In defence of polysystem theory

Forum

In defence of polysystem theory

Nam Fung ChangLingnan University Hong Kong

This article revisits Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos polysystem theory including its hy-potheses on the position of translated literature and its relation with translation norms and some of its basic assumptions and principles such as the hetero-geneity dynamics and overlapping of systems the quest for probabilistic laws and objectivity and neutrality Through reading Even-Zoharrsquos texts closely and tracing the later developments of the theory it attempts to explore the complexi-ties of the theory and clear up some misunderstandings citing examples from polysystem-inspired case studies It also discusses the complications caused by the expansion made by Gideon Toury on the concept of ldquoadequacyrdquo and ldquoaccept-abilityrdquo presents a revised version of Even-Zoharrsquos hypothesis on the situations in which translated literature is likely to occupy a central position and suggests ways in which polysystem theory can or should be rendered more intricate It argues that polysystem theory and other cultural theories can be complementary and mutually enriching

Keywords polysystem theory translated literature norm weak adequacy acceptability binary opposition heterogeneity system objectivity

1 Introduction

Polysystem theory was developed by Itamar Even-Zohar in the 1970s for the study of language literature and translation and expanded into a general theory of cul-ture in the 1990s In the first twenty years since its birth it had a great impact on translation studies and was well received by theorists Gentzler (1993) made a very positive assessment of the theory Although he questioned some of its ba-sic tenets he regarded the problems as ldquominorrdquo (Gentzler 2001 120) Hermans (1999) cast more serious doubts on some important assumptions of the theory in a systematic and substantial critique but still endorsed systems thinking With the rise to power of morallypolitically committed approaches and the emergence of other cultural-sociological approaches in the twenty-first century more and more

Target 232 (2011) 311ndash347 doi 101075target23208chaissn 0924ndash1884 e-issn 1569ndash9986 copy John Benjamins Publishing Company

312 Nam Fung Chang

scholars find polysystem theory unable to handle the complexities and versatility of translation phenomena and systems thinking in general seems to be on the verge of being abandoned Meanwhile Even-Zoharrsquos later writings as well as some endeavours to augment polysystem theory (such as Chang 2000 2001) have at-tracted little attention

In response to this situation this article attempts to clarify and explore the complexities and complications of polysystem theory It will start with the minor problems and then go on to discuss the bigger issues1

2 The hypothesis on the position of translated literature

In his paper ldquoThe Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystemrdquo Even-Zohar presented a series of hypotheses about translated literature First translated works can be considered as a system of the target culture rather than just a bundle of individual foreign texts as they have been treated in traditional translation studies There are at least two reasons for this assumption the selec-tion of source texts follows principles that are correlatable with the conditions of the target culture and their selection of translation norms depends very much on their relations with the home co-systems (Even-Zohar 1990a 45ndash46)

Secondly being a polysystem with its own centres and peripheries translated literature normally occupies a peripheral position in the literary polysystem How-ever translated literature or its central strata may maintain a central position main-ly in three typical situations which are ldquovarious manifestations of the same lawrdquo

(a) when a polysystem has not yet been crystallized that is to say when a litera-ture is lsquoyoungrsquo in the process of being established (b) when a literature is either ldquoperipheralrdquo (within a large group of correlated literatures) or ldquoweakrdquo or both and (c) when there are turning points crises or literary vacuums in a literature (Even-Zohar 1990a 47)

The third hypothesis concerns the relation between the position and behaviour of translated literature When translated literature assumes a central position taking part in shaping the centre of the literary polysystem the translatorrsquos main concern is the introduction of new models and repertoires rather than the preservation of those existing in the home system Under such special circumstances ldquothe chanc-es that the translation will be close to the original in terms of adequacy [hellip] are greater than otherwiserdquo When translated literature occupies a peripheral position on the other hand the translatorrsquos main effort is to find ldquoready-made secondary models for the foreign textrdquo and ldquothe result often turns out to be a non-adequate translationrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50ndash51)

In defence of polysystem theory 313

While the first hypothesis has seldom been challenged the other two have been queried Gideon Toury has redefined and elaborated upon the third hypoth-esis in order to develop a Descriptive Translation Studies creating a number of new problems in the process

Taking stock of these developments sections 2 and 3 of this paper will try to clear up some misunderstandings about the second and the third hypothesis

While praising Even-Zoharrsquos theory for opening ldquoso many avenues to re-searchers in translation studiesrdquo (Bassnett 1998 128) Susan Bassnett has found some of the key words in the second hypothesis problematic

Today we find this statement somewhat crude What does it mean to define a lit-erature as ldquoperipheralrdquo or ldquoweakrdquo These are evaluative terms and present all kinds of problems Is Finland ldquoweakrdquo for example or Italy since they both translate so much In contrast is the United Kingdom ldquostrongrdquo and ldquocentralrdquo because it trans-lates so little Are these criteria literary or political (Bassnett 1998 127)

Sharing Bassnettrsquos views Hermans further comments

It is also deeply troubling [hellip] because it points to a lack of clarity regarding the vantage point from which the comments are being made The value judgement in characterizing a literature as young or weak or in crisis or even more puzzling as containing a vacuum (a culture with a disability) requires a criterion to ascertain such things as the youth or strength of a culture or the presence of a ldquovacuumrdquo in it It also suggests critical involvement as the qualification affects the situation that is being described (Hermans 1999 109)

He suggests ldquoEven-Zoharrsquos statements about typical situations when translations are likely to fulfil a primary role make more sense if we take them as referring to perceptions from within a systemrdquo (Hermans 1999 109)

Meanwhile Wang Dongfeng a Chinese scholar cites the co-existence of do-mesticating and foreignizing strategies which he observes to have ldquoactually been the translation norms in China for a long timerdquo as ldquocounter-evidencerdquo to the as-sumption of polysystem theory that there is only ldquoone overall orientation of trans-lation strategyrdquo at any given time in a culture2 He attributes the co-existence of opposing strategies to the different cultural attitudes of individual translators ar-guing that while the cultural position of a nation is both an objective fact and a matter of subjective perception it is ultimately the latter that determines transla-tion strategies He criticizes polysystem theory for failing to make allowance for such exceptional cases by overlooking ldquothe translatorrsquos cultural attituderdquo (Wang 2000 2008) His criticisms are directed at both the second and third hypotheses but they boil down to the question of what determines the position and function of translated literature in the literary polysystem

314 Nam Fung Chang

21 Value judgement

These criticisms lead to a series of questions First are terms like ldquoperipheralrdquo ldquoyoungrdquo and ldquoweakrdquo evaluative Is one passing a value judgement when character-izing a literature or culture as such In the polysytemistrsquos usage these terms carry no appreciative or derogatory connotation but are entirely neutral To describe something as ldquocentralrdquo or ldquoperipheralrdquo (or ldquooldrdquo or ldquoyoungrdquo) for example does not imply like or dislike or respect or disrespect on the part of the researcher A basic assumption of polysystem theory is that the member systems of a polysystem are not equal but hierarchized some being in more central positions than others (Even-Zohar 1990 14)

The most problematic term is probably ldquoweakrdquo It is derogatory in general us-age and has often been taken to be synonymous with ldquoperipheralrdquo although Even-Zoharrsquos wording (ldquoeither lsquoperipheralrsquo [hellip] or lsquoweakrsquo or bothrdquo) makes it quite clear that it is not But what does Even-Zohar actually mean by this word In his paper ldquoThe Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystemrdquo there is a footnote referring the reader to another paper ldquoInterference in Dependent Liter-ary Polysystemsrdquo for the concept of ldquoweakrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 47) and in the latter he explains

It is then the weakness of the literary repertoire vis-agrave-vis a situation with which it cannot cope that mostly determines whether an alien system may be accessed or not In a weak situation a system is unable to function by confining itself to its home repertoire only (Even-Zohar 1990c 80ndash81)

Thus weakness or strength refers mainly to an entityrsquos internal conditions instead of such things as political or cultural power vis-agrave-vis another entity and the word ldquoweakrdquo is not intended to be derogatory However it is a bad choice of word for a descriptive theory as Even-Zohar has admitted (in conversation with the author)

With such an understanding we can see nothing puzzling in the word ldquovac-uumrdquo either It is just a figure of speech that describes the lack of a repertoire to handle a certain situation or to satisfy a certain need In fact one may say that there are always vacuums (at least small ones) in a culture as there are in the air otherwise it will stagnate In other words cultures having vacuums are just the normal state They have never been regarded by polysystem theory as what Gentzler (2001 122) calls ldquonon-conforming modelsrdquo To put it the other way round whenever a new repertoire is accepted into a culture one may assume that there must have been a vacuum to accommodate it It is big and perfect vacuums that cause crises in a culture just as they cause strong wind in the natural world Hermansrsquo query suggests that a culture cannot possibly have a disability However we can certainly recognize cases in which individuals groups and entire social


entities mdash which may all be regarded as cultures though at different levels mdash are or find themselves to be unable to function by confining themselves to their own resources It does not matter very much whether we use ldquovacuumrdquo or ldquodisabilityrdquo or some other terms to describe such situations

22 Subjective or objective

The second question is can those typical situations be identified objectively With regard to the relative position of a literature there could be a number of indicators If Literature A translates less from Literature B than vice versa that would be one of the manifestations of the centrality of Literature A in relation to Literature B It would be another if translations from A to B tend more towards adequacy than translations from B to A For example weights and measures tend to be converted in Chinese-English literary translations but preserved in the opposite direction (Chang 1998 265ndash266) This points to the relative centrality of English literature These indicators can sometimes be measured fairly objectively or assessed inter-subjectively and I do not see any problems mdash moral ideological or academic mdash in describing English literature as central relative to Chinese and many other litera-tures for such an assessment based on facts rather than opinion does not consti-tute a value judgment

The relative positions of literary polysystems may be determined by politi-cal as well as literary factors because political power may contribute to cultural interference (Even-Zohar 1990c 80) To touch on political matters does not mean that the researcher is using political criteria or taking a political stance One can always try onersquos best to be neutral whether one is describing political or literary phenomena

The youthfulness or maturity of literatures may also be compared fairly objec-tively by measuring not just their years of development but also the volume and diversity of their repertoires (of both texts and models) which is a more important indicator

Of course one can always find cases where the situation is not so clear-cut especially in cultures that have undergone or are undergoing dramatic changes but even if an element of subjectivity or speculation is sometimes unavoidable the researcher need not and cannot shirk the responsibility of making judgements in good faith when it is necessary to do so

On the other hand weakness and the existence of a vacuum or crisis can be more subjective Weakness means inability to cope with a situation by Even-Zo-harrsquos definition but there are in many cases no objective criteria to judge whether a culture is coping or not and therefore opinions may differ For example an out-sider may judge an entity to be weak if many of its people are dying of famine

316 Nam Fung Chang

however if the government is spending a substantial portion of its resources on developing nuclear weapons ignoring the suffering of its people one may assume that as the government sees it the entity is coping with the situation Similarly for some cultures the splitting of an entity is a crisis to be avoided at all costs but for others it may not matter that much and may sometimes even be desirable

Cultural vacuums are sometimes even less objectively discernable The ldquofour-teen-line poemrdquo for instance did not exist as a genre in traditional Chinese poetry although some classical poems do consist of fourteen lines but we cannot say objectively whether there was a vacuum or not for while there was not such a genre there was no ldquoten-line poemrdquo or ldquoeighteen-line poemrdquo as genres either The ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo did not feel something lacking until they learned about the sonnet in another literature Then the model was imported through transla-tion and transferred into the indigenous literary system in the sense that Chinese sonnets began to be composed and a new genre was established

