Graduate Journal of Social Science

Articles

• Translation: the construction and representation of people’s lives

  Bogusia Temple

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  • pp. 13–19

• Travelling between languages and disciplines: linguistic and interdisciplinary translation practices in Women’s/Gender Studies

  Angeliki Alvanoudi

  • Abstract

    In this paper I address issues related to translation from a disciplinary (linguistic) and an interdisciplinary perspective. I theorize translation as a process of travelling between a) languages and b) disciplines. In my discussion of translation as a travelling between languages, I address questions about language as a medium of constituting social reality and shaping experience. Here, I examine how words are related to different conceptualizations across different languages and argue that this linguistic and social context of concepts must be made visible and problematized in processes of translation. To illustrate the need for a reflexive engagement with this issue, I explore two case studies: the different conceptualizations related to various translations of ‘gender; and the sexism embedded in, and reproduced through the use of grammatical gender in Greek. In addition, I claim that the metaphor of translation can be productively used to problematize the travelling of concepts between disciplines. I demonstrate this through a focus on processes of reception, integration and expansion of meanings between linguistics and feminist philosophy and I examine the ways in which the concept of performativity has undergone a process of conceptual translation. Finally, I raise issues of politics and power associated with translation practices.

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  • pp. 20–39

• Translation in excess: engaging semiotics and the untranslatable

  Simon Hutta

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  • pp. 40–62

• Claims of ‘knowing’ in ethnography: realising anti-essentialism through a critical reflection on language acquisition in fieldwork

  Annabel Tremlett

  • Abstract

    The experience of researching in a second language is central to the types of ‘claims’ that can be made in ethnographic fieldwork, yet the process of language acquisition is barely explored in anthropological texts. This article contributes to addressing the gap through presenting a personal reflection on language learning during the research process. Learning Hungarian was central to the fieldwork experience referred to in this article, which included 15 months in a primary school in central Hungary researching discourses surrounding Roma (Gypsy) minorities. The article focuses on a personal account of learning Hungarian, acknowledging the importance of reflecting on language acquisition in order to illuminate the context in which research claims are made. This awareness of language learning in the field led to further insight into the problematic dimensions of claims-making in fieldwork and the role of anti-essentialist theorisation in empirical research. The focus is on how the personal experience of being a second language learner in research led to a greater understanding of the importance of accountability in ethnography, and how an anti-essentialist approach can help this process.

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  • pp. 63–85

• Difficulties of translation from Israeli Hebrew to American English: An analysis of pronouns and power relations in interviews with bus drivers who experienced terror attacks

  Alison Stern Perez and Yishai Tobin

  • Abstract

    This paper investigates both what can be ‘lost’ in language and in its translation to English, and what can be ‘found’ through a deep qualitative, semiotic analysis of the discursive patterns reflected in a number of interviews conducted in Hebrew with native Israeli interviewees by a semi-fluent American immigrant interviewer. Israeli Hebrew has a very complex pronoun system inflected for number, person, and gender. Masculine forms are considered to be unmarked and are used both generically and gender specifically, while feminine forms are marked and are only gender specific. The interviewees’ uses of pronouns when talking with the female interviewer has several socio-psychological implications which can be ‘lost’ in verbatim English translation. In this paper, we will discuss the ways in which they can be ‘found’ through a more careful and language-attentive translation. This paper will explore the difficulties in—but nonetheless the necessity of—translation of diverse pronoun systems and other semantic terms that exist in the original language but not in the translated one. Finally, we will investigate a number of specific communicative strategies used by the interviewee; namely, 1) English words; 2) repetition; 3) the phrases, “you know,” and “let’s say”; 4) both the masculine and feminine forms of the secondperson pronoun (“you”); and 5) the questions, “Do you understand?” and “Did you understand?”. We have found that, when closely examined, the non-random distribution of these uses of language, both in form and content, allows us to ‘find’ myriad analytical insights about power dynamics and interview co-construction that would have been ‘lost’ without careful translation. This paper also discusses the necessity for a great deal of reflexivity in crosslanguage research such as this, and the need for the ‘outsider’ researcher to keep a constant and watchful eye on his or her strengths and limitations when involved in a process of attempting to understand the ‘insider’ perspective, and then to translate it into another language—both linguistically and academically.

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  • pp. 86–107

• Deciphering ‘Voice’ from ‘Words’: Interpreting Translation Practices in the Field

  Lisa Ficklin and Briony Jones

  • Abstract

    The presence of an interpreter influences the dynamic between the researcher and the participants. This influence penetrates the multiple layers of the research process: speaking, listening, interpreting and contextual understanding. This paper seeks to move beyond a formulaic approach to research methods and to unpack how researchers respond to the interpreted interview, understood here as an encounter fully embedded in the practices and experiences of the field outside the linguistic act of translation. It draws its insights directly from recent qualitative fieldwork undertaken in Nicaragua and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In both countries, interpreters were used in a context of heightened politicisation and in fieldwork that crossed political, economic and cultural divides. Empirical and theoretical insights are obtained from this work, demonstrating that the positionality of the interpreter and the responses to this by the researcher require consideration. Indeed, it suggests that the interview encounter cannot be understood or properly analysed without reference to the presence of the interpreter and his/her mediation of ‘words’ into ‘voice’.

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  • pp. 108–130

• Research Note
  Translating a troubled return: Comparative fieldwork on deportees in the Dominican Republic and Jamaica

  Suzette Martin-Johnson

  • Abstract

    These research notes will focus on ideas surrounding planned and unplanned language differences encountered in data collection and analysis. Reference will be made to research conducted in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic between 2004 and 2008 on deportation, using in-depth interviews, mini-focus groups, content analysis, and secondary data, with a view to examining some of the issues surrounding collection and analysis of data across language barriers. Beyond Spanish and English, the additional element of Caribbean creoles will also be discussed. Were such barriers merely linguistic, traversing them would be less challenging. However, combined with, inter alia, inevitable culture differences as well as vast disparities in the education levels of the researcher and the researched, complexities arise. These complexities will also be addressed.

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  • pp. 131–141

Book Reviews

• Representing the Translator: Making Sense of Translation in Cross-Language Qualitative Research. A Review of Bogusia Temple’s Recent Investigations in Research and Translation by Bogusia Temple

  Yevgeniya Traps

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  • pp. 142–147

• Translation Goes to the Movies by Michael Cronin

  Liza Tripp

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  • pp. 148–153

• Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City by Sherry Simon

  Nora Koller

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  • pp. 154–158