Technology, translation and society: A constructivist, critical theory approach

Maeve Olohan
Abstract

Translation studies and social theories of translation tend not to deal adequately with questions regarding the role of technology in translation and have neglected the ways in which technologies, as non-human entities, embody and materialize hegemonic and power relations. This paper seeks to address this shortcoming by looking to science and technology studies (STS) for conceptual frameworks to help us to understand and articulate (a) how popular, deterministic perceptions of translation technology are perpetuated through the discourses of hegemonic actors, (b) how decisions regarding design and use of translation technologies may be studied with reference to their construction and interpretation by relevant social groups, and (c) how a critical theory of technology and an analytical focus on practices can help to focus our attention on the exercise of hegemonic control in the translation sector.

Keywords:
Table of contents

The starting point for this paper is that we still have much work to do to fully understand the ontological and epistemological bases of the impact of ideology and power on translation theory and practice. This paper, informed by schools of thought and research that converge within the discipline known as science and technology studies (STS), makes a contribution on both fronts by examining theoretical and conceptual frameworks for the social study of technology and power in translation.

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

Adler, Paul S
2007 “The Future of Critical Management Studies: A Paleo-Marxist Critique of Labour Process Theory.” Organization Studies 28 (9): 1313–1345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumgarten, Stefan
2016 “The Crooked Timber of Self-reflexivity: Translation and Ideology in the End Times.” Perspectives 24 (1): 115–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bijker, Wiebe E
1995Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Towards a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
2010 “How Is Technology Made? That Is the Question!Cambridge Journal of Economics 34 (1): 63–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bijker, Wiebe E., Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch
eds. 1987The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
eds. 2012The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bijker, Wiebe E., and Trevor Pinch
2012 “Preface to the Anniversary Edition.” In Bijker, Hughes and Pinch 2012, xi–xxxiv.Google Scholar
Bräuchler, Birgit, and John Postill
eds. 2010Theorising Media and Practice. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Chandler, Jennifer A
2012 “ ‘Obligatory Technologies’ Explaining Why People Feel Compelled to Use Certain Technologies.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 32 (4): 255–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Contu, Alessia
2014 “On Boundaries and Difference: Communities of Practice and Power Relations in Creative Work.” Management Learning 45 (3): 289–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Contu, Alessia, and Hugh Willmott
2006 “Studying Practice: Situating Talking About Machines.” Organization Studies 27 (12): 1769–1782. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cronin, Michael
2003Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2013Translation in the Digital Age. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dafoe, Allan
2015 “On Technological Determinism: A Typology, Scope Conditions, and a Mechanism.” Science, Technology & Human Values 40 (6): 1047–1076. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dobbins, Michael
2009Urban Design and People. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Donoghue, Patrick
Dorrier, Jason
2016 “Will the End of Moore’s Law Halt Computing’s Exponential Rise?” Singularity HUB . Accessed March 8, 2016. http://​singularityhub​.com​/2016​/03​/08​/will​-the​-end​-of​-moores​-law​-halt​-computings​-exponential​-rise/
Feenberg, Andrew
1992 “Subversive Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Democracy.” Inquiry 35 (3–4): 301–322. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1999Questioning Technology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2005 “Critical Theory of Technology: An Overview.” Tailoring Biotechnologies 1 (1): 47–64.Google Scholar
Fisher, Eran
2010 “Contemporary Technology Discourse and the Legitimation of Capitalism.” European Journal of Social Theory 13 (2): 229–252. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio
1971Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. London: Lawrence and Wishart.Google Scholar
Hackett, Edward J., Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman
eds. 2008The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna
1991Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra
1998Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
ed. 2011The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David
2015 “Consolidating Power.” ROAR Magazine. Accessed September 3, 2016. https://​roarmag​.org​/magazine​/david​-harvey​-consolidating​-power/.Google Scholar
Herman, Andrew
1982 “Conceptualizing Control: Domination and Hegemony in the Capitalist Labor Process.” The Insurgent Sociologist 11 (3): 7–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hommels, Anique
2005 “Studying Obduracy in the City: Toward a Productive Fusion between Technology Studies and Urban Studies.” Science, Technology & Human Values 30 (3): 323–351. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hornborg, Alf
