ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Editor-in-chief: Kinga Klaudy

Volume 2, Issue 2, 2001
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ABSTRACTS
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pp. 167-180
INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION PAPER
THE IDEA OF THE HYBRID TEXT IN TRANSLATION:
CONTACT AS CONFLICT
CHRISTINA SCHFFNER & BEVERLY ADAB
School of Languages and European Studies
Aston University Birmingham B4 7ET
E-mail: c.schaeffner@aston.ac.uk, b.j.adab@aston.ac.uk
Abstract: Intercultural communication in the global environment frequently
involves recourse to translation. This generates new phenomena which, in turn, raise new
questions for translation theory and practice. This issue is concerned with the concept of
the hybrid text as one of these phenomena. In this introductory chapter, a hybrid text is
defined as: "a text that results from a translation process. It shows features that somehow
seem 'out of place'/'strange'/'unusual' for the receiving culture, i.e. the target culture". It is
important, however, to differentiate between the true hybrid, which is the result of positive
authorial and/ or translatorial decisions, and the inadequate text which exhibits features of
translationese, resulting from a lack of competence. Textual, contextual and social
features of hybrid texts are postulated (see discussion paper). These are the object of
critical reflection in subsequent chapters, in relation to different genres. The potential of
the hybrid text for translation research is explored.
Key words: hybrid text, intercultural communication, conflict, globalisation,
multilingual environment

pp. 181-194
SOME IMPLICATIONS OF REGARDING TRANSLATIONS
AS HYBRID TEXTS
Albrecht Neubert
University of Leipzig, Kiefernweg 2, D-08118 Hartenstein, Germany
Phone: +49 37605 7196,
E-mail: albrecht.neubert@t-online.de

Abstract:: Hybridness is an important but by no means the defining feature of a

translation. Affecting passages or whole texts it is functionally related to a spectrum of
causes varying from individual to historical and social motivations (e.g. resistant
translation vs. pragmatic enculturation). It is also bound up with the formative role
translations have always played in the life of different communicative communities, serving
as a diagnostic by-product of the influences wielded by translations on target discourse (six
factors of influence). The historical variability and the multiple uses of translation have
continually revalued the strategies which translators have applied to produce target texts on
a scale ranging from hybridness, often regarded as a deficiency, to originality and creativity
lending the target version a new life of its own in a new cultural context. The concept of
hybridness could serve its purpose if it were taken as just one option in a new research
paradigm that looks at the uses and shapes of translation in history. It studies translation
events as they arise in a particular time and place and function as agents in the course of
history.
Key words: hybridness, functionality, resistant translation vs. pragmatic
enculturation, historical variability

pp. 195-206
AGAINST PRAISE OF HYBRIDITY
ANTHONY PYM
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Plaa Imperial Trraco, 1 43005 Tarragona, Spain
E-mail: ap@fll.urv.es
Abstract: Professional non-literary translation in contemporary Europe may be
understood as a coherent alternative to interlocutors using languages in which they have
deficient or non-natural competence. Such translation can thus be seen as inscribing an
ideology of non-hybridity. This is because macrostructural translated texts mark out lines
between at last two languages and cultures; they thus posit the separation and possible purity
of both; this in turn supports the ideal of pure or natural language use. If such imagined
purity is some kind of opposite of hybrids, then translations might help rather than hinder it.
This general argument can be unsheathed from a picture in a twelfth-century translation of
the Quran, a close reading of Horace, a wink at Schleiermacher, and twinkling EuroEnglish from an EU meeting on business statistics regulations.
Key words: translation, cross-cultural communication, hybridity, Horace,
Schleiermacher.
pp. 207-216
THE SPACE IN BETWEEN: WHAT IS A HYBRID TEXT?
MARY SNELL-HORNBY
University of Vienna,Institut fr bersetzen und Dolmetschen
Gymnasiumstrasse 50, A 1090 Vienna
E-mail: mary.snell-hornby@univie.ac.at
Abstract: The contribution discusses the concept of the hybrid text familiar in

