Mediating the Point of Refraction and Playing with the Perlocutionary Effect: A Translator's Choice?

Cultural studies and translation studies have traditionally trodden separate paths, though both have been fundamentally concerned with the processes of communication and meaning. To a large extent the former has viewed translation as a necessary but unimportant vehicle (and necessary only because many cultural studies scholars are foreign), while those involved in translation have tended to assume that culture, and the study of it, has little to do with the art of translating a text. As we shall see, though, times are changing. This paper takes as its starting point that language is one of four filters affecting perception of reality, the other three being physiological, individual and socio-cultural (Katan 1999a: 88-90). It is, as Hanks notes (1993: 139) “one of the central vehicles of habitus”. I will refer to habitus as Simeoni does, as a “convenient stenograph for different default functions applying at different levels and in different domains” (1998: 17), a global catch-all for context of situation, map of the world and context of culture (see Katan 1999a: 71-74). It is, according to Bourdieu: “a system of durable, transposable dispositions”, of “internalised structures, common schemes of perception, conception and action”, the result of inculcation and habituation, simultaneously structured and structuring, and directed towards practice (1990: 53- 60). Language re-presents a person’s particular vision of reality for the benefit of others. Barthes (1993: 109) calls this socially constructed representation a “myth”, suggesting that “everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse”. This is a useful metaphor to bear in mind. Myths do not exist in the objective reality, but are parables or allegories with an array of possible significations. The reader, in interpreting the succession of words as coherent discourse (locutions or signifiers) will give the words meaning, and experience a certain effect, known in speech act theory as the perlocutionary effect. Speech act theory deals principally with three levels of language and meaning, each of which anyone interested in communication should be aware of. The locution and the locutionary meaning, according to J. L. Austin (1962), is the dictionary or referential meaning. However, what is important in communication, both for culture studies and for translation studies is the force of the locution (the illocutionary force), which will be related to the interlocutor’s intention, and the way in which the locution affects the hearer or reader (perlocutionary effect).