Theorising translation as a process of ‘cultural repatriation’: A promising merger of narrative theory and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural transfer

Kalliopi Pasmatzi
University of York Europe Campus

Abstract

This article scrutinises instances where translation corresponds to what I call ‘cultural repatriation’, through the examination of two Anglophone novels about the Greek civil war and their transfer into Greece. Translation as repatriation concentrates on works which are, effectively, repatriated into their original context and made vulnerable to its aesthetic and socio-ideological encounters. The translation of Gage’s Eleni (1983a) and de Bernières’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994) into Greek constitutes cultural repatriation as cultural representations in the works are constructed through a ‘foreign gaze’ and rendered problematic upon transfer. Within this context, I examine how specific strategies in the promotion, translation, and consumption of these works challenge or reinforce hegemonic versions and narrative modes of the historical narrative and lead to a renegotiation of the cultural categories constructed in them. Methodologically, the article combines Bourdieu’s sociology and narrative theory creating a robust framework for the study of cultural repatriation.

Keywords:
Publication history
Table of contents

The differences are so great between historical traditions […] that the application to a foreign cultural product of the categories of perception […] in the domestic field can actually create fictitious oppositions between similar things, and false parallels between things that are fundamentally different.

Full-text access is restricted to subscribers. Log in to obtain additional credentials. For subscription information see Subscription & Price. Direct PDF access to this article can be purchased through our e-platform.