postcolonial literature as a text written by the ex-colonised in the language of the excoloniser, hence creating a new language and occupying a space in between. It is
therefore not identical with the concept of the hybrid text discussed in Schffner and Adab
1997 as the result of an interlingual translation process, although there are many similarities,
from the strange, unusual features to the phenomenon of contact as conflict. For the
translator, the postcolonial hybrid text - due to its new language involving elements
ranging from lexical and grammatical innovation to culture-bound items - presents many
problems. These emerge clearly from the examples discussed here, which are taken from
India (Rushdie and Roy) and from the Philippines (the traditional form of the short story
known as the sugilanon). It is seen that the hybrid, innovative nature of the language is often
actually reduced by the interlingual translation process, and - in contrast to the foreignising
process of artificially bending back the language - a case is made for a holistic, scenesand-frames approach and for strategies that maximise the creative potential of the text for
the target culture.
Key words: postcolonial, cultural identity, culture-bound item, target culture, scenesand-frames semantics

pp. 217-226
CULTURAL - TEXTUAL HYBRIDITY
SHERRY SIMON
Concordia University, School of Graduate Studies
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Montral, Qubec
H3G 1M8 Canada
E-mail: simon@alcor.concordia.ca

Abstract: This paper argues that the hybrid text is a product of a voluntarily
incomplete translation process. Hybrid texts are produced by writers who want to highlight
their position between cultures, creating a new site of individual and collective expression.
Hybrid texts are defined as those texts which use "translation effects" to question the borders
of identity. These works, which arise out of hybrid sites of belonging, involve acts of
interlingual creation. Three kinds of textual hybridisation which arise out of a number of
contexts of cultural and linguistic contact are investigated on the basis of literary texts.
Key words: deterritorialising strategies, creolisation, mtissage, hybrid sites of
belonging, cultural identity, hybrid writing
pp. 227-236
THE BUTTERFLY AND THE TRANSLATOR:
REFLECTIONS ON HYBRID TEXTUALITY

ALEXIS NOUSS
Universit de Montral, Facult des arts et des sciences
C.P. 6128, succursale A Montral, Qubec H3C, 3J7
E-mail: Nouss@aol.com

Abstract: The notion of hybridity in light of the French concept of mtissage opens
a third way between the reefs of totality (fusion, homogeneity) and differentialism
(fragmentation, heterogeneity). In an hybrid composition, the components are still visible
and it is the tension between them, not the resolution, which gives its full value and its
character to the alloying. In that approach, hybridity loses its negativity and becomes an
ontological category which should be not dependent on cultural and socio-historical factors.
There is no such thing as an original purity (for texts or anything else) which becomes
modified and yields to impurity (hybridity being one example). As long as any being is
subject to time - which is the primary condition for being - its essence and existence become
a succession of altered states~ This paper, drawing from contemporary translation studies as
well as Nietzsche and Deleuze, explore the applications of such a theorisation to translation
as a model of hybrid textuality and define a "translative text" functioning as a bridge
between the so-called source and target texts which are only two sequential moments of
textuality and two modes of saying.
Key words: mtissage, textuality, becoming, ontology, Deleuze.

pp. 337-250
EVOLVING IMAGERY IN THE TRANSLATION OF
ORHAN PAMUK'S KARA KITAP
KLAUS GOMMLICH1 & ESIM ERDIM2
1

Kent State University, Department of English,

Kent, OH 44242K
E-mail: gommlic@kent.edu
2

University of Mississippi, TESOL Program

Department of Curriculum and Instruction, School of Education
University MS 38677
E-mail: eerdim@olemiss.edu
Abstract: The article attempts to use examples of hybrid text from the English
translation of Orhan Pamuks novel Kara Kitap (1990) in order to show that in literary
translation the notion of the hybrid text is indispensable if the translator wants to
disseminate a less known source culture through the language of a better known target
culture. The novel was translated from the original by Guneli Gun as The Black Book (1994)
and three key images of the novel offer promising opportunities for study: the apartment
airshaft, the Bosphorus, and the statues of Ataturk. The pun in the phrase the apartment
airshaft cannot be captured in the target language so the English phrase becomes burdened
with associations that are unacceptable to the target reader. The images of the dried-up
Bosphorus lose their moorings in historical time and become phantasmagoric landscapes.
The coming to life of the statues of Ataturk gain Apocalyptic proportions not conveyed to
the source reader. However, the hybrid text is bound by time and space constraints.
Having entered into the mind of the target reader via Guns text, these images can serve to
develop a kind of understanding that may lead to new ways of relating to other cultures.
Keywords: Orhan Pamuk, Guneli Gun, hybridisation, Turkish culture.