On the whole the assessment of the relative position and degree of develop-ment of literatures or cultures can usually be more objective because it is based on fairly hard facts whereas the perception of weakness crises or vacuums must be more subjective because it is determined by cultural values Needless to say howev-er even facts can be interpreted differently distorted ignored or even fabricated

23 Self-perception mdash but of what

A further question is whether it is the ldquoobjectiverdquo situation or peoplersquos percep-tion of the situation that determines the role of translated literature On this point views are in fact less different than they seem to be Both Hermans and Wang Dongfeng think that it is the latter They are certainly right Many case studies may prove that the attitude of an entity to foreign repertoires is determined not by the researcherrsquos or any other outsiderrsquos judgement of it however neutral and objec-tive they may be but by its perception of itself One such case is the account by Laura Bohannan of her attempt to translate the story of Hamlet in West Africa to a group of illiterate tribal elders Instead of passively receiving the story from the teller the elders queried many of the details made their own interpretations mdash such as approving Gertrudersquos marrying her brother-in-law Claudius soon after her husbandrsquos death lest she should have no one to hoe her farms mdash and eventually took over the telling of the story They invited her to tell them other stories so that they could instruct her in their true meaning and teach her wisdom (Tymoczko 1990 47ndash49) An outsider would most likely think that the literature of the tribe is less developed than English literature but the elders feeling no deficiencies in their own culture would accept only a highly acceptable translation of Hamlet


Other theorists have had similar ideas Lefevere (1992 87) has remarked that translatorsrsquo attitudes towards the source textrsquos universe of discourse are heavily influenced by the ldquoself-imagerdquo of the target culture among other things and Yaha-lom (1979 65 translated by Codde 2003 114) has pointed out that when a system imports from a neighbouring system the home system will consider the adjacent system ldquomore lsquocompletersquo lsquodevelopedrsquo or lsquoadaptedrsquo for the attainment of a certain goal while considering itself lsquoinferiorrsquo rdquo

Even-Zohar holds a similar view when he writes

Although accessibility [of a foreign repertoire] may result from physical (co-ter-ritorial) contacts such as domination pressure andor prestige it is nevertheless ultimately determined by the cultural promptness (ldquoopennessrdquo ldquoreadinessrdquo) of the target system to consider a potential source ldquoavailablerdquo (Even-Zohar 1990d 93)

He has cited cases where a conquering entity may be culturally weak and has to adopt the repertoires of the conquered entity or two entities may be mutu-ally weak each dependent on the other for some of the repertoires (Even-Zohar 1990c 80) Although he has not explicitly said so in his hypothesis weakness is meant to be a state not for other people to judge but for the entity itself to perceive Indeed this is how the term has all along been understood by some polysystem-ists as evidenced by the following observation

When certain members of a society perceive their own culture as weak or ldquodefec-tiverdquo in certain ways and thus see a need for reform they will naturally turn to cultures that they perceive to be stronger or ldquobetterrdquo for models to be imported (Chang 1998 265 emphasis added)

It can be argued therefore that the criticism that Even-Zohar has overlooked the self-perceptions of a culture is not justified

It is all agreed then that it is the peoplersquos perception of their culturersquos situation that determines the position of translated literature I think this applies more to weakness than any other aspect If a culture realizes that it is peripheral compared to some others but feels that its position is undeserved it is unlikely to welcome foreign repertoires An obvious example is the French cultural system which takes vigorous measures to protect the ldquopurityrdquo of the French language warding off in-terference from other languages especially English in spite of the fact that it has lost much of its prestige to English culture Even-Zohar (1990a 50) has found the French system to be ldquomuch more rigid than most other systemsrdquo and I think its rigidity is at least partly attributable to the mixture of a sense of superiority and an awareness of its peripheralization

A mere sense of youthfulness will not necessarily lead translation to assume a central position either In fact not even crises turning points or vacuums will A

318 Nam Fung Chang

culture in such a situation will try to invent a new repertoire if it believes it is able to do so or if it does not consider any foreign repertoire to be superior The key word therefore seems to be Even-Zoharrsquos ldquoweaknessrdquo or Yahalomrsquos ldquoinferiorityrdquo a sense of which alone is in fact necessary and sufficient for a culture to welcome foreign repertoires All the other typical situations mentioned by Even-Zohar are just favourable conditions for such a feeling to arise

24 Second hypothesis revised

In light of the foregoing discussion ldquoweaknessrdquo or ldquoinferiorityrdquo which carry de-rogatory connotations can be replaced by ldquoa sense of self-insufficiencyrdquo which is not only neutral but also closer to what Even-Zohar actually means3 and his second hypothesis can be reformulated as follows

Translated literature tends to assume a central position in the literary polysystem when there is a general sense of self-insufficiency which is likely to arise in three situationsa when a literature is lsquoyoungrsquob when a literature is ldquoperipheralrdquo andc when there are turning points crises or vacuums in a literature

However this is just a specific manifestation (in the domain of translation) of a general law of cultural interference which is that when a culture faces a situa-tion in which it cannot cope with existing repertoires while a foreign repertoire happens to be accessible it may choose to import that repertoire with or without modifications rather than invent a new one The hypothesis may thus be rewritten in more general terms

Foreign repertoires tend to be welcomed by a culture when there is a general sense of self-insufficiency which is likely to arise in three situationsa when a culture is lsquoyoungrsquob when a culture is ldquoperipheralrdquo andc when there are turning points crises or vacuums in the culture

Nevertheless exceptions are always possible since these are just probabilistic laws (see Toury 1995 264ndash272)

25 Can polysystem theory explain it

The fourth question is whether polysystem theory can account for the co-existence of conflicting translation strategies in China or anywhere else A systems theory or any theory at all is designed to explain general tendencies instead of subjective


decisions and individual behaviour as Even-Zohar points out (Huang 2006 58) If a substantial number of people even though they may constitute only a minor-ity in a culture happen to make similar decisions and behave in similar fashions then one may assume that their decisions are not entirely subjective but inter-subjective in other words there are norms at work Polysystem theory would be defective if it were unable to explain such behaviour However this does not seem to be the case here Assuming heterogeneity and permanent struggles in the sys-tem (Even-Zohar 1990 11ndash15) Polysystem theory allows for the co-existence of rival systems and conflicting norms and their changing relations and polysystem researchers do not flinch from explaining such relations

Wang Dongfeng suggests that polysystem theory would be more convincing if it took into consideration the translatorrsquos subjective perception of the source and target cultures as a factor in the translation process (Wang 2000 4ndash5) but the theory has precisely done that at least as it is understood by some researchers In fact the overlapping of conflicting translation norms in China at the beginning of the twentieth century has been briefly explained in polysystemic terms

In the perspective of Even-Zoharrsquos polysystem theory an explanation of the trans-lations of Yan Fu Lin Shu and Lu Xun may be attempted In the late Qing Period invasion by foreign powers created in Chinarsquos cultural polysystem a crisis or a vacuum which needed to be filled with the help of translations However at the inception of the crisis the linguistic-literary system of classical Chinese still main-tained a secure position at the centre of the Chinese linguistic-literary polysystem and was still the supreme form in the mind of Yan Fu Lin Shu and their read-ers They must needs therefore conform to the linguistic and literary norms of the target culture producing highly ldquoacceptablerdquo but rather ldquoinadequaterdquo (that is unfaithful) translations [hellip] After the New Literature Movement the linguistic-literary system of classical Chinese lost its dominant position along with the ideo-logical system of Confucianism mdash at least in the eyes of left-wing writers and therefore Lu Xun used ldquounsmoothrdquo translations as ldquooffensiverdquo weapons to reform Chinarsquos ideology and literature and even its language (cf Lu 19311984 275ndash277) (Chang 1998a 34ndash35 my translation emphasis added Also see Chang 1998 265)

One may add that the acceptability-oriented translation norm of Yan and Lin the two pioneering translators in modern China was dominant in the first two de-cades of the twentieth century but by the 1920s this norm which Lin still adhered to became ldquoold-fashionedrdquo as the status of the adequacy-oriented norm changed from ldquoprogressiverdquo to ldquotrendyrdquo (see Toury 1995 63 for these terms) In this period there were heated debates over the issue of ldquofaithfulnessrdquo versus ldquosmoothnessrdquo as an accompaniment to divergence in translation strategies between left-wing and right-wing writerstranslators represented by Lu Xun and Liang Shiqiu respec-tively These were cited by Wang Dongfeng (2000 6 2008 146ndash148) as evidence

320 Nam Fung Chang

against polysystem theory However if we take a diachronic perspective we can see that although Liang advocated ldquosmoothrdquo translation his works (especially his translations of Shakespeare) were rather ldquoEuropeanizedrdquo in comparison not only with those by Yan and Lin as Wang Dongfeng (2000 6) observes but also with those by acceptability-oriented translators in later periods whereas Lu has re-mained the most adequacy-oriented translator in modern China Roughly speak-ing the first twenty years of the twentieth century remain the most acceptability-oriented period in modern Chinese history and the ensuing two decades are the most adequacy-oriented as the self-perception of the Chinese cultural polysystem changed dramatically This shift is proof of the existence of period norms The fact that there are conflicting norms in each period does not mean that there is no change over time because we can see that the middle ground has indeed shifted and largely in the way polysystem theory has predicted

Even if one confines oneself to a synchronic view one cannot prove polysys-tem theory to be faulty just by pointing out the co-existence of various shades of translation strategies To do that one will have to prove either that these strategies are not hierarchized in the way hypothesized by polysystem theory or that there is no competition among them or even that it is a normless free-for-all situation The heated debates mentioned above indicate that there was indeed fierce compe-tition and although more research needs to be done it can safely be said that the majority of translated works in the 1920s-30s tended towards adequacy and that Lu came out the winner of the debates according to the accounts of translation histories (such as Chen 1992 288ndash308)

Wang Dongfeng (2000 7) also opines that in present-day China the two types of strategies co-existed ldquorelatively peacefullyrdquo However there are still argument and competition In the mid 1990s there was a debate over strategies for the trans-lation of Stendhalrsquos Le rouge et le noir and the findings of a survey show that most readers prefer adequacy-oriented translations (Xu 1996 98ndash100) Although some of the questions seem to be loaded such as ldquoshould the language of literary transla-tion have an lsquoexoticrsquo flavour or should it be completely naturalizedrdquo (Xu 1996 79 my translation emphasis added) and many questions need to be answered in such detail that only the most fervent readers will have the patience to complete the questionnaire the survey may still reflect that adequacy is the dominant norm (Chang 2008 69ndash70)

The Chinese Cultural polysystem is old and established and is independent and self-sufficient most of the time It has been at the centre of the mega-polysys-tem of the region for centuries interfering rather than interfered with and there-fore it has a deep-rooted sense of superiority After a series of military defeats by Western powers and Japan in the late nineteenth century it came to realize that it was lagging far behind in terms of scientific technological and economic develop-


ments However some people especially those of the ruling class were still proud of the central systems of this cultural polysystem that is its ideology language and literature while some others losing faith in these systems wished to change them by importing Western repertoires For the culture as a whole it may be said that a superiority-inferiority complex arose in that period Since then this complex has existed in different forms and to different extents After disappearing for about two decades since the 1960s it came back in the 1980s Since then national pride has been rising amid rapid economic growth and technological advancement while there is awareness that the progress is largely a result of Westernization It is no surprise to polysystemists that when a culture has such mixed feelings about itself there should be conflicting translation norms

