Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 27:2 (2015) ► pp.173–191

Translators’ professional habitus and the adjacent discipline

The case of Edgar Snow

 | Ocean University of China
 | The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Simeoni’s seminal paper (1998) has spurred many to investigate translators’ habitus, both initial and professional, though fine-grained analysis is lacking. This paper argues that a translator’s professional habitus is highly influenced by the adjacent discipline. With Edgar Snow as an illustrative case, it attempts to explore the influence of journalism on the structuring of Snow’s professional habitus as a translator. An analysis of Snow’s social trajectory and inculcation of journalistic habitus and his translation strategies as a journalist translator, especially those of deletion of ‘telling,’ addition of ‘showing,’ and changing of beginning and ending, demonstrates that Snow’s professional habitus as a translator is obviously affected by his profession as a journalist. The translator’s habitus is a locus revealing a visible embodiment of interdisciplinary influences, and his/ her professional habitus is a combination of dispositions of both the profession of translation and the profession of the adjacent discipline.
Keywords: professional habitus, adjacent discipline, Edgar Snow, journalist translator
Article outline
  • 1.Translators’ habitus
  • 2.Edgar Snow’s social trajectory
  • 3.Edgar Snow as a journalist-translator
    • 3.1Deleting many passages of ‘telling’ narration
    • 3.2Dramatizing the eye-catching scenes of ‘showing’
    • 3.3Changing the beginning and the ending for the sake of ‘artistic form’
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 June 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.27.2.01xu
References (31)
References
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loic J.D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
. 2000. Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
. 2005. “Habitus.” In Habitus: A Sense of Place, ed. by Jean Hiller and Emma Rooksby, 43–49. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Farnsworth, Robert M. 1996. From Vagabond to Journalist: Edgar Snow in Asia 1928–1941. Missouri: University of Missouri Press.Google Scholar
Ge, Fei. 2005. “‘Baizi’ and Suppositional Narration.” Journal of Tsinghua University (Philosophy and Social Science) 20 (1): 20–27, 34.Google Scholar
Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. 2005. “A Bourdieusian Theory of Translation, or the Coincidence of Practical Instances: Field, ‘Habitus,’ Capital and ‘Illusio’.” The Translator 11 (2): 147–166. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hampton, Mark. 2004. “Rethinking the ‘New Journalism,’ 1850s–1930s.” Journal of British Studies 43 (2): 278–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hough, George A. 3rd.1988. News Writing. 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.Google Scholar
Inghilleri, Moira. 2003. “Habitus, Field and Discourse.” Target 15 (2): 243–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. “The Sociology of Bourdieu and the Construction of the ‘Object’ in Translation and Interpreting Studies.” The Translator 11 (2): 125–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jespersen, T. Christopher. 1991. The American Century in China: Henry Luce, United China Relief, and the Creation of American Perceptions of China, 1931-1949. Unpublished PhD diss. The State University of New Jersey.
Kinkley, Jeffrey. 1987. The Odyssey of Shen Congwen. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mackerras, Colin. 1999. Western Images of China. Revised ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mencher, Melvin. 1999. Basic Media Writing. 6th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill College.Google Scholar
Meylaerts, Reine. 2008. “Translators and (Their) Norms.” In Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in Homage to Gideon Toury, ed. by Miriam Shlesinger, Daniel Simeoni, and Anthony Pym, 91–102. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. “Habitus and Self-Image of Native Literary Author-Translators in Diglossic Societies.” Translation and Interpreting Studies 5 (1): 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robertson, Michael. 1997. Stephen Crane, Journalism, and the Making of Modern American Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Simeoni, Daniel. 1998. “The Pivotal Status of the Translator’s Habitus.” Target 10 (1): 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Snow, Edgar, ed. 1936. Living China: Modern Chinese Short Stories. London: George G. Harrap.Google Scholar
, ed. 1937. Living China: Modern Chinese Short Stories. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock.Google Scholar
. (1958) 1972. Journey to the Beginning. New York: Random House, Inc.Google Scholar
Snow, Lois Wheeler, ed. 1981. Edgar Snow’s China: A Personal Account of the Chinese Revolution Compiled from the Writings of Edgar Snow. New York: Random House, Inc.Google Scholar
Thomas, S. Bernard. 1996. Season of High Adventure – Edgar Snow in China. California: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Volz, Yong Z., and Chin-chuan Lee. 2009. “American Pragmatism and Chinese Modernization: Importing the Missouri Model of Journalism Education to Modern China.” Media, Culture & Society 31 (5): 711–730. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wang, Baorong. 2011. Lu Xun’s Fiction in Translation. Unpublished PhD diss. University of Hong Kong.
Wang, David Der-way. 1992. Fictional Realism in Twentieth-Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Xu, Minhui. 2013. English Translations of Shen Congwen’s Stories: A Narrative Perspective. Bern: Peter Lang.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (13)

Cited by 13 other publications

Zehnalová, Jitka
2024. Digital Data for the Sociology of Translation and the History of Translation. AUC PHILOLOGICA 2023:2 ► pp. 55 ff. DOI logo
BEYAZ, Emre & Atalay GÜNDÜZ
2023. Yemek Yazını Çevirisi Alanındaki Bir Yayıncının Habitusu ve Sermayesi: Güzin Yalın Örneği. Çeviribilim ve Uygulamaları Dergisi :34 ► pp. 25 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Lin
2023. Habitus beyond Bourdieu: in and out of translation studies. Perspectives ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Hongtao, Wang
2023. Defending the last bastion. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation DOI logo
Wang, Yun, Haslina Haroon & Yean Fun Chow
2023.  The translator as an observant reader in the Story of the Stone from the perspective of aesthetic illusion and habitus . Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 10:3 ► pp. 279 ff. DOI logo
Yuan, Mingming
2023. Ideological rewriting of conflict and violence in The Wind in the Willows: mitigating class struggle through translation into Chinese. Perspectives 31:3 ► pp. 576 ff. DOI logo
Diao, Hong
2022. Translating and literary agenting: Anna Holmwood’sLegends of the Condor Heroes. Perspectives 30:6 ► pp. 1059 ff. DOI logo
Zehnalová, Jitka & Helena Kubátová
2022. A methodology of translatological and sociological cooperation in data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 34:2 ► pp. 196 ff. DOI logo
Xu, Minhui & Jing Yu
2019. Sociological formation and reception of translation. Translation and Interpreting Studies 14:3 ► pp. 333 ff. DOI logo
Pan, Xiaxing, Xinying Chen & Haitao Liu
2018. Harmony in diversity: The language codes in English–Chinese poetry translation. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 33:1 ► pp. 128 ff. DOI logo
Xu, Minhui
2018. The Voice of a Scholar-Translator: Interview with Prof. Jeffrey C. Kinkley. Translation Review 102:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Zhang, Huanyao & Huijuan Ma
2018. Intertextuality in retranslation. Perspectives 26:4 ► pp. 576 ff. DOI logo
Gambier, Yves & Luc van Doorslaer
2016. Disciplinary tialogues with translation studies. In Border Crossings [Benjamins Translation Library, 126], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.