The Return to Ethics

Special Issue of The Translator (Volume 7/2, 2001)

If civilizations are to cooperate as well as clash, our mediators must solve problems using serious thought about relations between Self and Other.

Translation Studies has thus returned to questions of ethics. But this is no return to any prescriptive linguistics of equivalence. As the articles in this volume show, ethics is now a broadly contextual question, dependent on practice in specific cultural locations and situational determinants. It concerns people, perhaps more than texts. It involves representing dynamics, seeking specific goals, challenging established norms, and bringing theory closer to historical practice.

The contributions to this volume study a wide range of translational activity, questioning global copyright regimes, denouncing exploitation within the translation profession, defending a Bible translation in terms of mutlilateral loyalty, and delving into the dynamics of popular genres, the culture bubbles of talk shows, the horrors of disaster relief in Turkey, military interpreters in the Balkans, and urgent political pleas from a Greek prison. The theoretical approaches range from empirical text analysis to applications of fuzzy logic, passing through a proposed Translator's Oath and converging in a common concern with cross-cultural alterity