The translation phenomena of the present day can be explained even without recourse to this superiority-inferiority complex The Chinese nation and its cul-ture have left the periphery of the polysystem of the world but have not arrived at the centre In consequence adequacy- and acceptability-oriented norms exist only in their moderate forms with neither clearly having the upper hand (cf Chang 2008 70)

3 The hypothesis about the behaviour of translated literature and Touryrsquos Descriptive Translation Studies

Even-Zoharrsquos third hypothesis seems to have been less challenged except that Hermans has raised two points about the pair ldquoadequacyrdquo and ldquoacceptabilityrdquo (1) the ldquohopelessly confusingrdquo terms ldquoadequaterdquo and ldquoacceptablerdquo should be replaced by ldquosource-orientedrdquo and ldquotarget-orientedrdquo respectively and (2) there seems little point in trying to conceptualize a socio-cultural activity such as translation in terms of a choice along a single axis (Hermans 1999 77) Although some of the problems have been addressed by Toury a more detailed examination of them is warranted

31 Touryrsquos redefinition of ldquoadequacyrdquo and ldquoacceptabilityrdquo

Even-Zohar coined the term ldquoadequacyrdquo and defined it as ldquoa translation which realizes in the target language the textual relationships of a source text with no breach of its own [basic] linguistic systemrdquo (Even-Zohar 1975 43 translated by Toury 1995 56) The term he uses as the antonym of ldquoadequaterdquo is ldquonon-adequaterdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 51) Toury seems to be the first to complement it with ldquoac-ceptabilityrdquo which means a translation ldquonot only lsquoreading the way a TL text should readrsquo [hellip] but also lsquoreading the way a translation [hellip] into TL should readrsquo rdquo (Toury

322 Nam Fung Chang

1980 29) He argues that ldquoa translated text can be located on an axis between the two hypothetical poles of adequacy (source text oriented) or acceptability (target language oriented)rdquo (Toury 1980 34) and he regards the determining of this posi-tion of the text as ldquoone of the main objects of translation analysisrdquo (Toury 1980 49) The focus is therefore on the linguistic-textual level (cf Gentzler 2001 119 130) This seems to be inadequate if the aim is an exhaustive account of translation phe-nomena because the translator is faced with norms on other levels as well (cf So 2002 97ndash98) such as that of ideology and of what Lefevere (1992 41) calls ldquothe universe of discourserdquo Even if onersquos research interests are mainly on the linguistic-textual level one cannot overlook those other levels Otherwise the explanation may not only be local and partial but sometimes even erroneous

A case in point is Wang Dongfengrsquos explanation of the practice of Yan Fu and Lin Shu He argues that their adoption of domesticating translation strategies at a time when the target culture was weaker than the source culture proves that translation strategies are determined not by the ldquoobjective positionrdquo of the culture but by the translatorsrsquo ldquosubjective recognitionrdquo contrary to what polysystem theory hypothesizes (Wang 2008 147ndash148) In my opinion a more nuanced analysis is necessary A culture is a polysystem consisting of many domains towards which a ldquoperson-in-the-culturerdquo may have different attitudes Yan and Lin no doubt saw the Chinese language and literature as superior hence the acceptability-oriented strategies they adopted However they must have perceived a weakness in many other domains of Chinese culture such as science and technology the education system and certain moral concepts Otherwise they would not have translated so many works producing such a foreignizing effect on Chinese culture In other words their subjective recognition tallied with the objective situation as far as these domains are concerned4

Toury later redefined the two terms saying that adequacy means ldquo[sub-scription] to the norms of the source text and through them also to the norms of the source language and culturerdquo (Toury 1995 56) whereas ldquoacceptabilityrdquo is determined by ldquosubscription to norms originating in the target culturerdquo (Toury 1995 57) As these new definitions are meant to include norms beyond the linguis-tic-textual level the two special terms coined by Even-Zohar and Toury have no reasons to exist any more and should indeed be replaced by the more commonly used ldquosource-orientedrdquo and ldquotarget-orientedrdquo

32 How many axes

A significant implication of Touryrsquos redefinitions mdash made before Hermans ex-pressed his concern mdash is that translating is seen no longer as the making of a choice along a single axis but as that of a multitude of choices simultaneously


along many axes In Touryrsquos words ldquotranslation is intrinsically multi-dimensionalrdquo (Toury 1995 66) This means that Descriptive Translation Studies will have to de-termine the position of a translated text on all axes if it wants to be exhaustive It can start with the study of ldquonormemesrdquo or ldquodiscrete normsrdquo and then it should proceed from this ldquoparadigmaticrdquo phase to a ldquosyntagmaticrdquo phase to establish the relations among normemes pertaining to various domains and finally provid-ing that the network of relations established is thick enough it may attempt to reconstruct the ldquooverall normative modelrdquo the text is subject to that is ldquothe norms governing translation in their totalityrdquo (Toury 1995 66ndash67 1998 23)

However it is impossible to implement this ambitious scheme in full As there is in theory no limit to the types of norms that may have governed the translating of a text the researcher has to select those that heshe deems to be most relevant for hisher purpose and any case study has to remain partial with regard to both discrete norms and the overall normative model

33 Where are the tools for each phase

A more serious problem after Touryrsquos expansion of the scope of Descriptive Trans-lation Studies is that tools are yet to be developed for the paradigmatic and syntag-matic phases of investigation

According to Toury while the ldquoinitial normrdquo governs the ldquochoice which can be made between requirements of the two different sourcesrdquo of norms (Toury 1995 56) there are two types of ldquooperational normsrdquo that direct ldquothe decisions made during the act of translation itself rdquo ldquomatricial normsrdquo that ldquogovern the very existence of target-language material intended as a substitute for the correspond-ing source-language materialrdquo and ldquotextual-linguistic normsrdquo that ldquogovern the se-lection of material to formulate the target text in or replace the original textual and linguistic material withrdquo (Toury 1995 58ndash59) These two tiers of norms may be sufficient if the focus is on the linguistic-textual level only but they are inad-equate when the scope of investigation is enlarged to include all types of cultural norms Instead of simply saying that certain items have been deleted or replaced one needs to describe what types of items have been deleted or replaced by what and to explain why they have been treated in that way Take for example abridged translations as objects of study Researchers who confine themselves to the linguis-tic-textual level may just say that the translation leans towards acceptability since even the ldquofullness of translationrdquo (see Toury 1995 59) is not respected thus draw-ing a conclusion about initial norms directly from observations on operational norms Those who seek higher-level explanations however will have to find out or speculate upon the causes of the abridgements the literary device or the universe of discourse may be alien to the target culture the ideology may be offensive to

324 Nam Fung Chang

those in power or a full translation produced at a higher cost may have a much smaller market For the second type of researcher there seems to be a gap between the two tiers of norms and one wonders if all possible causes can be explained in terms of the initial norms of adequacy or acceptability

The next problem is how to proceed to the syntagmatic phase Needless to say the position of a translated text is not identical on every axis A translator may lean towards one pole in certain domains and towards the other pole in others de-pending on hisher translation purposes (cf Toury 1995 67) Yan Fursquos translation of Thomas Henry Huxleyrsquos Evolution and Ethics for instance is highly acceptable on the linguistic textual and literary levels as it is written in elegant classical Chi-nese more or less adequate on the ideological level as Huxleyrsquos views are largely preserved and somewhere in the middle where the universe of discourse is con-cerned as Chinese items are sometimes used in analogies and examples to replace Western ones in the text proper while the latter are retained and explained in brackets (Chang 2005 46ndash47) Then what can one say about the overall normative model of Yanrsquos translation Obviously one cannot simply give a numerical value to the textrsquos position on each axis and average them out

As the overall normative model cannot be derived automatically from findings about various discrete norms the empirical researcher still waits to be enlightened by the theorist

34 May texts fall outside the axes

A further question is whether translated texts always occupy a position along the straight line between the two poles so that a text less adequate than another must necessarily be more acceptable and vice versa

In fact there are texts that are neither adequate nor acceptable to different ex-tents For example in his translation of Victor Hugorsquos Les Miseacuterables Su Manshu invented a character to voice his own views on Chinese affairs

那支那國孔子的奴隸教訓只有那班支那賤種奉作金科玉律難道我們法

蘭西貴重的國民也要聽他那些狗屁嗎(Su 19031991 696)(The slavish teachings of that Confucius of China are revered as virgin gold and solid rock only by the miserable wretched Chinese Surely we noble citizens of France need not listen to such shit)

The ideology behind this attack on Confucianism and the Chinese people origi-nates from neither the source nor the target culture but from the translator him-self or from a trend of thought among left-wing intellectuals in China On the ideological axis Sursquos translation is neither source- nor target-oriented but can be said to be translator-oriented Similarly Ezra Poundrsquos translated poems collected


in his Cathay do not conform to the poetics of either Chinese or English literature Pound did not care very much about ldquoaccuracyrdquo mdash his knowledge of Chinese is very limited anyway as translation is a tool for him to experiment with new forms posing a challenge to the dominant literary norms of his time

The fundamental problem with Touryrsquos conception of the initial norm as a choice on axes between two poles is that although it assumes a multitude of axes after Touryrsquos revision it fails to take into consideration the possibility of translated texts falling outside these axes Toury mentions only two sources of norms opera-tive in the translation process mdash the source and the target culture5 whereas in re-ality there may be other important sources These may include not only the United Nations and other multi-cultural settings in the special cases cited by Hermans (1999 69) but also in quite ordinary cases the translators themselves who may not only conform to existing norms but also break them by inventing new models and repertoires Their inventions may result from creativity or an insufficient com-mand of the norms involved Poundrsquos inventions are a result of both

It may be argued that as Touryrsquos Descriptive Studies is also designed mainly to explain general tendencies it is less interested in individual behaviour However it leaves a portion of translation phenomena unaccounted for and that portion may sometimes be so substantial that a sub-set of norms may be assumed to exist

This limitation of the ldquoaxisrdquo concept may even lead researchers astray Seeing that Poundrsquos translations often deviate from the source texts one researcher (Zhu 2003 26ndash27) concludes that his translation strategies are extremely ldquodomesticat-ingrdquo while another (Zhang 2005 101) remarks that Pound was ldquoforeignizingrdquo on the grounds that his translations have created new primary models for American literature Both researchers apparently assume that a translation must lean towards either acceptability or adequacy

The locations of translated texts between the two poles should perhaps be con-ceived as forming a solid sphere rather than an axis so that a text may still be said to be nearer a certain pole than another text although one may be off the axis while the other may be on it mdash in the way that Europe is nearer the Arctic pole than the centre of the earth and a text near the axis may be more adequate and more ac-ceptable at the same time than another that is at the same latitude but further away from the axis

35 Is position the sole determinant of behaviour

It seems that translation norms are not always solely determined by the position of translated literature in the literary polysystem I contend that in China translation norms have been heavily influenced by the concept of ldquoloyaltyrdquo of the inferior to the superior Originating from the ideological and the political polysystems this

326 Nam Fung Chang

concept has for thousands of years dominated every aspect of Chinese society This may be what Even-Zohar (1990d 89ndash90) calls the conversion of norms mdash in our case from an ideological and political norm into a translational one And I further contend that the norm of ldquoliteral translationrdquo or even ldquorigid translationrdquo advocated by the well-known writer cum translator Lu Xun in the 1930s when the Chinese literary polysystem and even the whole Chinese cultural polysystem were in a crisis and therefore translated literature was at the centre has been canonized due to Lu Xunrsquos status as the greatest revolutionary writer and to Mao Zedongrsquos support and have continued to exert pressure on translators for over sixty years (Chang 2005 61 70ndash71) This may be described as perpetuation of norms crys-tallized in an earlier phase As the result of such conversion and perpetuation of norms one may not always see a shift of translation norms from adequacy to ac-ceptability to a corresponding degree when a centrifugal movement of translated literature takes place