2014 “Technology as Fetish: Marx, Latour, and the Cultural Foundations of Capitalism.” Theory, Culture & Society 31 (4): 119–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P
1983Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hutchins, W. John
1995 “Machine Translation: A Brief History.” In Concise History of the Language Sciences: From the Sumerians to the Cognitivists, ed. by E. F. K. Koerner, and R. E. Asher, 431–445. Kidlington: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kenny, Dorothy
2011 “The Ethics of Machine Translation.” In Proceedings of the 20th NZSTI National Conference. Reflections on Language and Technology, ed. by Sybille Ferner, 121–131. Auckland: New Zealand Society of Translators and Interpreters.Google Scholar
Kenny, Dorothy, and Stephen Doherty
2014 “Statistical Machine Translation in the Translation Curriculum: Overcoming Obstacles and Empowering Translators.” The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 8 (2): 276–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Hans K., and Daniel Lee Kleinman
2002 “The Social Construction of Technology: Structural Considerations.” Science, Technology & Human Values 27 (1): 28–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe
1985Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Leonardi, Paul M., and Stephen R. Barley
2010 “What’s Under Construction Here? Social Action, Materiality, and Power in Constructivist Studies of Technology and Organizing.” The Academy of Management Annals 4 (1): 1–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Littau, Karin
2016 “Translation and the Materialities of Communication.” Translation Studies 9 (1): 82–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Longino, Helen
1990Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lukes, Steven
2005Power: A Radical View. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lynch, Michael
2008 “Ideas and Perspectives.” In Hackett et al. 2008, 9–11.Google Scholar
Moore, Gordon E
1975 “Progress in Digital Integrated Electronics.” IEDM Technical Digest 1975: 11–13.Google Scholar
Morozov, Evgeny
2013To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Nicolini, Davide
2009 “Zooming In and Out: Studying Practices by Switching Theoretical Lenses and Trailing Connections.” Organization Studies 30 (12): 1391–1418. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012Practice Theory, Work, and Organization: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Sharon
2012 “Translation as Human-Computer Interaction.” Translation Spaces 1 (1): 101–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Hagan, Minako
2016 “Massively Open Translation: Unpacking the Relationship between Technology and Translation in the 21st Century.” International Journal of Communication 10: 929–946.Google Scholar
Olohan, Maeve
2011 “Translators and Translation Technology: The Dance of Agency.” Translation Studies 4 (3): 342–357. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forthcoming 2017. “Knowledge and Knowing in Translation Practice.” Translation Spaces.
Orr, Julian Edgerton
1996Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Pinch, Trevor J., and Wiebe E. Bijker
1984 “The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other.” Social Studies of Science 14 (3): 399–441. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reckwitz, Andreas
2002 “Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing.” European Journal of Social Theory 5 (2): 243–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robinson, William I
2012 “Global Capitalism Theory and the Emergence of Transnational Elites.” Critical Sociology 38 (3): 349–363. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Schatzki, Theodore R
1996Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 “Introduction: Practice Theory.” In The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, ed. by Theodore, R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr-Cetina, and Eike von Savigny, 1–14. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Shove, Elizabeth, Mika Pantzar, and Matt Watson
2012The Dynamics of Social Practice. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sismondo, Sergio
2010An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies. 2nd ed. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Thorpe, Charles
2008 “Political Theory in Science and Technology Studies.” In Hackett et al. 2008, 63–82.Google Scholar
van der Meer, Jaap
2016 “The Future Does Not Need Translators.” TAUS Blog. Accessed February 24, 2016. https://​taus​.net​/blog​/the​-future​-does​-not​-need​-translatorsGoogle Scholar
Waldrop, Mitchell
2016 “The Chips Are Down for Moore’s Law.” Nature News February 9, 2016. Archive 530 (7589). http://​www​.nature​.com​/news​/the​-chips​-are​-down​-for​-moore​-s​-law​-1​.19338 DOI: DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Warde, Alan
2016The Practice of Eating. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Winner, Langdon
1983 “Technologies as Forms of Life.” In Epistemology, Methodology and the Social Sciences, ed. by Robert S. Cohen, and Marx W. Wartofsky, 249–263. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Also in Winner 1986, Chapter 1. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1986The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2001 “Where Technological Determinism Went.” In Visions of STS: Counterpoints in Science, Technology, and Society Studies, ed. by Stephen H. Cutcliffe, and Carl Mitcham, 11–18. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Wyatt, Sally
2008 “Technological Determinism is Dead: Long Live Technological Determinism.” In Hackett et al. 2008, 165–180.Google Scholar