Cover not available
Article published In:
Legal and institutional translation: Functions, processes, competences
Edited by Fernando Prieto Ramos
[Target 33:2] 2021
► pp. 282–307

A case study of unquiet translators

Relating legal translators’ subservient and subversive habitus to socialization

ORCID logo | Universitat Jaume I
Remarkable efforts have been made in Translation and Interpreting Studies to test the subservient habitus hypothesis formulated by Simeoni (1998) in his seminal work. In the face of increasing evidence that translators tend to reproduce a given society’s or community’s prevalent norms and contribute to the stability of such norms (Toury 1978), subversive translation practices have been reported (Delabastita 2011; Woods 2012) and indeed promoted as a way of fostering social and cultural change (Levine 1991; Venuti 1992). However, insights into how translators’ subservient or subversive habitus develop and depart from each other are still lacking. In order to shed light on this gray area, this article scrutinizes the contrasts between the habitus of professional legal translators who acquiesce to and who reject the norms governing their positions in the field. Special attention is given to those who decide to abandon the translation field. Their behavior is examined by relating habitus to forms of socialization and studying the implications of their strategies. Based on a case study drawn from interview data, this article focuses on the social practices of resistance and rebellion vis-à-vis subservience, and the impact of both on translation workplaces, work processes, and translators’ futures.
Keywords: legal translation, socialization, translators’ habitus, subversive habitus, deviant behavior, interviews, workplace studies
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Facing the unexpected
  • 2.Habitus and behavior
    • 2.1Working with habitus in TIS
    • 2.2Interest: An essential ingredient of a successful habitus
    • 2.3Decaying orbits and going astray
  • 3.Translators’ habitus: Studying the submissive and the subversive
    • 3.1Institutional conditions and personal paths
      • 3.1.1Presenting the interviews
      • 3.1.2Introducing the participants
    • 3.2Analyzing conflicts, acquiescence, and dissent
      • 3.2.1Negotiating text-based translation decisions
      • 3.2.2Negotiating institutional workflows
      • 3.2.3Abandoning the field
  • 4.Discussion: Harnessing the interaction between habitus and field
    • 4.1Fine-tuning the concept of socialization to understand translators
    • 4.2Competing doxas
    • 4.3Socialization and adherence to doxas and illusios
    • 4.4Power as mediator of illusios
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 4 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.21069.mon
References (50)
References
Alcaraz Varó, Enrique, and Brian Hughes. 2002. Legal Translation Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Ben-Ari, Nitsa. 2012. “Political Dissidents as Translators, Editors, and Publishers.” In The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies, edited by Claudia V. Angelelli, special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 7 (2): 144–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckman. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Biel, Łucja. 2014. “The Textual Fit of Translated EU Law: A Corpus-based Study of Deontic Modality.” In Law in Translation, edited by Simone Glanert, special issue of The Translator 20 (3): 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biel, Łucja, and Jan Engberg. 2013. “Research Models and Methods in Legal Translation.” Linguistica Antverpiensia 121: 1–11.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971. “Le marché des biens symboliques [The market of symbolic goods].” L’Année sociologique (1940/1948–) 221: 49–126.Google Scholar
. 1972. Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, précédée de trois études d’ethnographie kabyle [Outline of a theory of practice, preceded by three studies of Kabyle ethnography]. Geneva: Droz. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1980. Le sens pratique [The logic of practice]. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar
. 1997. Méditations pascaliennes [Pascalian meditations]. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Delabastita, Dirk. 2011. “Continentalism and the Invention of Traditions in Translation Studies.” In Eurocentrism in Translation Studies, edited by Luc van Doorslaer and Peter Flynn, special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 6 (2): 142–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engberg, Jan. 2016. “Emphasising the Individual in Legal Translation: Consequences of Knowledge Communication and Post-Structuralist Approaches.” In Language for Specific Purposes: Research and Translation across Cultures and Media, edited by Giuliana Elena Garzone, Dermot Heaney, and Giorgia Riboni, 41–61. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Fernández Sánchez, María Manuela. 2019. “Understanding Interpreting and Diplomacy: Reflections on the Early Cold War (1945–1963).” In The Palgrave Handbook of Languages and Conflict, edited by Michael Kelly, Hilary Footitt, and Myriam Salama-Carr, 395–418. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. 2005. “A Bourdieusian Theory of Translation, or the Coincidence of Practical Instances: Field, ‘Habitus’, Capital and ‘Illusio’.” In Bourdieu and the Sociology of Translation and Interpreting, edited by Moira Inghilleri, special issue of The Translator 11 (2): 147–166. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hale, Sandra B. 2005. “The Interpreter’s Identity Crisis.” In Translation and the Construction of Identity: IATIS Yearbook 2005, edited by Juliane House, M. Rosario Martín Ruano, and Nicole Baumgarten, 14–29. Seoul: IATIS.Google Scholar
Harris, Brian. 1976. “The Importance of Natural Translation.” Working Papers on Bilingualism 121: 96–114.Google Scholar
Inghilleri, Moira. 2003. “Habitus, Field and Discourse: Interpreting as a Socially Situated Activity.” Target 15 (2): 243–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