References

Aidenaier, Niki
1986 “Nick Gage, Eleni, Ούτε λογοτεχνία ούτε ντοκουμέντο [Nick Gage, Eleni, neither literature nor documentary].” ΑΝΤΙ 313: 50.Google Scholar
Angelidou, Maria
2008 Interview by author, Greece, April 15 2008, my personal archive.Google Scholar
Apostolidou, Venetia
2010Τραύμα και μνήμη, η πεζογραφία των πολιτικών προσφύγων [Trauma and memory, the prose of political refugees]. Athens: Polis.Google Scholar
Axelos, Loukas
2008Εκδοτική δραστηριότητα και κίνηση των ιδεών στην Ελλάδα [Publishing activities and the circulation of ideas in Greece]. Athens: Stochastes.Google Scholar
Baker, Mona
2006Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. Abingdon: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakolas, Nikos
1997 “Τα ξαναγυρίσματα της ιστορίας στην πεζογραφία [History’s comebacks in fiction].” In Ιστορική πραγματικότητα και νεοελληνική πεζογραφία (1945–1995): επιστημονικό συμπόσιο [Historical reality and Modern Greek fiction (1945–1995): Scientific symposium], edited by Theofanos Kalogiannis, 27–34. Athens: Schole Moraites.Google Scholar
Boukalas, Pantelis
1994 “Η λογοτεχνία των αρνητικών ηρώων [The literature of negative heroes].” In Αφιέρωμα στον Αλέξανδρο Κοτζιά [Dedication to Alexandros Kotzias], edited by Spyros Tsaknias and Ekaterini Makrynikola, 66–70. Athens: Kedros.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
1991Language and Symbolic Power [orig. Langage et pouvoir symbolique], edited by John B. Thompson. Translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
1993The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Edited by Randal Johnson. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
1996The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field [orig. Les règles de l’art]. Translated by Susan Emanuel. Cambridge: Polity. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1999 “The Social Conditions of the International Circulation of Ideas.” In Bourdieu: A Critical Reader, edited by Richard Shusterman, 220–228. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bruner, Jerome
1991 “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18 (1): 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carretero, Mario
2018 “Imagining the Nation throughout School History Master Narratives.” In Public History and School: International Perspectives, edited by Marko Demantowsky, 97–108. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casanova, Pascale
2010 “Consecration and Accumulation of Literary Capital: Translation as Unequal Exchange.” Translated by Siobhan Brownlie. In Critical Readings in Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker, 285–303. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clarke, Robert
2018 “History, Memory, and Trauma in Postcolonial Travel Writing.” In The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Travel Writing, edited by Robert Clarke, 49–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
De Bernières, Louis
1994Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. London: Secker & Warburg.Google Scholar
1995To Μαντολίνο του Λοχαγού Κορέλι [orig. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin]. Translated by Maria Angelidou. Athens: Psichogios.Google Scholar
Dempsey, Lorcan
2000 “Scientific, Industrial, and Cultural Heritage: A Shared Approach: A Research Framework for Digital Libraries, Museums and Archives.” Ariadne 22. http://​www​.ariadne​.ac​.uk​/issue22​/dempsey Accessed May 23, 2021.
Elefantis, Aggelos
1984 “Ελένη, Πέραν των Αντιλόγων Υπάρχει και η Ιστορία [Eleni, beyond disputations there is a history].” O Polites [unknown issue]: 41–44.Google Scholar
2003Μας Πήραν την Αθήνα: Ξαναδιαβάζοντας την ιστορία 1941–1950 [They took Athens from us: Rereading history 1941–1950]. Athens: Vivliorama.Google Scholar
Erll, Astrid, and Ansgar Nünning
2008Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farakos, Grigoris
2000Ο Ελάς και η Εξουσία, Τόμος Πρώτος: Το αντάρτικο- Στρατός για «τώρα» και για «μετά» [ELAS and power, volume one: Guerrilla warfare – army for ‘now’ and for ‘later’]. Athens: Hellenika Grammata.Google Scholar
Freadman, Richard
2009 “Once Tortured, Forever Tortured: Testimony and Autobiography in Jacob Rosenberg’s East of Time and Sunrise West .” Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 7 (2): 279–297.Google Scholar
Friedman, Jonathan
1994Cultural Identity and Global Processes. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Gage, Nicholas
1983aEleni. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
1983bEleni. Translated by Alexandros Kotzias. Athens: Helleniki Euroekdotike.Google Scholar
Gazi, Efi
2002 “Ο Μεταμοντερνισμός Λέει… [Postmodernism says…].” To Vima, December 22, A63.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard
1997Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation [orig. Seuils]. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1986Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Gouanvic, Jean-Marc
2005 “A Bourdieusian Theory of Translation, or the Coincidence of Practical Instances: Field, ‘Habitus’, Capital and ‘Illusio’.” The Translator 11 (2): 147–166. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanna, Sameh F.
2016Bourdieu in Translation Studies: The Socio-cultural Dynamics of Shakespeare Translation in Egypt. Abingdon: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harth, Dietrich
2008 “The Invention of Cultural Memory.” In Erll and Ansgar (2008, 85–96).Google Scholar
Heilbron, Johan, and Gisèle Sapiro
2016 “Translation: Economic and Sociological Perspectives.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language, edited by Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber, 373–402. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hesmondhalgh, David
2006 “Bourdieu, the Media and Cultural Production.” Media, Culture & Society 28 (2): 211–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jusdanis, Gregory
1987 “Is Postmodernism Possible Outside the ‘West’? The Case of Greece.” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 11 (1): 69–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kalogeras, Yiorgos D.
1993 “ Eleni: Hellenizing the Subject, Westernizing the Discourse.” MELUS 18 (2): 77–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis
2003 “Aθώος ή ένοχος. O εμφύλιος πόλεμος και η ιδεολογική χρήση της ιστορίας [Innocent or guilty: The Civil War and the ideological use of history].” To Vima, March 9, 11.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis, and Marantzidis Nikos
2004 “Νέες τάσεις στη μελέτη του εμφυλίου πολέμου [New trends in the study of the Civil War].” Ta Nea, March 20–21, 10–11.Google Scholar
Kavvathas, Vassilis
1985Η Άλλη Ελένη [The other Eleni]. Athens: Alkyon.Google Scholar
Kotzias, Alexandros
1984aTranscribed interview, Kotzias’s private archive.Google Scholar
1984b “Ο Συγγραφέας δικαιούται να έχει πολιτική θέση’ [Al. Kotzias: ‘The author has the right to his political position’].” To Vima tes Kyriakis, March 18, 19.Google Scholar