pp. 251-260
INTERPRETING THE OBJECTIVELY "STRANGE"
AND THE STRANGELY "OBJECTIVE"
HYBRID TEXTS IN SOCIAL DISCOURSE AND IN THE
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Niall Bond
Universit Lumires Lyon 286, rue Pasteur 69007 Lyon
E-mail: bond@univ-lyon2.fr

Abstract: Our assessment of the use of the concept of hybrid texts in analysing
translations of social and political discourse shows that the deliberate and conscious
deployment of strange features can serve to heighten or to create an awareness of real or
contrived differences in assumptions between linguistic cultures. In their alien context,
certain terms can spin off unforeseen paradigms and perspectives, as is evidenced in the
cross-cultural reception of the works of Locke, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Dilthey, Freud and Max
Weber.
Key words: mutant, absorption, clarification, delimitation, obfuscation, convergence.
pp. 261-264
EU PROJECT PROPOSALS AS HYBRID TEXTS:
OBSERVATIONS FROM A FINNISH RESEARCH PROJECT
SONJA TIRKKONEN-CONDIT
Savonlinna School of Translation Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Joensuu
P.O.Box 48, SF-57101 Savonlinna, Finland
e-mail: sonja.tirkkonen-condit@joensuu.fi
Abstract: Intercultural communication gives rise to the development of new text
types and genres. Particular stages of this development can be described as hybridisation.
These are the stages at which the new text types and genres are not yet fully established
themselves as forms of communication in a socio-cultural setting: they manifest linguistic
and rhetorical features which are felt to be foreign. Hybridisation can be seen as a process
comparable to pidginisation: while pidginisation in the course of time may result in the
emergence of new languages, i.e., creoles, hybridisation may result in the emergence of new
domestic text types and genres. Thus the hybrid condition is transitory by definition. The
paper will illustrate this process with reference to EU grant applications.
Key words: rhetorical norms, Euro-rhetoric, deviance, conflicting discourse norms

pp. 265-276
DISCOURSE INTERFERENCE IN TRANSLATION

IEVA ZAUBERGA
University of Latvia, Department of Contrastive Linguistics
Visvalza 4A, Riga LV-1050
E-mail: izaub@lanet.lv
Abstract: This article focuses on three major factors that may enhance the degree of
hybridity of target texts: first, the ideological background, i.e. the prestige accorded to the source
culture in relation to the target culture; second, translators competence, i.e., the translators ability
to rationalise translation process and choose an adequate translation strategy; third, the skopos of
translation, i.e., hybrid features may be deliberately imposed upon the translation to enable the text
to serve a given function. Each of these factors is analysed within a framework of a concrete text.
The conclusion of this analysis is that due to the functionalist approach, the concept of translation
has become diffused and refers to texts whose relation with the original ranges from a faithful copy
to free rewrites. Therefore there may be target texts which bear no obvious imprint of the source
text. However, all translations by and large are transfers of one text into another language/culture
system and therefore qualify as hybrids.
Keywords: interference, hybridity, ideology, in/competence, strangeness.
pp. 277-302
CONCLUSION: THE IDEA OF THE HYBRID TEXT IN TRANSLATION REVISITED
CHRISTINA SCHFFNER & BEVERLY ADAB
School of Languages and European Studies
Aston University Birmingham B4 7ET
E-mail: c.schaeffner@aston.ac.uk, b.j.adab@aston.ac.uk
Abstract: This concluding chapter provides responses to some of the issues raised in the
individual chapters, highlighting similarities and differences in the interpretation of the concept of
the hybrid text. The questions dealt with here concern the notion of hybridity and the definition of
hybrid text; the contexts in which hybrid texts emerge; the functions of hybrid texts; the various
levels at which hybrid phenomena manifest themselves; the genres to which the notion of the hybrid
text applies; the effects of hybrid texts; and the status of a hybrid text in Translation Studies. It is
concluded that the phenomenon of the hybrid text involves greater complexity than had initially
been defined in the discussion paper. Therefore, the original hypothesis is reformulated to account
for the fact that hybrid texts are not only the product of a translation process but that they can also
be produced as original texts in a specific cultural space, which is often in itself an intersection of
different cultures.
Key words: hybrid phenomena, cultural space, multilingual environment, globalisation,
genre