This overdetermination of translation by various norms has created an inter-esting situation at a time when translated literature assumed a peripheral position the mainstream translation norms tended towards adequacy and yet a translator produced an acceptable translation on the linguistic-textual level in order to pose a challenge to the dominant translation norms and indirectly even to the dominant ideological norms (see Chang 1998) If a researcher has read Even-Zoharrsquos paper ldquoThe Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystemrdquo only but not his other papers and applies Even-Zoharrsquos hypotheses to the study of this case in a simplistic manner heshe may conclude that the translator producing a textu-ally acceptable translation when translated literature is on the periphery is just a normal average one Such a conclusion will not just be partial but even erroneous

A clause should therefore be attached to the third hypothesis ldquoother things being equalrdquo

36 Does ldquocentralrdquo and ldquoadequaterdquo always mean innovative

Even-Zoharrsquos hypothesis of a link between adequacy and the central position of translated literature is apparently made on the assumptions that primary (or inno-vatory) activities take place at the centre of the literary polysystem and that adequa-cy-oriented translation has the function of ldquocreating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) However neither assumption seems to be entirely unproblematic

In his earlier writings Even-Zohar (1978 16) equated ldquoprimaryrdquo with ldquocentralrdquo and ldquocanonizedrdquo and ldquosecondaryrdquo with ldquoperipheralrdquo and ldquonon-canonizedrdquo since he found in the corpora he was then analyzing that primary activities were confined to canonized systems and secondary activities to non-canonized systems It is no surprise that the same assumption was made in ldquoThe Position of Translated Litera-


ture within the Literary Polysystemrdquo which was first published in 1976 He revised his views later and made the following correction

[hellip] as in the actual literary corpora I had then analyzed ldquoprimaryrdquo types tended to appear exclusively in the canonized system (and ldquosecondaryrdquo in the non-canon-ized) I began using the term ldquoprimary systemrdquo for a ldquocanonized system possessing primary typesrdquo (and ldquosecondary systemrdquo for a ldquonon-canonized system possessing secondary typesrdquo) I must now strongly disavow this practice as it blurs the issue and is incorrect when periods other than those I discussed are taken into consid-eration [hellip] (Even-Zohar 1979 298)6

This is tantamount to admitting that innovations can be initiated by peripheral systems However no corresponding revisions have been made in the 1990 version of ldquoThe Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystemrdquo except for the insertion of the following statement

Whether translated literature becomes central or peripheral and whether this po-sition is connected with innovatory (ldquoprimaryrdquo) or conservatory (ldquosecondaryrdquo) repertoires depends on the specific constellation of the polysystem under study (Even-Zohar 1990a 46)

This remark seems to imply that the centre is not necessarily linked with innova-tion and the periphery with conservation in contradiction to the third hypothesis

Even-Zohar clarified his position on the issue in an email to me (dated 2 July 2004)

I believe there are instances in the history of cultures where it is the periphery which creates innovative alternative models I think I have even discussed this in several other papers Often when the established ldquocenterrdquo is capable of only perpetuating accepted repertoire innovations may then take place on the periph-ery For example when ldquooriginal writingsrdquo perpetuated old models (French 18th century) while an adjacent culture (English) offered alternatives translations and pseudo-translation on the French periphery began to offer alternatives which eventually penetrated the French ldquocenterrdquo after some 70 years of successful pro-duction However the overwhelming majority of the cases I have studied has shown that the combination of ldquoperipheral + secondaryrdquo is more regular but if we have a dynamic concept of a system then clearly it is very rare that a system can be dominated by a perpetuated repertoire in the long run UNDER CONDITION THAT THERE MIGHT BE SOME CONTACT WITH OTHER CULTURES Please remember that the paper you are now discussing was written in 1976 before I made some progress in analyzing and thinking about systemic dynamics I would consider it a pre-runner of what I and others have been able to develop

328 Nam Fung Chang

later If I had to re-write it in view of further work done it would have had to be completely reshuffled

The assumption that adequacy-oriented translation has an innovatory function seems to be somewhat shaky as well If a source text that is highly compatible with target culture norms is chosen then the translation cannot possibly be innovatory however adequate it may be whereas a translation made highly acceptable on the linguistic-textual level (such as some of the works of Yan Fu) may produce a great impact on the target culture if the source text is utterly alien in certain respects Adequacy may be the product of the conscious use of translation strategies mo-tivated by a desire to reform but it may also result from a lack of bilingual andor bi-cultural competence Although even the second type of adequacy may have an unintended innovatory effect in the sense that some new models may be intro-duced into the target language and eventually accepted into the indigenous rep-ertoire some others just become stable norms for translation but not for original writing The continued use of such ldquotranslationeserdquo is conservative

37 Acceptability vs acceptance

The concept of acceptability or indeed Touryrsquos target-oriented Descriptive Trans-lation Studies is designed to describe and explain what goes on during translation not the actual reception of a text In Gideon Touryrsquos words

It is not acceptance (or reception) which is the key-notion here but acceptability Thus what may be said to operate in literary translation [hellip] is not any fact about the reception of its product [hellip] Only assumptions can be operative here name-ly as to the chances a text has of being accepted whose structure andor verbal formulation would follow a certain pattern [hellip] Where in the target culture the [text] will then be located is a totally different matter which may indeed form part of a research program in reception literary or otherwise [hellip] Thus not only can translations which have been carried out according to strict requirements of literary acceptability not be accepted into the target litera-ture but translations which have not been executed under this mandate may nev-ertheless carve a niche for themselves in it even in cases where what they reflect is the source text and its underlying models [hellip] (Toury 1995 172ndash173)

In fact conformity to target linguistic and literary norms is not the only strategy to overcome cultural resistance and sometimes it is not the most effective one To understand the more complicated phenomena of actual reception one must look at a wider picture mdash that of the entire culture for the decisive battle may have to be fought on the ideological and political fields For instance without the social dis-course that gave legitimacy to Western learning such as the seventeenth century


myth that ldquoWestern learning originates from Chinardquo and the late nineteenth cen-tury proposition of ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practical applicationrdquo (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 42 Chang 2008 138ndash139) translation may not have eventually flourished in China at the turn of the twentieth century in spite of the efforts of the pioneering translators to make their products ldquoacceptablerdquo

An intriguing case is the reception of Sir Henry Rider Haggardrsquos Joan Haste around that time According to a case study conducted by Wang Xiaoyuan the first Chinese translation published in 1901ndash1902 contains only the second half of the source text The translator explained that the first half was missing when he bought the book from a second-hand bookstore The story about the hero-ine sacrificing herself for the one she loves was well received Four years later a complete translation was published but it was accused by some critics of having a corrupting effect on morals because in the first half of the story the heroine had pre-marital sex and got pregnant One critic lamented ldquoOh chastity can now be broken in an instantrdquo He preferred the first half to be deleted for the good of Chi-nese society (Wang 2006 107ndash115) The translator of the complete version is none other than Lin Shu who was well known for his systematic use of acceptability-oriented strategies on the linguistic and literary levels but these strategies made little difference The work was not able to gain acceptance until the moral norms that governed love and marriage changed

The most striking examples are perhaps foreign religions and ideologies such as Buddhism Christianity and Marxism none of which managed to carve a niche in Chinese culture until after bloody conflicts and even civil wars

38 Synonymous with domestication and foreignization

Finally it may be necessary to compare acceptability and adequacy with Lawrence Venutirsquos concepts of domestication and foreignization since the two pairs have been used by some scholars interchangeably There are significant differences be-tween them at least in two ways First Venutirsquos concepts apply not just to Touryrsquos ldquoinitial normsrdquo but to his ldquopreliminary normsrdquo as well As Venuti remarks the choice of a source text that challenges certain values dominant in the target culture ldquocan be just as foreignizing in its impact on the receiving culture as the inven-tion of a discursive strategyrdquo (Venuti 2008 125 153)7 Tymoczko finds Venutirsquos concepts ldquoproblematicrdquo on the grounds that since choice of text and discursive strategy are not ldquofamily resemblancesrdquo ldquohe seems to attempt to define a catego-ry characterized by disjuncts of various properties rather than partial overlapsrdquo (Tymoczko 2000 36) However it seems puzzling why the selection of a text to translate and of strategies to translate it cannot be regarded as family resemblanc-es They are both decisions that the producer of a translated text has to make in

330 Nam Fung Chang

relation to the question of what foreign repertoires to transfer and they jointly determine the function of the text in the target culture Such academic niceties apart some researchers may find foreignization and domestication a more help-ful pair of concepts than adequacy and acceptability The former may yield more satisfactory answers to certain complicated questions such as why some translated works have produced a great impact on the target culture or have been regarded as a serious threat in spite of their norm-conforming discursive strategies It is worth noting that Even-Zoharrsquos second and third hypotheses are both attempts to explain the second reason why translated works can be regarded as a system of the target culture that is the selection of translation norms depends very much on their relations with the home co-systems whereas the first reason mdash that the selection of source texts follows principles that are correlatable with the conditions of the target culture mdash has not been followed up My second revised version of his second hypothesis (presented in Section 14) is in part an attempt to fill this gap

The second difference is that while domestication means conformity to target norms in the same way that Touryrsquos redefined acceptability does foreignization refers to the introduction of any element incompatible with values or norms cur-rently dominant in the target culture regardless of where it comes from It may have been invented by the translator or borrowed from an earlier period or the peripheries of the target culture or from a third culture (see Venuti 1998 13ndash20) That is why Venuti (2008 252) warns that implementing a strategy of resistance ldquomust not be viewed as making the translation more literal or more faithful to the foreign-language textrdquo Foreignization in translation therefore covers a wider area than adequacy or source-orientation A translation that can be described as for-eignizing is not necessarily an adequate one Poundrsquos translation may serve as an example Another more complicated case is an acceptable translation produced at a time when the dominant translation norm is adequacy (see Chang 1998) On the linguistic-literary level it may be said to constitute a domesticating or acceptable translation but on the level of translation poetics it can be explained conveniently only in Venutirsquos term mdash foreignizing but not in any of Touryrsquos terms

The adequacy-acceptability continuum may still be a useful concept for the study of the relation between the position of translated literature and its behaviour but this relation should not be the only object of Descriptive Translation Studies On the other hand it seems that Venutirsquos concepts being more comprehensive sophisticated and flexible may be turned into a more helpful explanatory tool for some more complicated cases in spite of his prescriptive stance


4 The bigger issues

Many of the doubts about the basic tenets of polysystem theory were raised by Hermans (1996 1999) and expounded on by others The most serious criticisms include binary thinking over-emphasis on systemicity at the expense of the agen-cy of the translator text orientation inability to deal with power and ideology lack of a coherent theoretical framework and the impossibility of objectivity and neutrality Some of these questions have been partly answered in the previous two sections but a more detailed discussion is called for

41 Binary oppositions

Hermans is of the view that ldquothe pattern of binary oppositions with which polysys-tem theory operatesrdquo has resulted in research findings that are ldquohighly structured accounts of systems which are themselves shown to be highly structuredrdquo (Her-mans 1999 119) He explains

To the extent that translation research inspired by polysystem theory operates with mutually exclusive terms [hellip] it remains blind to all those ambivalent hy-brid unstable mobile overlapping and collapsed elements that escape binary classification (Hermans 1999 119)

