1st Edition

Bourdieu and the Sociology of Translation and Interpreting

By Moira Inghilleri Copyright 2005

    Bourdieu's key concepts of habitus, field and capital have been adopted or adapted to elaborate the social and cultural nature of translation or interpreting activity, to locate this activity within social structures and social institutions, and to analyse the cultural, historical and political specificity of translation and interpreting practices. This special issue of The Translator explores the emergence and subsequent development of Bourdieu?s work within translation and interpreting studies. Contributors to this volume offer their critical assessment of the force of Bourdieu?s arguments in clarifying, strengthening or challenging existing analyses of the role of the social in translation and interpreting studies. The topics include a consideration of the role of habitus and symbolic/linguistic capital in translation and interpreting within the legal field; a critical evaluation of how educational sign language interpreters serve to reinforce the continuation of exclusionary practices toward deaf pupils within mainstream schooling; a critique of the dominant historiography of the early translations of Shakespeare?s drama in Egypt; an exploration of Bourdieu?s concepts of habitus, capital and illusio in relation to the formation of the literary field in France and America in the 19th and 20th century; a re-evaluation of the potential for a theoretical alliance between Latour? s actor-network theory and Bourdieu?s reflexive sociology; and a discussion of the ethnographic epistemological foundations of Bourdieu?s work with reference to political asylum procedures in Belgium. From varying perspectives, the papers in this volume demonstrate the contribution of Bourdieu?s work toward the continued elaboration of sociological perspectives within translation and interpreting studies.

    Chapter 1 The Sociology of Bourdieu and the Construction of the ‘Object’ in Translation and Interpreting Studies, Moira Inghilleri; Chapter 2 A Bourdieusian Theory of Translation, or the Coincidence of Practical Instances, Jean-Marc Gouanvic, Jessica Moore; Chapter 3 Hamlet Lives Happily Ever After in Arabic, Sameh F. Hanna; Chapter 4 *I would like to thank the informants who Part Icipated in the research programme mentioned below as well as Philippe Barrot, collaborator on this programme, who collected some of the data used in this article. My thanks also to Steven Sacks for his linguistic revision of the text., Hélène Buzelin; Chapter 5 Bourdieu the Ethnographer, Jan Blommaert; Chapter 6 The Sign Language Interpreter in Inclusive Education, Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd; Chapter 7 Re-presenting the “;Real”, M. Carmen África Vidal Claramonte; Chapter 8 Revisiting the Classics, Reine Meylaerts; Chapter 9 Book Reviews, Ebru Diriker;

    Biography

    Moira Inghilleri