Introduction

The term ‘cultural turn' refers to a shift that occurred in the field of translation studies around the 1980. The shift occurred in the perspective towards translation and the theory that came up around the practice of translation. Translation was no longer thought of as a linguistic activity that was done in isolation, but as the product of a broader cultural context that encompassed plural belief systems. Andre Lefevere was one of the first theorists to adopt this stance. According to him: “Translation needs to be studied in connection with power and patronage, ideology and poetics, with emphasis on the various attempts to shore up or undermine an existing ideology or an existing poetics” (10). He adds that it has to be studied in terms of the language and text that are being translated, besides the questions of why, how and who translates. He goes on: “Seen in this way translation can be studied as one of the strategies cultures develop to deal with what lies outside their boundaries and to maintain their own character while doing so – the kind of strategy that ultimately belongs to the realm of change and survival, not in dictionaries and grammars” (10). Translation was thus no longer seen as just a linguistic transference of texts, but as a strategy that links up two cultures that might have an unequal power relationship. It thus becomes a literary / cultural history of two nations or cultures, mirroring and sometimes subverting, the given perceptions. However, it should also be pointed out that Lefevere was not the first to view translation as part of a larger cultural context; Itamar Even-Zohar's polysystem theory did something similar. But while Even-Zohar confined his theory to the literary realm, what Lefevere did was to take translation outside the realms of pure language. Translation was expanded to take in retellings and adaptations. The film adaptation of a literary text is construed as a translation, perhaps inter-semiotic. The various acts of conscious and unconscious translations that we do in our daily lives become part of the domain of translation studies. For example, the job of interpreting, machine translations, communication in a multilingual world etc are coming under closer scrutiny. Translation theorists like Maria Tymoczko are using translations to study the balance of power between cultures, as reflected in languages. Michael Cronin has written extensively on the impact of globalization on the activity of translation. Much of postcolonial translation, with its self-reflexive thoughts on the strategy and aim of translation, can be seen as part of the cultural turn. Thus the focus of translation studies seems to be shifting to the broader area that is encompassed by the rubric of cultural studies, and this cultural turn is paving the way for meaningful studies of the socio-cultural aspects of translation.