It is not entirely clear from this statement whether Hermans lays the blame on the theory itself or the application of the theory or the interpretation of these terms by researchers or both Meylaerts blames Descriptive Translation Studies (Mey-laerts 2006 6) mdash which can be regarded as a polysystem-theory-inspired frame-work designed specifically for the study of translation Wolf and Agorni blame the theory itself (Wolf 2007 7 Agorni 2007 127) and Gentzler blames both (Gentzler 2008 53) The ldquobinary oppositionsrdquo they cite include centralperipheral canon-izednon-canonized8 sourcetarget adequateacceptable primarysecondary and producerconsumer Meylaerts claims that ldquofunctionalist descriptive research on heterolingualism inand translation can render traditional binary oppositions [hellip] more flexiblerdquo (Meylaerts 2006 6)

However most of these pairs are in relations of ldquomore or lessrdquo not ldquoeitherorrdquo as Hermans alleges (Hermans 1999 119) Take for example the pair ldquoadequacyrdquo and ldquoacceptabilityrdquo As mentioned in Section 2 of this article Hermans criticizes Toury for conceptualising translation in terms of a choice ldquoalong a single axisrdquo (Hermans 1999 77) not between two alternatives thus recognizing that the two poles form a continuum Many other pairs in polysystem theory such as authortranslator or original writingtranslation are of a similar nature Even-Zohar al-

332 Nam Fung Chang

lows for the existence of ldquoquasi-translationsrdquo and of ldquodiffuserdquo borderlines between ldquoa translated work and an original workrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50)

These continuums are unstable and mobile As Even-Zohar emphasizes ldquothe distinction between a translated work and an original work in terms of literary be-havior is a function of the position assumed by the translated literature at a given timerdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) In his works one can also find references to cen-tripetal and centrifugal motions and to canonization all of which imply changes Rather than jumps from one pole to the other such changes are often movements along a cline which may reach the other pole or stop halfway Polysystem theory is after all a ldquotheory of dynamic systemsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990 10)

In fact the very term ldquopolysystemrdquo is coined to prevent binary thinking and simplistic ideas about cultures As Even-Zohar points out

if the idea of structuredness and systemicity need no longer be identified with homogeneity a semiotic system can be conceived of as a heterogeneous open structure It is therefore very rarely a uni-system but is necessarily a polysys-tem mdash a multiple system a system of various systems which intersect with each other and partly overlap using concurrently different options yet functioning as one structured whole whose members are interdependent (Even-Zohar 1990 11 emphasis added)9

Since cultures literatures literary canons languages ideologies repertoires in-stitutions and mdash by extension mdash producers consumers and translators etc can all be regarded as polysystems we can see that polysystem theory is not guilty of binary thinking Nor does it assume the neat demarcation of national cultures or ldquothe neat equation of cultures with monolingual territories coinciding in turn with nation statesrdquo (Hermans 1999 121) as some people might think it does If there are case studies that perpetuate simplicities by assuming that ldquothe translator belongs to the target culturerdquo (Hermans 1999 68ndash69) etc the fault is with those particular applications of the theory instead of the theory itself because there are polysystem-inspired studies that deal with literary translation initiated by the source culture and with the conflicting norms between translators and even co-translators with different cultural backgrounds (such as Chang 2004 215ndash227)

42 System vs agency

Closely related to binary thinking is the criticism that polysystem theory by fore-grounding systemicity and universals has overlooked the agency of the translator and non-conforming behaviour Gentzler observes that Even-Zohar and Toury seem to set out to look for unity and conformity more than contradiction and deviation (Gentzler 2001 122 130) Hermans suggests that ldquothe structuredness


of the method produces the structuredness of the objectrdquo (Hermans 1999 119) Daniel Simeoni feels a need to ldquo[nudge] theory away from the properties of sys-temic constructs towards the main focus of translation norms ie the translatorrdquo (Simeoni 1998 1) and Agorni finds a ldquomechanical tendency implicit in system thinkingrdquo (Agorni 2007 130)

To address this perceived insufficiency of polysystem theory some alternative research models have been proposed Simeoni applies Pierre Bourdieursquos notion of habitus to translation studies in order to help account for ldquothe myriad determin-ing choices made by translators in the course of translatingrdquo (Simeoni 1998 1) According to Simeoni the difference between his notion of the translatorrsquos habitus and Touryrsquos Descriptive Translation Studies is ldquosimply one of anglerdquo

Toury places the focus of relevance on the pre-eminence of what controls the agentsrsquo behaviour mdash ldquotranslational normsrdquo A habitus-governed account by con-trast emphasizes the extent to which translators themselves play a role in the maintenance and perhaps the creation of norms (Simeoni 1998 30)

As he sees it the two approaches are complementary rather than contradictory to each other because ldquonorms without a habitus to instantiate them make no more sense than a habitus without normsrdquo (Simeoni 1998 30 33)

Agorni derives from Maria Tymoczko the concept of localism which means ldquo lsquolocalizedrsquo research into specific translation phenomena (providing a careful and detailed reconstruction of their social linguistic historical and cultural context)rdquo to help investigate ldquothe contingent nature of the various agencies and institutions involved in translation practicesrdquo (Agorni 2007 129) Although she finds Touryrsquos concept of norms compatible with the translatorrsquos agency she sees a need to pay attention to the role of individual case studies ldquoas a testing-ground for the discov-ery [hellip] of general patterns of translation behaviourrdquo so as ldquoto avoid the danger of generalisationrdquo (Agorni 2007 128ndash129)

It seems to me however that such criticisms are not totally justified As poly-system theory was intended to pose a challenge to traditional translation criticism mdash the central paradigm of the time mdash whose main objective is the evaluation of the translatorrsquos competency and creativity it naturally emphasizes systemicity and norms Probably being too eager to prove their point some researchers may have focused in their methodology and their findings on translation as a norm-gov-erned activity and on regularities but there is nothing in the content of the theory itself that shows a mechanical tendency (cf Gentzler 2001 122) Heterogeneity and changes are postulated from the beginning and words like ldquochances [hellip] are greater than otherwiserdquo and ldquooftenrdquo are used in the formulation of hypotheses As mentioned in Section 14 polysystem theory is just after probabilistic laws

334 Nam Fung Chang

Agorni calls for translation studies to ldquoemploy research models committed to register both stability and change both norm and norm-breakingrdquo (Agorni 2007 125) However some case studies inspired by polysystem theory have tried to do exactly that10

Further there seems to be binary thinking in Agornirsquos statement Stability and change are not always mutually exclusive As Even-Zohar remarks change does not always entail instability on the contrary ldquopermanent steady and well-con-trolled changerdquo may be a means to maintain stability (Even-Zohar 1990 26) The relationship between norm-conformity and norm-breaking is even more compli-cated First norm-breaking or creativity may result from the invention of new items new combinations of existing items (cf Simeoni 1998 6) recycling items no longer in use or appropriation of items existing in a co-system (another so-cial domain another stratum etc) Conformity and non-conformity to norms are therefore relative Secondly norm-breaking and norm-conformity may be inter-dependent In what Even-Zohar calls innovative or primary systems new products are expected to break existing norms resulting in a low degree of predictabili-ty (Even-Zohar 1990 20ndash21) In such cases breaking norms at a lower level is a means to conform to norms at a higher level In the case mentioned in Section 25 conforming to target linguistic and literary norms serves the purpose of challeng-ing translation and ideological norms

Referring to Andreacute Lefeverersquos theory of rewriting Hermans finds that his terms are ldquotoo apodictic too few and therefore too broad to be able to guide re-search in any meaningful way beyond a general orientation towards the social context of literaturerdquo (Hermans 1994 139ndash140) The same can be said about poly-system theory which is a general theory of culture designed to provide a broad framework For detailed research into particular problem areas it may need to be revised and elaborated upon in the light of the special features of the area to be investigated and for this purpose input from theories focusing on those areas is needed (see Chang 2001 319 329) In this sense polysystem theory and the concept of habitus are complementary as general theories and partial theories are

There is nothing in polysystem theory that makes light of empirical research either The inter-dependency of theorizing or hypothesizing on the one hand and case studies on the other has been emphasized by Toury

the findings of a well-executed study will always bear on the theory in whose framework it has been performed thus contributing to the verificationrefuta-tionmodification of this theory [hellip] A theory thus refined will in turn make possible the execution of yet more elaborate studies which will then reflect on the theory and render it even more intricate and so on and so forth [hellip] (Toury 1995 266)


As long as some theorists may be too hasty in drawing conclusions about patterns an emphasis on case studies should be welcomed but I wonder if it is necessary to invent an ldquoismrdquo just to make this point After all research cannot stop at individual case studies Eventually attention must be turned to ldquouniversalismrdquo mdash if that is the right word because the ultimate goal of academic research should be the discov-ery of regularities

43 Text-bound

Another so-called ldquolimitationrdquo of polysystem theory is that it is concerned mainly with the text Hermans remarks that the theory ldquoremains thoroughly text-boundrdquo (Hermans 1999 118) Meylaerts opines that only a combination of such a ldquotext-orientedrdquo approach with ldquoan actor- and institution-oriented modelrdquo will enable us ldquoto avoid simplistic mechanical patternsrdquo (Meylaerts 2006 7) Wolf finds that ldquoEven-Zoharrsquos words remain directly related to the textrdquo in the following passage

It suffices to recognize that it is the interdependencies between these factors which allow them to function in the first place Thus a CONSUMER may ldquoconsumerdquo a PRODUCT produced by a PRODUCER but in order for the ldquoproductrdquo (such as ldquotextrdquo) to be generated a common REPERTOIRE must exist whose usability is determined by some INSTITUTION A MARKET must exist where such a good can be transmitted None of the factors enumerated can be described to function in isolation and the kind of relations that may be detected run across all possible axes of the scheme (Even-Zohar 1990b 34 original emphasis)

It can be seen however that ldquotextrdquo is cited in brackets only as an example of ldquoprod-uctrdquo Elsewhere in the article ldquoThe lsquoLiterary Systemrsquo rdquo from which this passage is quoted Even-Zohar states clearly that ldquothe lsquotextrsquo is no longer the only and not necessarily for all purposes the most important facet or even product of this systemrdquo and that the actual ldquomerchandiserdquo ldquolies in a completely different socio-cultural and psychological sphere interpersonal as well as political production of images moods and options of actionrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990b 33 35) When this pas-sage reappears in another paper ldquoFactors and Dependencies in Culture A Revised Outline for Polysystem Culture Researchrdquo with slight modifications the phrase ldquosuch as lsquotextrsquo rdquo is deleted (Even-Zohar 1997a 20)

In the 1990 article the capitalized words represent ldquothe factors involved with the literary (poly)systemrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990b 31) but in the 1997 article they be-come ldquothe constitutive factors involved with any socio-semiotic (cultural) eventrdquo (1997a 19) Consequently the range of products regarded as legitimate objects of study in polysystem research has increased enormously

336 Nam Fung Chang

If one is to employ this scheme as a framework for a case study one may choose to investigate the whole event identifying all the factors and exploring the relations among them or one may choose to focus on a particular factor and its relations with the other factors

In theory at least any cultural phenomenon can be regarded as the product or as some other factor depending on the perspective of the researcher For example in a study of a translated text the translator is the main producer but in a study of a translator-training programme the translator is the product and the university is part of the institution and in a study of the tertiary educational system the uni-versity is part of the product

