The position of translations

Even-Zohar considered translations to be part of the polysystem of literature. Their position in the polysystem would vary, depending upon the nature of the literary system it belongs to. It is generally believed that translations occupy a secondary position in a given literary system. Even-Zohar disagreed with this; he believed that it could be occupy a primary (central) or secondary (peripheral) position, depending on the larger system it was part of. This was the centre point of his essay “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem” (1978).

There are three situations in which translated literature would maintain a primary position:

• when a literature is young or in the process of being formed,

• when a literature is weak or peripheral

• when a literature is facing a crisis (Venuti, 194)

According to Even-Zohar, in the first two cases translations play an important part because the language/literature is inadequate to express a wide range of experiences in the contemporary world. Translations can also bring in a whole new set of literary genres that are nonexistent in the literature of that language. Very often these translations give examples of works that are departures from the norm, motivating the receptor language to experiment with genres. Even-Zohar believed that this is true of translations into a language like Hebrew. Here translated works were not only sources of new ideas, but also the works to which the creative writers in that language looked up to.

But the case is different with the literatures of developed cultures like English. There can be times when the literature seems to stagnate without any fresh blood to invigorate it. At such junctures in the history of a literature, translations can provide a completely different perspective. The widespread translations from languages like Chinese and Spanish in the 1960s in the U.S is an example of this. Ezra Pound and his translations from the Chinese paved the way for Imagism as a movement in the U.S.

However, it is often the case that translations occupy a secondary position in strong literary traditions like French. There will be already existing forms and traditions of writing in such literatures. In such situations, translations tend to follow the extant norms rather than set a pattern of their own.

Now we come to another crucial question: why do certain texts get translated into a particular language? Even-Zohar, who was initially a Formalist, had like them thought only of literary factors till then. But in this case he went beyond the realms of ‘pure' literature as he had started to expound the diachronic study of literature. So he believed that extraliterary factors played a vital role in the issue of selection of texts. Even-Zohar maintained that the principles of selecting texts for translation are determined by the conditions existing in the target language polysystem. This in turn would determine the centrality or otherwise of the translations. His theory thus stated that the socio-literary conditions of the receptor culture were the deciding factors in the choice of text to be translated. If the receptor language lacked in certain forms or styles or genres, then it was likely to fill up that empty space through translations.