The Mediator, the Negotiator, the Arbitrator or the Judge? Translation as Dispute Resolution

Abstract

Metaphors have long shaped the way pure translation studies describe and justify the translation phenomenon by discovering and consolidating underlying principles. Ultimately, by means of metaphor, something that dwells on the interaction of two seemingly distinct things, translation theorists have obtained a better understanding of the category of translation. Human beings are gregarious, and disputes are inevitable in every society, ancient or modern, primitive or civilized. In fact, conflict is one iron law of life that mankind has had to improvise ways of resolving, from such formal ones as litigation to private ones such as self-help. We may not be able to eliminate dispute altogether, but we can, however, resolve it through creative and civilized means. Translation can be approached in a similar context, except it concerns a metaphorical dispute between cultures and/or languages—and probably on a more intangible and subtle platform. Disparate cultures, religions and languages in a clash can be brought closer to each other with skillful translation, and hence, translation is a variation of dispute resolution. That never went totally unnoticed. Over the years, countless translation metaphors have been constructed and exploited with very different results, which indicates how interdisciplinary a subject translation studies really is. Yet, apparently, translation is most often metaphorized as mediation and negotiation but rarely as arbitration or litigation, and one cannot but wonder whether this happened out of sheer coincidence or because of some misunderstanding. Thus, much as I appreciate what theorists have accomplished with translation metaphors, in regard to didactics and heuristics, my primitive observation is that translation theorists and practitioners have never made full use of metaphorization in that they might have had an incomplete idea of dispute resolution theory in general. After all, a metaphor is, ideally, meant to facilitate active learning and full integration of new knowledge, but there still remains a missing piece that is part and parcel of our metaphorization of translation. Specifically, translators have always embraced the amicable terms of negotiation and mediation, distancing themselves from non-mainstream ones such as arbitration and litigation. To that end, in my thesis, I will explore and examine translation through slightly renewed lenses, demonstrating how and why our metaphor schema and mapping should originate in dispute resolution, and why litigation, and perhaps even arbitration as dispute resolution mechanisms, would serve as good a metaphor—if not a better one—for translation. It is my resolute belief that the translator is more qualified as a judge, a respectable professional vested with immense judicial power, than as a mediator, who is but a third-party neutral facilitating dialogue between two disputants. Only in this way can metaphors do translation theory a great service by furnishing it with a renewed and objective description of translation.