As a matter of fact Even-Zoharrsquos own research interest has turned from litera-ture and translation to culture in general (see Chang 2001 318) as can be seen in the variety of his case studies published after 1990 Polysystem research projects undertaken by other people have also proved that the theory is a very versatile tool For example it can be used to analyse the Westernization process of transla-tion studies in China (Chang 2009) or explain the authoritative status of a certain Chinese version of the Bible focusing on actors and institutions without touching on the text itself (Chong 2000)

It is therefore only fair to say that polysystem theory is not text-oriented not even product-oriented It is intended to be and has been used as a general theory of culture

44 Unable to deal with power and ideology

The ldquotext-boundrdquo allegation goes hand in hand with the complaint that polysystem theory is ldquoferociously abstract and depersonalizedrdquo (Hermans 1999 118) Gentzler observes that ldquodespite allowing for such a possibilityrdquo Even-Zohar ldquoseldom relates texts to the lsquoreal conditionsrsquo of their production only to hypothetical structural models and abstract generalizationsrdquo (Gentzler 2001 121) Hermans comments that ldquopolysystem theory is aware of the social embedding of cultural systems but in practice takes little heed of actual political and social power relations or more concrete entities such as institutions or groups with real interests to look afterrdquo (Hermans 1999 118) Wolf rsquos criticism is even more unreserved

Even-Zohar [hellip] fails to integrate his ldquofactorsrdquo (ie agents and institutions) into the frameworks of polysystem theory and prefers to focus on the description of the existing relationships between them (Wolf 2007 7)

From this perception it follows that polysystem is not in a good position to inves-tigate issues of power and ideology for two related reasons One is that since ldquothe material social milieu of translationrdquo is ldquosomehow overlookedrdquo


questions of power and ideology issues of primary concern for researchers and practitioners alike run the risk of appearing obscure and ineffectual if they are not linked to the actual people involved in translation activities (Agorni 2007 126)

The other is that because Even-Zohar ldquomasks issues related to [power and politi-cal engagement] with his rather sanitized vocabularyrdquo ldquoit is difficult to tease out the geopolitical implications of centre and periphery cultural prestige and so forth in his presentation of the issuesrdquo (Tymoczko 2000 31)

Tymoczko prefers postcolonial approaches which she thinks ldquounpack Even-Zoharrsquos ideas about centre and periphery in both concrete and theoretical terms pertaining to powerrdquo (Tymoczko 2000 32)

However the ldquodaunting level of abstractionrdquo (Hermans 1999 115) is what Even-Zohar aims to achieve He explains

System or better relational thinking has provided the sciences of man with versatile tools to economize in the analysis of socio-semiotic phenomena This approach has allowed the significant reduction of the number of parameters as-sumed to work in any given context thus making it possible to get rid of huge nomenclatures and intricate classifications Instead a relatively small set of rela-tions could be hypothesized to explain a large and complex array of phenomena (Even-Zohar 1997a 15 original emphasis)

In other words phenomena may be different in their surface manifestation but the relations in different sets of phenomena may be similar Instead of develop-ing different partial theories to explain different sets of phenomena Even-Zohar builds a general theory with an abstract terminology to explain relations that he believes or assumes to be universal

The terminology must be sanitized for the principles of descriptivism and neutrality

These principles might have been a necessity as well as a virtue Yael S Feid-man offers the following conjecture with regard to the emergence of such a school of thought in Israel

I would imagine that it is the fear of the overpowering presence of political issues palpable as they are in the Israeli experience that endows the scientific meta-phor with such alluring power The delusion of rationality and objectivity is no doubt a greatly needed defence against the turbulent reality of Israeli life (Feid-man 1985 34)

It is understandable that some scholars working in a social environment where there is freedom of speech and where ldquospeaking truth to powerrdquo (Said 1996 85) is less likely to entail persecution than fame and gain in academic circles would find polysystem theory insufficient for their purpose However they should also

338 Nam Fung Chang

understand that one personrsquos poison is another personrsquos meat The ldquodelusion of ra-tionality and objectivityrdquo and the ldquodaunting level of abstractionrdquo may help scholars who need or wish to publish in repressive societies on power and ideology get away from the censors Take for example the following statement

In cultures which think that the people need to be governed the political and the ideological system are central systems while other systems being in more pe-ripheral positions are more heteronomous than autonomous [hellip] the academic system being no exception (Chang 2010 78 my translation)

If it is to be expressed in terms that are more concrete taking heed of ldquoactual politi-cal and social power relations or more concrete entitiesrdquo it will become something like this

In the Peoplersquos Republic of China where the social elite think that the people should be governed rather than be governing the Communist Party controls ev-ery social domain and academics are expected to say what the ruler wants them to say more than tell the truth

Such a version might constitute the crime of ldquocounter-revolutionary propaganda and incitementrdquo

Polysystem theory is less interested in the actual people than the relationships among them but it is untrue to say that it is incapable of integrating agents and institutions into its framework It at least allows for such a possibility as Gentzler recognizes This possibility has been demonstrated by Even-Zohar himself

Of course from the point of view of power whether it be one Czar Nicolai one Stalin or one Franco or mdash (though in a different way no doubt) one Mitterand mdash the repertoires proposed by an industry more or less ldquofreerdquo (or less dependent) are too dangerous (This is obviously because it can conflict with the repertoires de-sirable and preferred by the power) Consequently even when they cannot control directly this industry power attempts to do it through an indirect control This can be expressed today in several forms For example a quite generous treatment of the producers mdash or of the industry as a whole mdash in the form of subsidies schol-arships positions in the administration (ministers ambassadors) or sometimes simply in the form of an invitation extended to one Roland Barthes to have tea in the Eliseacutees Palace with the President of the Republic (Even-Zohar 2002 81)

Even-Zoharrsquos interest is still in relations more than in the people that may be involved who are cited only to prove a pattern Actually describing a struggle between ldquocompeting norms and modelsrdquo is academically more challenging than describing a struggle between ldquoindividuals or collectives who stand to gain or lose something by the outcomerdquo (Hermans 1999 118) because the former involves tak-


ing one step up the level of abstraction Polysystemists may always take that easy step down to describe actual people if they so wish

Some of the criticisms directed against polysystem theory seem to have re-sulted from using the research interests and values prevalent in onersquos own culture as the standards to judge (rather hastily too) a theory designed under different cul-tural constraints for a purpose somewhat different from onersquos own Ethnocentrism has been committed unwittingly

45 A coherent theoretical framework proposed

In order to cater for my own research needs and to answer Hermansrsquo call for ldquoa comprehensive theoretical and methodological framework that can encompass the social and ideological embedding and impact of translationrdquo (Hermans 1996 41) I ventured to propose an augmented version of polysystem theory specifically for the study of translation (Chang 2000) This version follows Hermansrsquo ldquofirst falter-ing steprdquo (Hermans 1996 42) towards such a framework through further elabora-tion of the concept of norms hypothesizing that ldquoactivities within a polysystem are governed not only by norms from within the polysystem itself but also by a web of norms from many other polysystemsrdquo (Chang 2000 119) It goes in a direction opposite to that of Even-Zoharrsquos ldquorevised outlinerdquo in the sense that while the latter moves towards generality getting rid of ldquohuge nomenclatures and intricate clas-sificationsrdquo on its way the former moves towards particularity with an increase in nomenclatures The following is a summary of my proposal

I propose that the activities and products of translators especially those of liter-ary texts are governed mainly but not exclusively by norms originating from six polysystems or certain sub-systems thereof1 The political polysystem which is made up of institutions of power and mar-ginalized groups2 The ideological polysystem which consists of competing and conflicting ide-ologies of all sorts that exist in a given culture sponsored by different groups3 The economic polysystem whose norms would bind translation activities to certain ldquoeconomic principlesrdquo4 The linguistic polysystem which would require conformity to the norms of a language variety5 The literary polysystem which offers certain ldquorecognizedrdquo literary models (see Toury 1995 171) for translations to emulate and6 The translational polysystem whose norms may be partially reflected in cer-tain classroom exercises where the texts to be translated are not posited to serve any real purpose and students are instructed just to translate as if in a cultural vacuum

340 Nam Fung Chang

It can be seen that norms originating from the translational polysystem often conflict with the other types of norms These different types of norms pull the translator in different directions and reach an equilibrium with the resistance of the translator if any This equilibrium becomes ldquothe overall lsquonormative modelrsquo rdquo a translation event is subject to (Chang 2001 321)

I also attempted to demonstrate the operation of this framework with a small-scale case study (Chang 2001) I believe that this augmented version of polysystem the-ory can better accommodate investigations into the socio-cultural factors involved in translation (Chang 2000 122)

Among habitus theorists there is a view that translation does not constitute a field since it is heteronomous The argument is

it will be difficult to envisage actual products of translation as anything more than the results of diversely distributed social habituses or specific habituses governed by the rules pertaining to the field in which the translation takes place Not the field of translation but that of heteronomous (literary scientific technical legal etc) production Whatever special habitus can be deemed relevant will have originated in a special field distinct from that which we-as-scholars take to be the sphere of translation (Simeoni 1998 19ndash20)

This means if ldquotranslatedrdquo into polysystemic terms that all the norms operative in translation activities originate from systems other than translation and none from the translation system itself This assumption is entirely against that of polysystem theory according to which no system however weak or peripheral can be entirely heteronomous otherwise it does not exist as a system In reality we can see that in some cultures and for some time there have been commonly accepted translation criteria These criteria have been claimed to be applicable to all types of transla-tion such as Yan Fursquos xin da ya (faithfulness fluency and elegance) or Eugene A Nidarsquos dynamic equivalence and at least some parts of them such as dynamic equivalence and xin are never considered applicable to non-translational text pro-duction In other words these norms are more or less specific to translation activi-ties Further they originate mainly from the translation system although they are not entirely untainted by the norms of other systems These norms can be taken as strong evidence for the existence of a translation system or field with a certain degree of autonomy Regarding translation as entirely heteronomous smacks of binary thinking

Yet Simeonirsquos view has been echoed by other habitus theorists such as Gouan-vic (2007) whereas Wolf has found it necessary to resort to Homi Bhabharsquos third space theorem to argue to the contrary (Wolf 2007a)


46 Objectivity and neutrality

Agorni suggests that a distinction can be drawn between descriptive approaches that emphasize neutrality and objectivity such as Mona Bakerrsquos work on corpus linguistics and Touryrsquos Descriptive Translation Studies and approaches that high-light issues such as translatorsrsquo agency and choices and questions of power and ideology (Agorni 2007 124) This distinction seems strange because approaches that highlight those issues may also ldquoemphasizerdquo neutrality and objectivity An ex-ample is Lefevere who believes that ldquothe concept of system allows us to describe power in its various ramifications [hellip] in a fairly lsquoneutralrsquo wayrdquo because it enables the elimination of evaluative terms (Lefevere 1988ndash1989 59) Even-Zohar who anticipated ldquomany of the points about power and translation made by recent theo-ristsrdquo (Tymoczko 2000 31) also uses a technical or in Tymoczkorsquos word ldquosani-tizedrdquo vocabulary to emphasize neutrality11

It is one thing to emphasize neutrality and objectivity and another to achieve these goals It has been generally agreed that total objectivity is impossible in re-search in the humanities The main reason is that many objects of study such as norms are not directly observable hard facts The reconstruction of composite norms already involves an element of speculation not to speak of the further at-tempt to resolve them into normemes and trace each of them to a particular sys-tem which again is even less directly observable This problem is aggravated by the fact that social phenomena are so complex that how we make sense of them de-pends on our perspective which is over-determined by our cultural background our polysystemic position and our values The diversity of judgements made on polysystem theory including mine may serve as an example

