Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 26:1 (2014) ► pp.63–97

How devoted can translators be?

Revisiting the subservience hypothesis

| Université de Montréal

In a seminal contribution published in Target in 1998, Daniel Simeoni argued for a habitus-governed model of explanation for translation and suggested that subservience might be a defining feature of this habitus, a primordial norm. The objective of the present article is twofold. First, it aims to recontextualize the ‘subservience hypothesis’ by shedding light on the empirical work underlining it. Second, following the approach developed in Simeoni (2001), the author tests again the hypothesis through textual analysis, by studying the early translation history into French of a textbook entitled Marketing Management by Philip Kotler. The author explores to what extent traces of the primordial norm, as defined by Simeoni (2001), can be found in the first four French editions of this scholarly text produced over the period (1967–1981), two of which were signed by a professional translator and the others by a marketing scholar.

Keywords: habitus, Philip Kotler, primordial norm, social sciences, marketing, Daniel Simeoni, subservience, translation language
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.The empirical basis of the subservience hypothesis
    • 1.1On the origins of subservience
    • 1.2Finding traces of the translator’s devotion in contemporary translations
  • 2. Marketing Management as translation, in translation
    • 2.1Notes on corpus, authors, and method
    • 2.2Kotler’s Marketing Management (1967–1980): moving toward universality
    • 2.3Translating Marketing Management into French
    • 2.4Updating one’s own translation
  • 3.Discussion
    • 3.1Interpreting translatorial choices
    • 3.2Distinguishing different types of habituses
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Appendix
  • References
Published online: 7 March 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.26.1.03buz
References

Primary sources

American editions

Kotler, Philip
1967  Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control . EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 628 pages.Google Scholar
1972  Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control. 2nd ed. EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, xiv, 885 pages.Google Scholar
1976  Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control. 3rd ed. EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, xiv, 529 pages.Google Scholar
1980  Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control. 4th ed. EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, xiv, 722 pages.Google Scholar

French editions

Kotler, Philip
1971  Marketing Management: analyse, planification et contrôle . Traduit de l’américain par Christine Durieux. Paris: Publi-Union, 743 pages.Google Scholar
1973  Marketing Management: analyse, planification et contrôle . 2e éd. Traduit de l’américain par Christine Durieux. Paris: Publi-Union, 1041 pages.Google Scholar
Kotler, Philip, and Bernard Dubois
1977  Marketing Management: analyse, planification et contrôle . 3e éd. française. Paris: Publi-Union, 558 pages.Google Scholar
1981  Marketing Management: analyse, planification et contrôle . 4e éd. française. Paris: Publi-Union, 714 pages.Google Scholar

French Canadian Edition

Kotler, Philip, Pierre Filiatrault, and Ronald E. Turner
1994  Le management du marketing . Montréal: Gaëtan Morin, xxiii, 1144 pages.Google Scholar

Secondary sources

Berman, Antoine
1995  Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne . Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Bourassa, Maureen A., Peggy H. Cunninghman, and Jay M. Handelman
2007 “How Philip Kotler Helped to Shape the Field of Marketing.” European Business Review 19 (2): 174–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
1984  Homo academicus . Paris: Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar
1994  Raisons pratiques. Sur la théorie de l’action . Paris: Le Seuil.Google Scholar
Buzelin, Hélène
2005 “Unexpected Allies.” The Translator 11 (2): 193–218.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 “Translations in the Making.” In Constructing a Sociology of Translation, ed. by Alexandra Fukari, and Michaela Wolf, 135–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “Agents of Translation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies , ed. by Yves Gambier, and Luc van Doorslaer, 6–12. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cochoy, Franck
1999  Une histoire du marketing. Domestiquer l’économie de marché . Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Crisafulli, Edoardo
2002 “The Quest for an Eclectic Methodology of Translation Description.” In Crosscultural Transgressions. Research Models in Translation Studies II: Historical and Ideological Issues , ed. by Theo Hermans, 26–43. Manchester: St Jerome.Google Scholar
Durieux, Christine
1988  Fondement didactique de la traduction technique . Paris: Didier Érudition.Google Scholar
2010  Fondement didactique de la traduction technique . 2nd ed. Paris: Maison du dictionnaire.Google Scholar
Fox, Karen F.A., Irina I. Skorobogatykh, and Olga V. Saginova
2008 “Philip Kotler’s Influence in the Soviet Union and Russia.” European Business Review 20 (2): 152–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gambier, Yves
1992 “Adaptation: une ambiguité à interroger.” Meta 37 (3): 421–425. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heinich, Nathalie
1984 “Les traducteurs littéraires: l’art et la profession.” Revue française de sociologie 251: 264–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kalinowski, Isabelle
2002 “La vocation au travail de traduction.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 1441: 47–54.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Katan, David
2009 “Translation Theory and Professional Practice: A Global Survey of The Great Divide.” Hermes 421: 111–153.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno
1987  Science in Action .Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, Douglas
1996  Translation and Taboo . DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
2008 “The Translators’ Personae: Marketing Translatorial Images as Pursuit of Capital.” Meta 53 (3): 609–622. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simeoni, Daniel
1995 “Translating and Studying Translation: the View from the Agent.” Meta 40 (3): 445–460. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998 “The Pivotal Status of the Translator’s Habitus.” Target 10 (1): 1–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001  Traduire les sciences sociales. L’émergence d’un habitus sous surveillance: Du texte support au texte source . PhD diss. Paris, École des hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon
1995  Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
1995  The Translator’s invisibility: A History of Translation . London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998  The Scandals of Translation . London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 12 other publications

Bayri, Furzana
2019. Li-qawmin yatafakkarūn(Q. 30:21): Muhammad Asad's Qur'anic TranslatorialHabitus. Journal of Qur'anic Studies 21:2 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Buzelin, Hélène
2014. Translating the American textbook. Translation Studies 7:3 ► pp. 315 ff. DOI logo
Buzelin, Hélène, Mylène Dufault & Cecilia Foglia
2015. On translating the ‘bible of marketing’. The Translator 21:1 ► pp. 24 ff. DOI logo
Diao, Hong
2022. Translating and literary agenting: Anna Holmwood’s Legends of the Condor Heroes. Perspectives 30:6 ► pp. 1059 ff. DOI logo
Gagné, Anne-Marie
2021. Du livre de poche subversif au standard sobre « à la française » : les trajectoires matérielles d’Invitation to Sociology en anglais et en français1. TTR 33:2 ► pp. 41 ff. DOI logo
Panofsky, Ruth
2022. Gwendolyn Moore. Mémoires du livre 13:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Parkins-Ferrón, Courtney G.
2020. Are Translators Really Subservient? Empirical Evidence from Lexical Transfer and Language Prestige in Curaçao. Research in Language 18:3 ► pp. 245 ff. DOI logo
Piekkari, Rebecca, Susanne Tietze & Kaisa Koskinen
2020. Metaphorical and Interlingual Translation in Moving Organizational Practices Across Languages. Organization Studies 41:9 ► pp. 1311 ff. DOI logo
Sayols, Jesús
2018. Transculturation and Bourdieu’s habitus theory. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 30:2 ► pp. 260 ff. DOI logo
Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet
2022. The Translation Professions. In The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, ► pp. 160 ff. DOI logo
Tekgül, Duygu
2017. Competition and co-operation for recognition and professional esteem in the literary translation industry. Translation Studies 10:1 ► pp. 54 ff. DOI logo
Xu, Minhui & Jing Yu
2019. Sociological formation and reception of translation. Translation and Interpreting Studies 14:3 ► pp. 333 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 june 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.