James, William. 1884. “What is an Emotion?” Mind 9 (34): 188–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krais, Beate. 2006. “Gender, Sociological Theory and Bourdieu’s Sociology of Practice.” In Pierre Bourdieu, edited by Derek Robbins, special issue of Theory, Culture & Society 23 (6): 119–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Léger, Benoit. 2002. “Desfontaines travesti: une « Dame angloise » traduit les Avantures de Joseph Andrews de Fielding (1743) [Desfontaines in drag: An ‘English lady’ translates The Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1743)].” In Censorship and Translation in the Western World, edited by Denise Merkle, special issue of TTR 15 (2): 19–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levine, Suzanna Jill. 1991. The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction. Saint Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press.Google Scholar
Martín Ruano, M. Rosario. 2014. “From Suspicion to Collaboration: Defining New Epistemologies of Reflexive Practice for Legal Translation and Interpreting.” In Crime in Translation, edited by Karen Seago, Jonathan Evans, and Begoña Rodriguez de Céspedes, special issue of JoSTrans 221.Google Scholar
Mayoral Asensio, Roberto, and Ricardo Muñoz Martín. 1997. “Estrategias comunicativas en la traducción intercultural [Communication strategies in intercultural translation].” In Aproximaciones a los estudios de traducción [Approaches to translation studies], edited by Purificación Fernández Nistal and José María Bravo Gozalo, 143–192. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid.Google Scholar
Mead, George Herbert. 1934. Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Edited by Charles W. Morris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meylaerts, Reine. 2005. “Sociology and Interculturality: Creating the Conditions for Inter-national Dialogue across Intellectual Fields.” The Translator 11 (2): 277–283. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. “Habitus and Self-image of Native Literary Author-translators in Diglossic Societies.” In Profession, Identity and Status: Translators and Interpreters as an Occupational Group: Part II: Questions of Role and Identity, edited by Rakefet Sela-Sheffy and Miriam Shlesinger, special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 5 (1): 1–19.Google Scholar
. 2013. “The Multiple Lives of Translators.” In Translation as Social Conscience: Around the Work of Daniel Simeoni, edited by Alexis Nouss and Hélène Buzelin, special issue of TTR 26 (2): 103–128.Google Scholar
Monzó-Nebot, Esther. 2001. El concepte de gènere discursiu: una aplicació a la traducció jurídica [Discourse genre as a concept: Application in legal translation]. MPhil diss. Universitat Jaume I.Google Scholar
. 2003. “Las socializaciones del traductor especializado: el papel de los géneros [The socialization of specialized translators: The role of genres].” Revista de la Facultad de Lenguas Modernas [The Modern Language School Journal] 61: 15–29.Google Scholar
. 2015. “(Re)producing Habits in International Negotiations: A Study on the Translation of Collocations.” In Legal Phraseology Today: A Corpus-Based View, edited by Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo, special issue of Fachsprache 37 (3–4): 193–209.Google Scholar
. 2019. “Interviewing Legal Interpreters and Translators: Framing Status Perceptions and Interactional and Structural Power.” In Research Methods in Legal Translation and Interpreting: Crossing Methodological Boundaries, edited by Łucja Biel, Jan Engberg, M. Rosario Martín Ruano, and Vilelmini Sosoni, 189–211. Abingdon: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newmark, Peter, Gideon Toury, Theo Hermans, and Peter Bush. 1998. “The Meaning of Hamlet and Poems.” In Translation and Norms, edited by Christina Schäffner, special issue of Current Issues in Language and Society 5 (1–2): 33–34.Google Scholar
Piaget, Jean. (1936) 1977. La naissance de l’intelligence chez l’enfant [The origins of intelligence in children]. Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé.Google Scholar
Reay, Diane, Gill Crozier, and John Clayton. 2009. “‘Strangers in Paradise’?: Working-class Students in Elite Universities.” Sociology 43 (6): 1103–1121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Risku, Hanna, Regina Rogl, and Jelena Milošević. 2020. “Researching Workplaces.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Language Industry Studies, edited by Erik Angelone, Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, and Gary Massey, 37–62. London: Bloomsbury Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ryan, Richard M. 1995. “Psychological Needs and the Facilitation of Integrative Processes.” Journal of Personality 63 (3): 397–427. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Šarčević, Susan. 1997. New Approach to Legal Translation. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar
. 2000. “Creativity in Legal Translation: How Much is too Much?” In Translation in Context: Selected Papers from the EST Congress, Granada 1998, edited by Andrew Chesterman, Natividad Gallardo San Salvador, and Yves Gambier, 281–292. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sayer, Andrew. 2005. The Moral Significance of Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schäffner, Christina. 2010. “Norms of Translation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies, vol. 11, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, 235–244. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. “‘Stars’ or ‘Professionals’: The Imagined Vocation and Exclusive Knowledge of Translators in Israel.” In Applied Sociology in Translation Studies, edited by Oscar Diaz-Fouces and Esther Monzó-Nebot, special issue of MonTI 21: 131–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simeoni, Daniel. 1998. “The Pivotal Status of the Translator’s Habitus.” Target 10 (1): 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toury, Gideon. 1978. “The Nature and Role of Norms in Literary Translation.” In Literature and Translation: New Perspectives in Literary Translation, edited by James S. Holmes, José Lambert, and Raymond van den Broeck, 83–100. Leuven: Acco.Google Scholar
. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Rev. ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1992. Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vidal Claramonte, M. Carmen África. 2005. “Re-presenting the ‘Real’: Pierre Bourdieu and Legal Translation.” In Bourdieu and the Sociology of Translation and Interpreting, edited by Moira Inghilleri, special issue of The Translator 11 (2): 259–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. “Critical Thought as Solvent of Doxa .” Constellations 11 (1): 97–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yu, Jing, and Minhui Xu. 2016. “From Norm-breaking to Norm-making: A Sociological Study of the Genesis of a New Norm.” Perspectives 25 (1): 66–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar