Ethnocentrique versus exocentrique?
Abstract
This lecture describes the dilemma regarding ethnocentric and exocentric translation and asks which of these two tendencies can offer the best results. To answer this question, both options should be freed of any burden of ethical responsibility, which might impede a thorough analysis of the possibilities offered by one or the other.
One answer to this dilemma is offered by Antoine Berman, who argues that translation must be open to the Other, to the unfamiliar and, therefore, eccentric. The speaker points out, however, that first it is necessary to clarify what the terms of the aforementioned conflict are; i.e., to what extent can a translation open itself to that Other person, or expressed in a different way, where is the limit between the translator's choice and the servitude imposed by the target language? Nida and Taber's recipe that oral language must prevail over written language does not appear to be universally acceptable either, because, in each case, it is necessary to bear in mind what is being translated, for whom and why, the distance in space and time, culture, typology, etc., between the source and target languages, as well as the specific conditions in which each language evolves.
Based on these premises, we must begin by looking at a language, such as Basque for example, which is being debated in a situation of pure, strict diglossia and consider what is being translated at present and from what language or languages. These translations are generally texts of a pragmatic nature, translated from Spanish by the author himself; i.e., texts created in Spanish by Basques and later translated into Euskara. Bearing this fact in mind, it does not seem that translations of school text books or the self-translations which appear in the Basque communications media are the best way to enrich the Basque language through their openness to the Other, in a supposedly cosmopolitan posture.
On the other hand, we should not forget that, in our case, the blind subjection to Spanish discriminates against native speakers in the French Basque Country. And vice versa. For this reason, in many cases we do not have a clear idea of what the other, or the unfamiliar, is; the thing which, supposedly, is going to enrich us. The problem is that, furthermore, in the highly unlikely case that speakers of the Basque language were to overcome all these obstacles, which authority would impose one or the other criterion? Or, where are the means which would be used to reach the public at large?
This is the difficult situation in which translators of the Basque language find themselves every day and who, as we see, cannot make use of translation theories which are valid for other languages. Thus, without denying the importance of these theories, translators must exercise their own judgement and conscience in their everyday work.
