Translation Studies Concepts

Their Contexts of Conception and Use

Abstract

In an attempt to address the title, this article will follow two lines of inquiry. It firstly will trace the development of several key concepts in Translation Studies and ethnography and show how these concepts have shifted in terms of interpretation and scope over time depending on the broader contexts in which they were used. In each case, the concepts were derived from observation of and reflection on translation. The paper will also point to theorization in anthropology (perhaps in contrast to philology) and how it stems directly from ethnographic observation and study in which translation plays an important role. In doing so, the paper will argue that these local insights have considerable staying power and theoretical reach, precisely because they are grounded in the lived experience that sustains them, which perhaps will make them adaptable in other places and situations far beyond their ‘origin’ or the place where the seed of insight germinated. This is considered important in relation to the theme of the special issue, namely community interpreting and translation in the African
context, as many concepts emerge from studies of communities and their cultural contexts. Secondly, the paper draws on and discusses ethnographic data of translational practices in a social housing scheme to shed new light on intralingual translation as conceptualized by Jakobson (1959) and set out in a model by
Korning Zethsen (2009). The data also illustrates how the various elements of intralingual translation belong in a broader economy of exchanges in the housing scheme.