1973 In Alexandros Argyriou, Alexandros Kotzias, Kostas Kouloufakos, Spyros Plaskovitis and Stratis TsirkasΗ Νεοελληνική Πραγματικότητα και η Πεζογραφία μας [Modern Greek reality and our prose].” He Synecheia 4: 172–179.Google Scholar
Krmpotich, Cara
2011 “Repatriation and the Generation of Material Culture.” In Archaeologists on Contemporary Death, edited by Howard Willians, special issue of Mortality 16 (2): 145–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lachmann, Renate
2008 “Mnemonic and Intertextual Aspects of Literature.” In Erll and Nünning (2008, 301–310).Google Scholar
Leech, Andrew
2001 “ ‘Let him be called Hellene!’ The last interview with Professor C.M. Woodhouse.” Athens News, February 25. Accessed May 23, 2021. http://​www​.helleniccomserve​.com​/woodhouse​.html
Liakos, Antonis
2001 “Η Νεοελληνική Ιστοριογραφία το Τελευταίο Τέταρτο του Εικοστού Αιώνα [Modern Greek historiography in the last quarter of the twentieth century].” Sychrona Themata 76–77: 72–91.Google Scholar
Mackridge, Peter
1988 “Testimony and Fiction in Greek Narrative Prose 1944–1967.” In The Greek Novel AD1–1985, edited by Roderick Beaton, 90–102. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Marantzidis, Nikos, and Giorgos Antoniou
2004 “The Axis Occupation and Civil War: Changing Trends in Greek Historiography, 1941–2002.” Journal of Peace Research 41 (2): 223–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mazower, Mark
2000 “Introduction.” In After the War was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943–1960, edited by Mark Mazower, 3–23. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Meylaerts, Reine
2005 “Sociology and Interculturality: Creating the Conditions for Inter-national Dialogue across Intellectual Fields.” The Translator 11 (2): 276–283. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moro-Abadía, Oscar
2006 “The History of Archaeology as a ‘Colonial Discourse’.” Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 16 (2): 4–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neumann, Birgit
2008 “The Literary Representation of Memory.” In Erll and Nünning (2008, 333–344).Google Scholar
Nilsson Stutz, Liv
2013 “Claims to the Past: A Critical View of the Arguments Driving Repatriation of Cultural Heritage and Their Role in Contemporary Identity Politics.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 7 (2): 170–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paivanas, Dimitris
2010 “Cold Wars after 1989: Thanasis Valtinos’ Orthokosta and its Reception.” Hellenic Studies 18 (1): 21–53.Google Scholar
Papagianidou, Mary
1998 “Το βάρος της Ιστορίας [The weight of history].” To Vima tes Kyriakis, February 15, ΣΤ12, 24.Google Scholar
Pasmatzi, Kalliopi
2012 “Translating the Greek Civil War: Alexandros Kotzias and the Translator’s Multiple Habitus.” New Voices in Translation Studies 8 (1): 115–131.Google Scholar
2014 “Translatorial Hexis and Cultural Honour: Translating Captain Corelli’s Mandolin into Greek.” In Remapping Habitus in Translation Studies, edited by Gisella Maria Vorderobermeier, 73–92. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Plato
2002Phaedrus. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rori, Labrini
2008 “Από το «δωσίλογο» Μητσοτάκη στη «Νέα Βάρκιζα του ‘89»: η Μνήμη της δεκαετίας του ’40 στον πολιτικό λόγο του ΠΑΣΟΚ [From ‘collaborationist’ Mitsotakis to ‘the new Barkiza of ’89’: Memory of the 1940s in the political rhetoric of PASOK].” In Μνήμες και Λήθη του Ελληνικού Εμφύλιου Πολέμου [Memories and forgetting of the Greek Civil War], edited by Riki Van Boeschoten, Tasoula Vervinioti, Eftyhia Voutira, Vasilis Daldavoukis, and Konstantina Mbada, 293–309. Thessaloniki: Epikentro.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W.
1989 “Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors.” Critical Inquiry 15 (2): 205–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sakkatos, Vaggelis
1995a “Ανακρίβειες σε μια Εκπομπή [Inaccuracies in a show].” ANTI, November 24, 44.Google Scholar
1995b “Το Μαντολίνο του Λοχαγού Κορέλι [Captain Corelli’s mandolin.]” Rizospastis, October 26, 26.Google Scholar
2002Μεραρχία Ακούι, Η σφαγή των Ιταλών στην Κεφαλονιά. Η αντίσταση [Acqui division, the Italians’ slaughter on Cephalonia: The resistance.] Athens: Estia.Google Scholar
Scott, Rebecca
1989 “The Dark Continent: Africa as Female Body in Haggard’s Adventure Fiction.” Feminist Review 32 (1): 69–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shih, Shu-Mei
2004 “Global Literature and the Technologies of Recognition.” PMLA 119 (1): 16–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Somers, Margaret R.
1992 “Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action: Rethinking English Working-class Formation.” Social Science History 16 (4): 591–630. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Summers, Caroline
2012 “Translating the Author-Function: The (Re)narration of Christa Wolf.” New Voices in Translation Studies 8 (1): 170–187.Google Scholar
Tsaousis, I. Kostas
1995 “Κριτική Βιβλίου [Book review].” Eleftherotypia, November 30, page unknown.Google Scholar
Tsirkas, Stratis
1973 In Alexandros Argyriou, Alexandros Kotzias, Kostas Kouloufakos, Spyros Plaskovitis and Stratis TsirkasΗ Νεοελληνική Πραγματικότητα και η Πεζογραφία μας [Modern Greek reality and our prose].” He Synecheia 4: 172–179.Google Scholar
Valent, Paul
2002Child Survivors of the Holocaust. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vasilikos, Vasilis
1995Interview with Maria Angelidou, Mark Mazower, Apostolos Santas and Georgia Farinou. Axion Esti. October 25. ERT Digital Archives.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
1995The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Voukelatos, Yiorgos
2011 Mail interview by author, Greece, February 26 2011, my private archive.Google Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc J. D.
1992 “Part I: Toward a Social Praxeology: The Structure and Logic of Bourdieu’s Sociology.” In An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, authored by Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D. Wacquant, 1–59. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
1993 “From Ruling Class to Field of Power: An Interview with Pierre Bourdieu on La Noblesse d’Etat.” Theory, Culture & Society 10 (3): 19–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whitby-Last, Kathryn
2010 “Legal Impediments to the Repatriation of Cultural Objects to Indigenous Peoples.” In The Long Way Home: The Meaning and Values of Repatriation, edited by Paul Turnbull and Michael Pickering, 35–47. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Whitebrook, Maureen
2001Identity, Narrative and Politics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Woodhouse, C. M.
1983 “The Tragedy in Lia.” New York Review of Books, August 18, 25–26.Google Scholar
Ziras, Alexis
1994 “Ρεαλισμός και Εξπρεσιονισμός: Η δαιμονική βίωση της ιστορίας στο έργο του Αλέξανδρου Κοτζιά [Realism and expressionism: The demonic experience of history in the work of Alexandros Kotzias].” In Αφιέρωμα στον Αλέξανδρο Κοτζιά [Dedication to Alexandros Kotzias], edited by Spyros Tsaknias and Ekaterini Makrynikola, 123–146. Athens: Kedros.Google Scholar