Such difficulties however are not entirely unsurmountable We may and should try our best to observe from perspectives other than our ldquonaturalrdquo one especially from a ldquohigherrdquo one one that is above and beyond our own background and position This is the aspiration of polysystem theory Gentzler criticizes Even-Zohar for locating his theory ldquoabove other translation theories giving him an in-dependent perspective on translational phenomenardquo because ldquosuch total objectiv-ity is impossiblerdquo (Gentzler 2001 122) In my opinion the academic world is in need of theories that include other theories as their objects of study and the im-possibility of objectivity does not mean that we should give up trying in the same way as the impossibility of complete honesty does not justify lying

As an objective neutrality is probably even more controversial Just as tra-ditional translation theories take sides in translational issues the committed ap-proaches to translation which have been ldquomaking most of the runningrdquo (Hermans 1999 157) since the 1990s take sides in moral andor political issues and some of

342 Nam Fung Chang

them in translational issues too I think Tymoczkorsquos remark on Lawrence Venutirsquos methods and concepts may be applied to these approaches in general that is they

lead us backward rather than forward in the development of translation stud-ies for the development of descriptive approaches as an alternative to normative approaches has been a major watershed in the expansion of the contemporary academic disciplines related to translation (Tymoczko 2000 39)

Whether we like it or not ldquoimpartiality concern for truth honest evaluation of evidence and objectivityrdquo (Simon 1994 5) used to be and seem to remain the dominant academic norms in many parts of the world

A further complication is that description even if it can be (more or less) objective or neutral alters the perception or the status of the things described (cf Hermans 1999 150) It may expose certain aspects of a system that the system wishes to hide Polysystem theory refuses to take for granted the assumed inherent superiority of central systems and sees the standards they uphold as norms rather than as the only truth thus demythicizing their very centrality The mere recogni-tion of the existence of a neglected peripheral system may draw attention to it and contribute to its legitimation whereas acknowledging the dominant position of central norms may be construed as endorsement (Chang 2001 327ndash328) The fol-lowing observation made by Even-Zohar for instance is hardly music to the ears of authoritarian governments

The ideology of an official culture as the only tenable one in a given society has resulted in the massive cultural compulsion for whole nations through a central-ized educational system and has made it impossible even for students of culture to observe and appreciate the role of the dynamic tensions [between canonized and non-canonized cultures] which operate within the culture for its efficient mainte-nance (Even-Zohar 1979 295)

Polysystem theory and other descriptive approaches are thus ldquoneutralrdquo double-edged weapons They can be subversive or conservative depending on where and how they are used In societies with very limited freedom however neutral de-scription is often subversive because there are a lot of facts that the government does not want anyone to mention12

One need not reject the polysystem concept even if one does not believe in neutrality because there is no necessary relation between the two Although Even-Zohar is against the ldquoreverse high-browrdquo approach (Even-Zohar 1979 292) there is nothing to prevent one from using polysystem as a theoretical basis to ldquospeak truth to powerrdquo mdash or for that matter to ldquonon-powerrdquo


5 Concluding remarks

It often happens that after a period of domination a theory begins to lose influence and eventually give place to other theories There are several possible causes for such a situation The theory may have exhausted its potential as research reaches a higher level of sophistication it may be unable to cope with a new set of prob-lems that arise as research interests change its potential may not have been fully developed or understood or it may lose in a competition for some non-academic reasons such as power relations In the case of polysystem theory I think it is a combination of all these causes

In an attempt to tackle some of these causes I have argued in this article that polysystem theory is more intricate than it has been generally taken to be some key points have been missed or misunderstood some later revisions and develop-ments by Even-Zohar and others have been overlooked and sometimes the theory gets the blame for the fault of practice On the whole the allegations that polysys-tem theory is simplistic and mechanical are based on a simplistic and mechanical interpretation of the theory

I have also suggested some revisions to the theory After all ldquoa theory is not the property of any one personrdquo as Even-Zohar says (Huang 2006 57)

I think that it is a shame polysystem theory should have come to such a state It still has a contribution to make because it remains one of the few theories that provide a general framework for the descriptive study of the relations between translation and other cultural domains If there are limitations in the theory in its present form it can be further expanded as Gentzler points out

The advantage of Polysystem theory is that it allows for its own augmentation and integrates the study of literature with the study of social and economic forces of history Even-Zohar uses the term ldquopolyrdquo just to allow for such elaboration and complexity without having to limit the number of relations and interconnections (Gentzler 2001 119)

Its relation with other theories can be complementary and even mutually enrich-ing if there is sufficient dialogue between them Polysystem theory can be made more intricate with input from other cultural theories and it in turn may provide a more comprehensive framework enabling researchers of particular problem areas to take a step back and enjoy a panoramic view

Notes

1 Sections 2 and 3 of this article are based on two unpublished conference presentations ldquoEven-Zoharrsquos Hypothesis on the Position of Translated Literaturerdquo presented at the ldquoConference on

344 Nam Fung Chang

the Building of Translation Studies as a Discipline in the New Milleniumrdquo Three Gorges Univer-sity Yichang China 27ndash29 October 2007 and ldquo lsquoAdequacyrsquo and lsquoAcceptabilityrsquo Revisitedrdquo pre-sented at the International Conference ldquoTranslation Studies and Translation between Chinese and Englishrdquo the Chinese University of Hong Kong 11ndash12 December 2008

2 Wang Dongfeng as well as many other Chinese scholars (such as Zhu Yige and Zhang Qiyan who will be quoted later in this paper) takes ldquoforeignizationrdquo and ldquodomesticationrdquo as synony-mous with ldquoadequacyrdquo and ldquoacceptabilityrdquo respectively

3 Even-Zohar agreed to this amendment in conversation with the author during a conference held at the University of Hyderabad India in February 2007 He has used the term ldquosense of insufficiencyrdquo when discussing factors of transfer of repertoires from another culture (Even-Zohar 1997 360)

4 Wang Dongfengrsquos explanation of Yanrsquos selection of domesticating translation strategies in con-junction with foreignizing source texts is that ldquowhen the translated literature takes the secondary position the target literature must be highly developed in such a way that it only needs lsquonew ideasrsquo but does not need new foreign formsrdquo (Wang 2008 147) He states that this is ldquoEven-Zoharrsquos argu-mentrdquo without indicating the source This seems to me to be a rather strained interpretation of Even-Zohar if he is referring to the latterrsquos observation that when translated literature occupies a peripheral position ldquotranslation by which new ideas items characteristics can be introduced into a literature becomes a means to preserve traditional tasterdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 49)

5 Toury states that translation involves ldquoat least two sets of norm-systemsrdquo (Toury 1995 56) but he has not named a third set

6 Regrettably this correction has been ignored by some critics who still talk about the prima-rysecondary position or status or importance of translated literature when referring to Even-Zoharrsquos theory (such as Gentzler 2001 116ndash121 Wang 2008 141)

7 This by the way is an understatement untypical of Venuti The translation projects of Yan Fu and Lin Shu prove that the choice of a foreignizing text may produce a far greater social impact than foreignizing discursive strategies

8 Gentzler alleges that one of the pairs used by Even-Zohar and Toury is canonicalnon-canon-ical (Gentzler 2001 53) This is of course incorrect The pair they consistently use is canonizednon-canonized Even-Zohar explains why

While ldquocanonicalrdquo may suggest [hellip] the idea that certain features are inherently ldquocanoni-calrdquo [hellip] ldquocanonizedrdquo [hellip] clearly emphasizes that such a state is a result of some act(ivity) exercised on certain material not a primordial nature of this material ldquoitselfrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990 16)

9 Contrary to Hermansrsquo view that ldquoif all systems are poly- the lsquopoly-lsquo in lsquopolysystemsrsquo is redun-dantrdquo (Hermans 1999 106) it seems that the ldquopoly-nessrdquo of systems cannot be over-emphasized

10 Such as my work Yes Prime Manipulator How a Chinese Translation of British Political Hu-mour Came into Being which describes how dominant translation norms have changed over time in China and how a particular translator conforms to some norms while breaking others (Chang 2005)


11 Tymoczko finds that ldquosome of [Even-Zoharrsquos] theoretical language mdash lsquohighrsquo vs lsquolowrsquo for example mdash is today distasteful offensive and unacceptablerdquo (Tymoczko 2000 31) In fact Even-Zohar puts terms like ldquohigh culturerdquo and ldquolow culturerdquo in brackets most of the time to distance himself from their connotations

12 For instance any mention of ldquoJune 4rdquo is not allowed on the Internet in China but ldquoMay 35rdquo still is

References

Agorni Mirella 2007 ldquoLocating Systems and Individuals in Translation Studiesrdquo Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari eds Constructing a Sociology of Translation Amsterdam John Ben-jamins 1ndash36

Bassnett Susan 1998 ldquoThe Translation Turn in Cultural Studiesrdquo Susan Bassnett and Andreacute Lefevere Constructing Cultures Essays on Literary Translation Clevedon Multilingual Matters 123ndash140

Chang Nam Fung 1998 ldquoPolitics and Poetics in Translation Accounting for a Chinese Version of lsquoYes Prime Ministerrsquo rdquo The Translator 42 249ndash272

Chang Nam Fung 1998a ldquoAn Applied Discipline Obsessed with Loyalty mdash On the Chinese Tradition of Translation Studiesrdquo [in Chinese] Journal of Translation Studies 2 29ndash41

Chang Nam Fung 2000 ldquoTowards a Macro-polysystem Hypothesisrdquo Perspectives Studies in Translatology 82 109ndash123

Chang Nam Fung 2001 ldquoPolysystem Theory Its Prospect As a Framework for Translation Re-searchrdquo Target 13 2 317ndash332

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Zhongxi yixue piping (Criticism of Chinese and Western Translation Theories) Beijing Tsinghua University Press

Chang Nam Fung 2005 Yes Prime Manipulator How a Chinese Translation of British Political Humour Came into Being Hong Kong Chinese University Press

Chang Nam Fung 2008 ldquoThe Concept of Norms in Polysystem Theoryrdquo [in Chinese] Journal of Foreign Languages 5 64ndash71

Chang Nam Fung 2009 ldquoRepertoire Transfer and Resistance The Westernization of Translation Studies in Chinardquo The Translator 152 305ndash325

Chang Nam Fung 2010 ldquoTranslation Studies Academic Norms and Cultural Traditionsrdquo [in Chinese] Chinese Translators Journal 2 73ndash80

Chen Fukang 1992 Zhongguo yixue lilun shi gao (History of Chinese Translation Theory) Shanghai Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press

Chong Yau Yuk 2000 A Study of the Phenomenon of Authoritativeness in the Chinese Transla-tions of the Protestant Bible [in Chinese] Hong Kong International Bible Society

Codde Philippe 2003 ldquoPolysystem Theory Revisitedrdquo Poetics Today 241 91ndash126Even-Zohar Itamar 1975 ldquoDecisions in Translating Poetryrdquo [in Hebrew] Ha-sifrutLiterature

21 32ndash45Even-Zohar Itamar 1978 Papers in Historical Poetics Tel Aviv Tel Aviv UniversityEven-Zohar Itamar 1979 ldquoPolysystem Theoryrdquo Poetics Today 11ndash2 287ndash310Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem Theoryrdquo Poetics Today 111 9ndash26

346 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysys-temrdquo Poetics Today 111 45ndash51

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990b ldquoThe lsquoLiterary Systemrsquo ldquo Poetics Today 111 27ndash44Even-Zohar Itamar 1990c ldquoInterference in Dependent Literary Polysystemsrdquo Polysystem Stud-

ies Poetics Today 111 79ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 1990d ldquoSystem Dynamics and Interference in Culture A Synoptic Viewrdquo

Poetics Today 111 85ndash95Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe Making of Culture Repertoire and the Role of Transferrdquo Target

92 355ndash363Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and Dependencies in Culture A Revised Outline for Poly-

system Culture Researchrdquo Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 243 15ndash34Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoLiterature as goods Literature as Toolsrdquo Neohelicon 1 (XXIX) 75ndash83Feidman Yael S 1985 ldquoPoetics and Politics Israeli Literary Criticism between East and Westrdquo

Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research vol LII 9ndash35Gentzler Edwin 1993 Contemporary Translation Theories London RoutledgeGentzler Edwin 2001 Contemporary Translation Theories (Revised 2nd Edition) Clevedon

Multilingual MattersGentzler Edwin 2008 Translation and Identity in the Americas New Directions in Translation

Theory London RoutledgeGouanvic Jean-Marc 2007 ldquoObjectivation reacuteflexiviteacute et traduction Pour une re-lecture

bourdieuscienne de la traductionrdquo Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari eds Constructing a Sociology of Translation Amsterdam John Benjamins 79ndash92

Hermans Theo 1994 ldquoTranslation between Poetics and Ideologyrdquo Translation and Literature 3 138ndash145

Hermans Theo 1996 ldquoNorms and the Determination of Translation A Theoretical Frame-workrdquo Roman Aacutelvarez and M Carmen-Aacutefrica Vidal eds Translation Power Subversion Clevedon Multilingual Matters 25ndash51

Hermans Theo 1999 Translation in Systems Descriptive and System-oriented Approaches Ex-plained Manchester St Jerome

Huang Dexian 2006 ldquoDuoyuanxitonglun shiyi Zuohaer fangtan lurdquo (Clarifications on Polysys-tem Theory Interview with Even-Zohar) Chinese Translators Journal 3 57ndash60

Lefevere Andreacute 1988ndash1989 ldquoSystems Thinking and Cultural Relativismrdquo Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature 26ndash27 55ndash68

Lefevere Andreacute 1992 Translation Rewriting amp the Manipulation of Literary Fame London Routledge

Lu Xun 19311984 ldquoLu Xun he Qu Qiubai guanyu fanyi de tongxin Lu Xun de fuxinrdquo (Cor-respondence between Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai on Translation Reply of Lu Xun) Luo Xin-zhang Ed Fanyi lun ji (Essays on Translation) Beijing Commercial Press 273ndash279

Meylaerts Reine 2006 ldquoHeterolingualism inand Translation How Legitimate Are the Other and HisHer Language An Introductionrdquo Target 13 2 317ndash332

Said Edward 1996 Representations of the Intellectual New York Vintage BooksSimeoni Daniel 1998 ldquoThe Pivotal Status of the Translatorrsquos Habitusrdquo Target 101 1ndash39Simon Robert L 1994 Neutrality and the Academic Ethic Maryland Rowman amp LittlefieldSo Sin Nga 2002 ldquoA Critical Study of Inclusive Language in Protestant Chinese Biblesrdquo [in Chi-

nese] MPhil thesis Lingnan University Hong KongSu Manshu (trans) 19031991 ldquoBeican shijierdquo (A Miserable World) Su Manshu wenji (The

Works of Su Manshu) 2 vols Guangzhou Flower City Publishing House II 671ndash753


Toury Gideon 1980 In Search of a Theory of Translation Tel Aviv Tel Aviv UniversityToury Gideon 1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond Amsterdam John BenjaminsToury Gideon 1998 ldquoA Handful of Paragraphs on lsquoTranslationrsquo and lsquoNormsrsquo rdquo Current Issues in

Language amp Society 1ndash2 10ndash32Tymoczko Maria 1990 ldquoTranslation in Oral Tradition as a Touchstone for Translation Theory

and Practicerdquo Susan Bassnett and Andreacute Lefevere eds Translation History and Culture London Pinter (reprinted London Cassell 1995) 46ndash55

Tymoczko Maria 2000 ldquoTranslation and Political Engagement Activism Social Change and the Role of Translation in Geopolitical Shiftsrdquo The Translator 6ndash1 23ndash47

Venuti Lawrence 1998 The Scandals of Translation Towards an Ehtics of Difference London Routledge

Venuti Lawrence 2008 The Translatorrsquos Invisibility A History of Translation (2nd Edition) Lon-don Routledge

Wang Dongfeng 2000 ldquoCultural Position of Translated Literature and Translatorrsquos Cultural At-tituderdquo [in Chinese] Chinese Translators Journal 4 2ndash8

Wang Dongfeng 2008 ldquoWhen a Turning Occurs Counter-evidence to Polysystem Hypothesisrdquo Wang Ning and Sun Yifeng eds Translation Globalisation and Localisation A Chinese Per-spective Clevedon Multilingual Matters 140ndash154

Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 ldquoTranslation Ideology and Discourse Literary Translation in China 1895ndash1911rdquo [in Chinese] PhD thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Wolf Michaela 2007 ldquoIntroduction The Emergence of a Sociology of Translationrdquo Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari eds Constructing a Sociology of Translation Amsterdam John Benjamins 1ndash36

Wolf Michaela 2007a ldquoThe Location of the lsquoTranslation Fieldrsquo Negotiating Borderlines be-tween Pierre Bourdieu and Homi Bhabhardquo Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari eds Con-structing a Sociology of Translation Amsterdam John Benjamins 109ndash119

Xu Jun (ed) 1996 Wenziwenxuewenhua Hong Yu Hei Han yi yanjiu (Language Literature and culture A Study of the Chinese Translations of Le rouge et le noir) Nanjjing Nanjing University Press

Yahalom Shelly 1979 ldquoHet gedrag van een literair polysysteem in een crisissituatie Intersyste-mische contacten en soorten vertalingenrdquo Andreacute Lefevere and Ria Vanderauwera eds Vert aalwetenschap Literatuur wetenschap vertaling en vertalen Leuven Acco 64ndash85

Zhang Qiyan 2005 ldquoOn the Non-adequacy of Polysystem Theory in Explaining Literary Trans-lationrdquo [in Chinese] Journal of Sichuan International Studies University 1 100ndash103

Zhu Yige 2003 ldquoCong Pangde he Lin Shu fanyi gersquoan fanguan duoyuanxitong lilun (Looking back at Polysystem Theory from a Case Study of the Translation of Ezra Pound and Lin Shu) Foreign Language Teaching Abroad 4 25ndash28

Authorrsquos address

Nam Fung ChangDepartment of TranslationLingnan UniversityTuen MunHong Kong

e-mail changnflneduhk

312 Nam Fung Chang

scholars find polysystem theory unable to handle the complexities and versatility of translation phenomena and systems thinking in general seems to be on the verge of being abandoned Meanwhile Even-Zoharrsquos later writings as well as some endeavours to augment polysystem theory (such as Chang 2000 2001) have at-tracted little attention

In response to this situation this article attempts to clarify and explore the complexities and complications of polysystem theory It will start with the minor problems and then go on to discuss the bigger issues1

2 The hypothesis on the position of translated literature

In his paper ldquoThe Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystemrdquo Even-Zohar presented a series of hypotheses about translated literature First translated works can be considered as a system of the target culture rather than just a bundle of individual foreign texts as they have been treated in traditional translation studies There are at least two reasons for this assumption the selec-tion of source texts follows principles that are correlatable with the conditions of the target culture and their selection of translation norms depends very much on their relations with the home co-systems (Even-Zohar 1990a 45ndash46)

Secondly being a polysystem with its own centres and peripheries translated literature normally occupies a peripheral position in the literary polysystem How-ever translated literature or its central strata may maintain a central position main-ly in three typical situations which are ldquovarious manifestations of the same lawrdquo

(a) when a polysystem has not yet been crystallized that is to say when a litera-ture is lsquoyoungrsquo in the process of being established (b) when a literature is either ldquoperipheralrdquo (within a large group of correlated literatures) or ldquoweakrdquo or both and (c) when there are turning points crises or literary vacuums in a literature (Even-Zohar 1990a 47)

The third hypothesis concerns the relation between the position and behaviour of translated literature When translated literature assumes a central position taking part in shaping the centre of the literary polysystem the translatorrsquos main concern is the introduction of new models and repertoires rather than the preservation of those existing in the home system Under such special circumstances ldquothe chanc-es that the translation will be close to the original in terms of adequacy [hellip] are greater than otherwiserdquo When translated literature occupies a peripheral position on the other hand the translatorrsquos main effort is to find ldquoready-made secondary models for the foreign textrdquo and ldquothe result often turns out to be a non-adequate translationrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50ndash51)










314 Nam Fung Chang

21 Value judgement














316 Nam Fung Chang















318 Nam Fung Chang















320 Nam Fung Chang












322 Nam Fung Chang




32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













342 Nam Fung Chang
















Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang


















































314 Nam Fung Chang

21 Value judgement














316 Nam Fung Chang















318 Nam Fung Chang















320 Nam Fung Chang












322 Nam Fung Chang




32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













342 Nam Fung Chang
















Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































314 Nam Fung Chang

21 Value judgement














316 Nam Fung Chang















318 Nam Fung Chang















320 Nam Fung Chang












322 Nam Fung Chang




32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









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43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















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32 How many axes








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326 Nam Fung Chang















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330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







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42 System vs agency









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43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















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316 Nam Fung Chang















318 Nam Fung Chang















320 Nam Fung Chang












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32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















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4 The bigger issues







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42 System vs agency









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43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















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318 Nam Fung Chang















320 Nam Fung Chang












322 Nam Fung Chang




32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















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330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







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42 System vs agency









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43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































318 Nam Fung Chang















320 Nam Fung Chang












322 Nam Fung Chang




32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









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43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang














































320 Nam Fung Chang












322 Nam Fung Chang




32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









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43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































320 Nam Fung Chang












322 Nam Fung Chang




32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





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340 Nam Fung Chang













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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang
















































322 Nam Fung Chang




32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





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340 Nam Fung Chang













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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































322 Nam Fung Chang




32 How many axes








324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang















































324 Nam Fung Chang


















326 Nam Fung Chang















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330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







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42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































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326 Nam Fung Chang















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330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







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42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















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330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







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42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















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326 Nam Fung Chang















328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







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42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang

















































328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















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340 Nam Fung Chang













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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































328 Nam Fung Chang













330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













342 Nam Fung Chang
















Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang















































330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













342 Nam Fung Chang
















Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































330 Nam Fung Chang





4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













342 Nam Fung Chang
















Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang










































4 The bigger issues







332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













342 Nam Fung Chang
















Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































332 Nam Fung Chang






42 System vs agency









334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













342 Nam Fung Chang
















Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang
















































334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













342 Nam Fung Chang
















Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































334 Nam Fung Chang








43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang











































43 Text-bound





336 Nam Fung Chang




















338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













342 Nam Fung Chang
















Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































336 Nam Fung Chang




















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340 Nam Fung Chang













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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang




















































338 Nam Fung Chang















340 Nam Fung Chang













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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































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340 Nam Fung Chang













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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang















































340 Nam Fung Chang













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Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































340 Nam Fung Chang













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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang















































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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































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Notes


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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang

















































Notes


344 Nam Fung Chang















References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































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References
















346 Nam Fung Chang












































References
















346 Nam Fung Chang









































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Documents

In defence of polysystem theory