in the
context of that larger global picture.

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 2014.1:222-230.

Yang:

Tymoczko:

Yang:

Tymoczko:

So is that the reason that in the rst part of your book Enlarging translation, empowering translators (Tymoczko 2007) you emphasize the internationalization of translation studies. We need to enlarge this eld, not just
focusing on one area.
Exactly. That is part of what I talk about in Chapter 2. There are a lot of
different ideas about what translation is in the world. If you only think
about it in terms of Western European languages, you only have one tiny
corner of the domain of translation, and, as I said, it is changing all the
time.
Some people in China suggest that there should be a Chinese translation
theory, or similarly a German translation theory, or French translation theory, as the names of some works published in China suggested. What is
your comment on this?
I know a lot of people in China think we should just give up all of these
Western theories, weve got a very long and strong culture tradition. But
then they would have the same problem going in the other direction applying their theory to data from Europe or the Americas. I think we have to
learn about many different cultural traditions and then we will have better
theory.

The translation binaries such as literal or free, domesticating or foreignizing dont

always work in China. So one can ask when do the binaries work? because Nida was
tremendously popular in China. Well, I suppose binaries are useful to know about, if
what you are doing is trying to translate from Chinese to English, because it tells you
what would be acceptable to your English readers. And Nida gives you two ways to
approach the problem of making the text plausible for your target readers. At the same
time if you completely keep yourself within the set of instructions and options that suit
the target audience, then you become folded into the whole Eurocentric structure. Somehow we have to nd a way to go back and forth across cultural domains.
Yang:

Tymoczko:

Yes, like the way China now is trying to disseminate Chinese culture, letting the world know more about China. In the current way, maybe, if we
try to make a text t the target reader, well lose some of the things in the
text, the cultural elements.
Yes, those are still things I think we have to work out. When we think
about these problems, we have to remember that this is a very young eld.
It is about 50 or 60 years old. If you think about literature or literary criticism for that matter, there are hundreds and hundreds of years behind those
elds. Or science, or astronomy, or mathematics, or law. All those elds go
way, way back in human history. So I think its OK. for us not to have all
the answers and for us to struggle a little bit and to realize well, there is
some work here to be done, we dont quite understand the situation.

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W. Yang

Yang:
Tymoczko:

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 2014.1:222-230.

Yang:
Tymoczko:

Yang:
Tymoczko:

Translation studies should not be a discipline solely of China or any nation,

but should be all the same all over the world, just like mathematics, the
same one discipline all over the world.
Precisely. That doesnt mean that we all struggle with the same problems
in mathematics. We have different interests and we come to things from
different angles and perspectives. But the eld has to be coherent for all of
us together. Im very interested in China. I keep learning.
Yes, you know a lot about Chinese translation theory or history.
Well, I keep trying. I mean it is the oldest continuously written language in
the world. Why would one not be interested in that? China offers so many
points of view in terms of translation. I think frankly that as Chinese scholars begin to move beyond the important and fundamental work of Ma Zuyi
and really do more nitty-gritty descriptive studies of different periods of
Chinese translation and Chinese history, it will add fuel to the translation
studies oven. There is so much interesting material that can come out of
Chinese history about translation.
Yes, I know that some scholars in Hong Kong are doing this, like
Lawrence Wong.
Yes, but Chinese history, Chinese textual history is so vast, nobody, not
even Lawrence Wong, a very energetic man, is going to be able to do it
all. Nobody has exhausted the topic of translation history in Spain or
France, or any other country either. Yes, I think its going to be very interesting to watch. But again, the people who do such studies have to have a
kind of large spirit about politics and be willing to interrogate nationalism
of their own countries. I think thats one of the things we always have to
do in translation studies. You have to be able to set aside your own nationalism if you are going to look at your own culture, and you have to be
patient, you have to do the work carefully, and so on.

Here is another thing, I think, that is going to be challenging for Chinese scholars.
English has emerged as the international link language for the eld of translation studies
since World War II. Thus, if you want to be part of knowing what other scholars in the
eld are doing in the world, then you have to learn English. Its not only true of people
in China, but people in Spain, people in France, people in Turkey.
Yang:
Tymoczko:

Yang:

Tymoczko:

Sure, English is a must for internationalizing ones point of view.

I think so at present. The fact that my colleagues around the world are
publishing in English makes it all the more important that I as a native
English speaker must as a scholar be careful about developing cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity. Global English brings with it the temptation
of dominance and hegemony, and I dont want to fall into that attitude.
This is part of the reason that I feel theres an ethical imperative to try to
learn a lot about other cultures and about translation in other cultures.
Thats part of the reason I lecture and travel internationally a lot.
What suggestions would you like to give to the teachers of translation
related to the pedagogy of translation studies? What are the core issues
they should pay attention to? As for the competence to translate, what is
necessary for teaching translation?
Well, I think that it is not language prociency. If what you are really
doing is teaching how to manage the asymmetries and anisomorphisms of
Chinese and another language, or any two languages, youre not really
teaching translation, youre teaching pragmatics, youre teaching an aspect
of language. A teacher of translation has to nd a way to broaden it. I
dont know what else to say except to make sure youre staying current in
some of the issues that are being discussed by scholars who do descriptive
studies and theoretical studies and the work of people who are doing

Asia Pacic Translation and Intercultural Studies

Yang:
Tymoczko:

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 2014.1:222-230.

Yang:
Tymoczko:

Yang:
Tymoczko:

Yang:
Tymoczko:

Yang:
Tymoczko:

229

general studies of translation phenomena. There is no set of core issues that

should be always taught about how to translate. It changes from time to
time.
From my perspective, culture is a very important part of it.
Absolutely. So is ideology. You have to understand why people tell you
what to do and you have to understand ethics. Are you going to go along
with what you are told to do? Are you going to say no? Can you face the
ethics and ideology of translation? I think we have to teach students honestly what the difculties are, and what the responsibilities of a translator
are.
There are extreme examples, involving political conicts.
Yes, in a daily job if you translate an advertisement, for example, you have
to be careful what company you work for. Is it a company that you really
want to grow and make money? You read about Mona Bakers articles
about narrative and translation and how the narratives behind translation
are often exploitative.
It is complex.
Yes, exactly. If the company you are working for does not have a very
good narrative, you are either going to be blind to the situation, or you will
be compliant, or you are going to begin to have some discomfort. So thats
kind of thing I think you might as well prepare your students for early on.
To make them have a real picture of the eld. What do you think of the
future trend in translation studies?
As to the future, I have no idea. I think the sociological turn is very good
a development that is happening now. I think that when we start incorporating neuroscience into translation studies, that will add some interesting
discourses.
I know that you are very interested in Chinese translation history. Do you
have any advice for the Chinese colleagues?
As for advice, I will just give Chinese colleagues the same advice given
anyone here in the United States, which is to stay open, to learn as much
as you can, and not to get closed in. People can get closed in by their
own cultural boundaries. Whether we come from Estonia, or China, or
Russia, or England, or the United States, I think we always have to have
our hands reach across to others, because thats our job in translation
studies.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by China Scholarship Council [grant number 201206375044] and Hunan
Provincial Funding for Social Sciences [13YBA424].

Notes on contributor
Wendi Yang is an associate professor of English at Central South University,
Changsha, Hunan, China, and currently a PhD candidate of translation studies
at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include second
language acquisition, comparative studies of English and Chinese, and
translation and intercultural studies. His articles have appeared in journals like
Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, Quest, and Academic Forum.

230

W. Yang

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