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Article published In: Target
Vol. 30:2 (2018) ► pp.260–287

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Transculturation and Bourdieu’s habitus theory

Towards an integrative approach for examining the translational activity of literary translators through history

ORCiD logo with link | Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Published online: 15 March 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.16097.say
Abstract
In the last two decades, Bourdieu’s sociology has provided appropriate tools for examining the work of literary translators through history. However, Bourdieusian approaches to literary translation seem to reproduce a major problem underlying Bourdieu’s theory; namely, a deterministic view of human behaviour. This article, against the alleged incompatibility between sociological approaches and culturalist paradigms, proposes to combine Bourdieu’s sociology with the notion of transculturation borrowed from Latin American cultural studies. The article demonstrates how transculturation helps elucidating the divided and contradictory nature of the habitus, as it was originally formulated by Bourdieu in his early writings on Kabylian society. Data from my previous study on the translational activity of Dai Wangshu in Republican China are used to illustrate how transculturation reveals itself as a valid model for the study of literary translators through history beyond the limitations of a sociologically-informed approach based exclusively on a Bourdieusian perspective.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The position of Bourdieu’s habitus theory in translation studies
  • 3.The alleged determinism of Bourdieu’s sociology
  • 4.The origin of transculturation
  • 5.Rama’s model of narrative transculturation
  • 6.Striking connections between transculturation and Bourdieu’s cultural sociology
  • 7.Transculturation as a framework for the study of translation in post-colonial contexts
  • 8.Applying an integrative sociological approach to study Dai Wangshu’s translational activity
    • 8.1The pivotal status of Dai’s translational activity in Dai’s social trajectory
    • 8.2The multi-layered nature of transculturation as an interpretive framework
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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