Translation and discursive identity

Translation and Discursive Identity (Poetics Today 15:3, Fall 1994, pp. 405-428) Clem Robyns Comparative Literature, K.U.Leuven Abstract For any target discourse, translation, as a confrontation with the nonidentical, is a potential threat to its own identity. Via a broad definition of translation as “discursive migration,” this paper discusses the possible ways in which a discourse may react to the intrusion of alien discursive elements. Two basic questions function as guidelines: Does a discursive practice acknowledge the otherness of intruding elements? And, does it allow their intrusion without transforming them according to target codes? Thus, four prototypical stances (imperialist, defensive, trans-discursive and defective) are extensively discussed. Finally, this framework is applied to the conflicts characterizing the identity construction of translation studies as a discipline in itself. Any discourse (re)produces its own borderlines and thus defines its own specificity with respect to other discourses. This implies that identity is always a dynamic concept, a fragile equilibrium. Translation (in the traditional sense), as an explicit confrontation with "alien" discourses, is only the most conspicuous instance of the continuous conflicts which characterize the construction of identity. Although the translation problem has already been formulated in these terms by certain scholars (such as Even-Zohar 1990 . In the field of sociolinguistics, similar frameworks have been developed by Uriel Weinreich (see, e.g. Weinreich 1966 [1953], on bilingualism and linguistic interference), and by Joshua A. Fishman (see, e.g. Fismman 1989, on ethnicity), among others.), the monolithic and static concepts of "text," "language" and "translation" itself that still dominate translation studies, seriously hamper the discussion. Therefore, in order to study the role that translation plays in the dynamics of self-definition, the focus of attention has to be shifted from individual texts or linguistic features in translation (however "contextualized" the analysis may be) to interference between discourses and discursive structures and strategies. In this paper, which is only a first attempt to develop the theoretical framework of a larger research project, I would like to discuss the ways in which a discourse may deal with the problem of discursive interference, as manifested in both translation strategies and the positions taken toward translation itself. 1. Translation and discursive self-definition A discourse - or, to use a term which also encompasses the individual and institutional extra-textual factors, a discursive practice - defines itself in relation, or rather in opposition to other discourses. (The same goes for "cultures," which may be seen as large systemic conglomerates of discursive practices.) If we define a discourse as a set of messages viewed by their producers or receivers as linked because they rely partially on a common set of norms, the awareness of such common codes is possible only via the confrontation with their absence, namely, with other discourses. Thus the dynamics of discursive self-definition imply continuous contact between discourses. Moreover, those relations are never relations of equality, since they never exist in an isolated form: the complex web of relationships created by the superposition of political, economic, scientific, artistic, literary and other discourses makes a perfect symbiosis between any two discursive practices seem hardly more than an idealistic construct. The unequal character of interdiscursive relations, that is to say, the fact that the construction of identity is linked to unequal power relations, implies that identity construction can be seen as ideological: in establishing its identity, a discursive practice constructs, reproduces, or subverts social interests and power relations. Two remarks may clarify this thesis. First, the very fact that, within a culture or discursive practice, there is an awareness of a common identity implies that there has also been a striving toward preservation of this identity, toward self-preservation of the discourse . In "The Notion of System" (1992), Dirk De Geest links the central/ peripheral position of systemic elements to their role for systemic unity: elements interfering with other systems tend to be relegated to a marginal position. De Geest also proposes a Greimassian "square of normativity" which allows us to describe the normative status of (imported) elements.. If identity is constructed in opposition to the alien, interferences imply loss of autonomy and thereby loss of identity. Secondly, the shared conventions on which identity is based are often implicit. In order to make the internal functioning of a discourse possible, certain basic rules and meanings underlying its production are generally taken for granted by the participants. This structured (but plural and dynamic) whole of presuppositions is what we call "doxa." Just as the presupposition of a linguistic utterance ("When did you stop beating your wife?") cannot be contested (unlike the denotation) without contesting the situation of communication itself, the doxa of a given discourse cannot be contested (thereby making it explicit, while its efficiency lies in its implicitness) without contesting the self-evident legitimacy of the discourse and its producers . I don't see "doxa" as a "structural unconscious" determining a discourse and its producers. The ideological function of doxa lies in its hegemonic character: its implicitness and self-evidence. But if doxa by definition excludes contradiction, that doesn't mean that it cannot be contradicted.. Still this is precisely one possible function of translation. It introduces discursive elements from other discourses, and therefore by definition is a potential code violation. The simple fact that a text is written in something other than the common language is already a radical challenge to the conventions of a target discourse . Unless, of course, nobody can identify the linguistic codes of a certain alien text (because nobody knows the script or the language). However, even though there is no linguistic code-violation (because no alternative is offered), the text can still function as an alien object. As such, it can be manipulated. In their racist propaganda, for instance, the extreme right wing parties in Europe frequently create the image of future cities dominated by Arabic billboards.. Since the awareness of common norms constitutes the basis for discursive self-definition, the intrusion of alien, convention-violating elements is a potential threat. Therefore every discourse is continually forced to determine its position(s) toward such alien elements, hence toward translation. Different reactions are possible here, and these will be determined in accordance with the internal and external systemic relations characterizing the discursive practice in question. In this paper, I want to discuss four types of attitudes toward translation which may characterize a discursive practice. In order to study translation as the "intrusion of the alien," it is useful, even necessary, to redefine the notion of "translation" itself. First of all, translation clearly cannot be seen in isolation from non-translation. In other words, both the exclusion of alien elements and their acceptance in their original form, both the "faithful" translation and the complete transformation of a text or textual element have to be seen as translation strategies. To put it in an extreme way: translation may be anything between literal repetition (which, in practice, does not exist) and intertextuality in the broadest sense. Secondly, since "cultures" and "literatures" are merely specific types of discursive practice, there is no reason to restrict the concept of translation to the transfer of texts or textual elements between languages (cultures, literatures). So translation can be redefined as "the migration and transformation of discursive elements between different discourses." Each of those discourses can be described as occupying a position in a larger system and as forming a system in itself . See Robyns 1992 and Lambert and Robyns 1992 for a more elaborate discussion of this topic. A similar option has been suggested by Itamar Even-Zohar (1981), but this proposal doesn't seem to have had any influence in the field of translation studies.. This "scholarly definition" is a working hypothesis, like any definition formulated by other "people in the culture." I use my concept of translation not as an exclusive tool for classification, but as a convenient hypothesis, being conscious of its historicity. The historical context here is of course the questioning (which, unfortunately, hasn't been generalized yet in translation studies) of the essentialistic and reductive concepts of "text," "subject" and especially "literature". In order to pin down the positions a given discourse may take toward "alien migration," three basic aspects have to be taken into account. First of all: what is the position and function of the concept of translation, or of "the alien" in general, in the various subdiscourses of a discursive system? Is it discussed at all? Is it seen as a problem, and if so, what type of problem? Which dichotomies are used to characterize it, and which rhetorical devices? The second aspect is the selection and distribution of imported elements: does a discourse allow intrusion, and from which other discourses? Finally, translational strategies have to be analyzed. How and to what extent are the alien discursive elements adapted to the implicit and explicit rules of the target discourse? In combination these three aspects should allow us to describe some basic attitudes characterizing a discursive practice. My examples wil be chosen from various types of discourse (literary, academic, linguistic-cultural, nationalist-political, and cinematographic) in order to show that similar mechanisms are at work within different discourses that are usually treated in isolation. 2. Meeting the alien: some basic attitudes In order to describe four main attitudes toward discursive migration, I would like to propose two basic criteria. First, does a discursive practice acknowledge the otherness of (potentially) intruding elements from other discourses? Does it explicitly oppose itself to "the other"? Secondly, does a discursive practice allow the intrusion of code-violating elements without transforming them according to the target codes? An attitude in which otherness is denied and transformed may be called imperialist, while one in which otherness is acknowledged but still transformed may be called defensive. A trans-discursive discourse neither radically opposes itself to other discourses nor refuses their intrusion, while a defective discourse stimulates the intrusion of alien elements that are explicitly acknowledged as such. Both the defensive and defective attitudes can be called reactive, since they explicitly react against either the presence or the absence of discursive migrations and will therefore thematize translation. Clearly these types are generalizations: neither a taxonomy nor even a methodological scheme, they should be seen as coordinates for research into specific, complex situations. Indeed, no discourse will ever correspond exactly to a single type. It is obvious that in the cases of the trans-discursive and the defective attitudes the end result would be a total loss of autonomy. In any case, migrations are normally partial: only a limited number of codes will be called into question. (The force of the reaction will depend on the central or marginal position of the contested norms for the self-definition of the target discourse.) Nor will any discourse ever reflect only one attitude: like any model dominating a given discourse at a given moment, these basic attitudes can (and will) be contested and eventually replaced by other ones. Very often, as some of my examples will show, the coexistence of various attitudes within the same discourse is itself a function of discursive interference. Finally, it is important to emphasize that only very rarely (if ever) will a specific attitude dominate a whole culture. As the Québécois case (cf. infra) shows especially clearly, attitudes toward the same foreign culture can differ widely depending on the positions of the specific discourses, institutions and individuals comprising both cultures: another argument for studying target discourses instead of cultures . For a similar argument, see Brisset 1988b. However, Brisset 1990 again articulates a rather monolithical concept of "Québécois culture".. 2.1. The imperialist stand An imperialist attitude toward the other is characterized by a paradoxical claim of, on the one hand, the irreducible specificity of one's own identity, and, on the other hand, the universality of its values. This claim is an elaboration of the way in which canonical language is legitimized, according to Marc Angenot: Son idéologie immanente veut que la langue canonique soit une "forme" universelle, adaptable à n'importe quel contenu. (Angenot 1989: 135) [Its immanent ideology demands that the canonical language be seen as a universal "form," adaptable to any content. . All the translations of quotations are mine, unless otherwise indicated.] All kinds of recuperative strategies are called upon to hide the internal contradictions of this type of doctrine. As one example I want to discuss the legitimized French political / linguistic / cultural ideology of the universality of the French language (implying, of course, the culture and the nation). In centralist France, where the Minister of Cultural Affairs is one of the main actors on the cultural scene, this has been a state matter for many centuries, and it still is. The following statements were recently made by Bernard Aubert, head of the Department of Linguistic and Educational Cooperation of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry, in an interview with the magazine Le français dans le monde. Soyons sérieux. En France, vous le savez bien, la politique linguistique extérieure se pense, se négocie, se publie aux plus hauts sommets de l'Etat (...). (...) la diffusion de la langue française à l'étranger reste une priorité nationale et les budgets qui lui sont affectés ne baissent pas. (Pécheur 1990: 26-27) [Let us be serious. In France, as you well know, the external linguistic policy is conceived, negociated and made public at the highest levels of the State. The diffusion of the French language abroad remains a national priority, and its budgets will not be reduced.] The ideology of the universality of the French language which legitimizes this policy is still rarely questioned at the institutional level: the "Secrétariat à la francophonie" created in 1986 sees its task as based on the assumption that "la vocation de la francophonie est de tendre à l'universel" [the mission of the Francophone world is to reach for universality] (Pécheur 1986b: 23). Marc Angenot describes exactly the same way of thinking as having prevailed in France in 1889: Les doctrinaires, les philosophes veulent bien disserter sur l'Espèce humaine, mais cette humanité n'est qu'un avatar abstrait de la culture française,- du bourgeois français. (Angenot 1989: 268) [The doctrinarians, the philosophers readily dwell on the human species, but this humanity is only an abstract incarnation of the French culture,- of the French bourgeois.] Of course the universality of a language has to be based on "universal criteria." Those are provided by Michel Bruguière, an executive of the High Comittee of the French Language, in the Symposium volume of the Encyclopaedia Universalis . The fact that such a text appears in a French encyclopaedia calling itself "universal" is eloquent enough. Actually, the Symposium volume is worth a study in itself. The encyclopaedia, which presents itself as uncontestable knowledge, nevertheless includes this volume as a kind of survey of current debates. Meanwhile, the credit for analyzing the phenomenon of the encyclopaedia as an overview of legitimized cultural literacy goes to Stef Wauters (1991). (1985). No doubts remain: Il n'en reste pas moins que les langues ne sont pas égales entre elles, et que toute politique doit tenir compte de six paramètres obligés (...). (Bruguière 1985: 1019b) [Still, languages are not equal, and every policy has to take into account six obligatory parameters.] Of those six criteria, three could already be found in Rivarol's L'universalité de la langue française, published over 200 years ago: the "variété humaine," the "diffusion pédagogique," and the "richesse littéraire." The other three are: number of speakers, geographical distribution and technological impact. Fair enough: Bruguière tries to apply these criteria in an "objective" way, by quantifying them. However, it is interesting to see how the recuperative strategies and timeless metaphors pop up. Indeed, French ranks lower in number of speakers than Chinese and English, among others, but since Hindi and Bengali also have more speakers, "sans représenter sur le plan international une réelle concurrence" [without offering any real competition on an international scale] (1019b), the implication is that the importance of this criterion should not be overestimated. In any case, the second criterion, geographical distribution, is used to explain why French doesn't meet the first one: French is well represented all over the world, "seule l'Asie, réservoir de l'humanité, manque au tableau" [only Asia, the reservoir of mankind, is missing from the picture] (ibid.); the emphasis is mine, the derogatory connotation Bruguière's. Et cetera. Assigning one, two or three points to every major language for each criterion allows Bruguière to establish a "hit parade" of international languages: French finishes second, after English. In short, "l'espace d'expression française doit être (...) présenté au reste du monde pour ce qu'il est, c'est-à-dire un abrégé du monde" [the French-speaking sphere must be presented to the rest of the world the way it is: a summary of the world] (ibid.:1022a). Quod erat demonstrandum. How, then, is this doctrine of universality made congruent with the claim of cultural specificity? Several basic strategies can be combined here. The main one is to deny "the other" the status of a "valid culture": "only our culture is universally human." The other is reduced to a barbarian or to an exotic curiosity. According to Angenot, such a position prevails in France in 1889: Ce qui est universel, c'est l'évidence de l'infériorité des peuples exotiques, de la supériorité de l'Europe et singulièrement de la France, foyer de civilisation. (1989: 279) [What is universal, is the self-evident inferiority of the exotic peoples, the superiority of Europe and especially of France, the seat of civilization.] This attitude is not only taken toward Africa and Asia, but, for instance, toward Germany as well (ibid.:137). Today, Bruguière produces an only slightly weakened version of this reasoning: Une situation de conflit, en effet, serait d'abord absurde: le français est à ce point implanté en France qu'il ne saurait subir la moindre concurrence de la part du corse, du basque ou du breton. (Bruguière 1985:1021a-b) [Indeed, a situation of conflict would first of all be absurd: French is so well-established in France that it couldn't possibly meet with even the weakest competition from Corsican, Basque or Breton.] In matters of "foreign policy," this superiority complex naturally leads to assuming the role of "cultural guide" for the more primitive people. In the words of historian Gustave Lanson: Elle [France] a été le guide qui, d'un geste, entraînait les peuples vers les routes de l'avenir, tenant le flambeau vers lequel se tournent les autres nations, inquiètes de la direction à suivre. (1923: 1) [She [France] has been the guide who, with a single gesture, has drawn [other] peoples along the roads to the future, bearing the torch for other nations, who are concerned about what direction to take.] And today? Today, the department headed by Bernard Aubert sees its "vocation" as maintaining a "positive influence on the institutional context in which French is taught in other countries" (Pécheur 1990: 27). To give another example: the two illustrations for Bruguière's article in the Encyclopaedia Universalis (1985: 1022, 1023) nicely suggest the "civilizing force" of French culture. Both are photographs of the entrance to a modern concrete building. Both similar buildings are "Centres culturels français." In both pictures young people hang around, some entering or leaving the building. In one picture, however, the youngsters are white; in the other they're black. The first photograph was shot in Paris, the second in... Brazzaville. As to "internal policy," a assumption of superiority leads to an unscrupulous assimilation of the alien elements - an assimilation that effectively denies their specificity. After describing how "we" constructed "our Middle Ages" out of Latin, Celtic and Germanic elements, "our Renaissance" out of Latin, Italian and Greek components, all culminating in "our great classical age," Lanson (1923:441) can't avoid the conclusion that "la puissance d'assimilation d'une nation, et particulièrement de notre nation, est incroyable" [the assimilating power of a nation, and especially of our nation, is incredible]. In 1985 Bruguière goes even further: En définitive, toute langue est de nature biologique. Certaines espèces animales ou végétales se préservent seulement dans tel ou tel climat (...). D'autres s'adaptent, prospèrent sous diverses latitudes (...). La langue française a derrière elle près d'un millénaire d'adaptations successives (...). [Ultimately, every language has a biological nature. Certain animal and vegetable species survive only in such-and-such a climate. Others adapt themselves, prosper in various climates. The French language has gone through almost a millennium of successive adaptations.] If a culture attains universality by combining specificity with the assimilation of otherness, this suggests a strong teleological movement. Other nations are seen as prehistorical resources for the inevitable development toward perfection of the French culture. So it is not by chance that Mitterand calls the French language "cet arbre superbe qui plonge ses racines dans toutes les cultures du monde" [that superb tree that has its roots in all the cultures of the world] (quoted in Pécheur 1986a: 27, my emphasis), nor that Lanson (1923: 442) can predict that (...) nos descendants (...) sauront retrouver le visage de la France éternelle. Ayons confiance. [Our descendants will be able to recognize the face of eternal France. Let us have faith.] Let me note in passing that, as a consequence of the identification language-nation-culture, even foreign Francophone texts can function as "alien" elements. Indeed, in his article "Notre littérature non pas lue, mais vue par les Français" (1990), Paul Dirckx describes the attitude of French textbooks and of the Nouvelle Revue française critics toward Belgian Francophone literature. He detects similar strategies of, on the one hand, occulting the foreign nationality of highly valued texts and, on the other hand, emphasizing the "exotic," even primitive features of "typically Belgian" texts. In both cases the alien texts are seen as contributions to "the admirable development of our French literature". I have discussed at length the legitimizing rhetoric of an imperialist attitude toward the alien without mentioning translation in the strictest sense. One reason for this is that in an imperialist doctrine, the role of translation will not be strongly emphasized, although that doesn't preclude it from being deployed as a discursive strategy. Still, the unquestioned "assimilation policy" makes it clear how translation will be seen. First of all, it has to be denied an innovative function. Imported elements are not allowed to dominate the target discourse, but must be integrated through transformation (cf. infra). Translation is also seen as transparency: because of the universality of the target discourse, the understanding of the other can never be a problem. An extreme example of this ideology is the following statement made by Fichte in one of his Addresses to the German nation (1807): Hence the German (...) can always be superior to the foreigner and understand him fully, even better than the foreigner understands himself (...). On the other hand, there is no doubt that he [the foreigner] will leave what is genuinely German untranslated. (Quoted and translated by Edwards 1985: 26) In translations of canonized literature, the "transformative stand" is, of course, problematic, since Romanticism and l'Art pour l'Art imposed the doctrine of the unique literary text as irreducible Otherness. However, it is clear that in practice translation strategies, even of canonized literature, do not correspond entirely to this official doctrine. A telling example is the first French translation of Milan Kundera's novel Zert (1967/ La plaisanterie, 1968). In an afterword to the second translation (1985), on which he himself worked, Kundera writes that he became suspicious of the first translation when a journalist questioned him about the "baroque" language of his first novel. When Kundera checked the translation, he found, among dozens of other embellishments, a sentence that meant "the sky was blue" in the original, translated as "sous un ciel de pervenche, octobre hissait son pavois fastueux" [under an azure sky, October raised its magnificent banners] (Kundera 1985: 460). In more popular fiction, transformative strategies are even more frequent. Again, they are linked to larger discourse structures. To give just one example, during the last few decades, slang, or "argot," has become more or less "officialized" in France, and thus has yielded to the strict language requirements of that country. This means that French slang, in order to become generally "accepted," first has to shed any possible regionalistic or foreign connotations. Just as in Anglo-American literature, slang has become acceptable in French literature. However, in French translations, Anglo-American slang comes into conflict with both the norms of "official French slang" and the very strong literary requirement of grammatically correct usage. French translators thus face some problems. First of all, any regional connotations in the American original (especially expressions characteristic of the U.S. South) disappear. Secondly, while characters in the original texts may often use ungrammatical constructions, this almost never occurs in the French versions. And finally, all of the slang terms used in the French translations are part of a repertoire of exclusively French "standard argot" which can be found in any standard dictionary. So it is clear that the translation strategies applied to argot must be integrated with a general policy of recuperation of "the popular" by standard French, including the prohiibition on references to specific regions or subcultures. This type of strategy corresponds to what Even-Zohar calls the generally "secondary" (i.e., conformist, non-innovative) position of translated texts in the French literary system (1990: 50). As I have tried to demonstrate, this discursive strategy has to be integrated into an overall attitude toward translation and "the alien" within a discursive system. 2.2. The defensive stand Power relations can change, of course, and otherness, instead of being assimilated, denigrated and hidden, can intrude as such. Generally, i.e. if the target discourse doesn't take a defective stand (cf. infra), such intrusions provoke defensive reactions. This is certainly the case with today's dominant political doctrine concerning the French language, especially when it is considered as language, and thus isolated from the (still triumphalist) propaganda about French culture in general. Terms such as "state of emergency" are used to decry the "Americanization" of French (Pécheur 1986a: 27), and the need for a "popular front" to launch the "reconquest" is emphasized (Pécheur 1986b: 23). In Québec, the situation is more complicated, as we shall see. The dominant Québécois nationalist-political doctrine not only presents the Québécois language as threatened by the English-speaking Canadian majority, but also emphasizes the "cultural identity crisis" caused by the cultural dominance of France. Therefore, defensive reactions work in two directions. How can we characterize a defensive stand toward the intrusion of alien discursive elements .For a more detailed study of defensive discourse on the French language, see Robyns (forthcoming).? First of all, a sense of threat to one's own identity, of alienation, is expressed. In the words of the Québécois translator Jacques Poisson (1977: 287): S'il est vrai qu'une langue de civilisation suppose un minimum de consensus chez ses usagers, détruire la possibilité de ce consensus par l'arbitraire de la traduction et, surtout, de la traductionalisation . For Poisson: nontransformative translation., c'est (...) l'essence de la déculturation (...). [If it is true that a language of civilization supposes a minimal consensus among its users, destroying the possibility of this consensus by the arbitrariness of translation, and especially translationalization, is the essence of deculturation.] In such a situation, claims of universality are no longer possible, for (...) the nationalist ideology does not tolerate Québec French being "international." The use of this qualifier is revealing: multiculturalism and transculturalism are negative values, and thus must be fought. (Brisset 1989: 13) What will be claimed is the unviolable specificity of one's own discourse. Revealing in this respect is, for instance, the complaint by René Etiemble (one of the main French "language purists") that, as a result of the "Americanization" of French advertising, "words have lost their meaning" (Etiemble 1985: 107). The implication here is that a specifically "French meaning" has always been attached to a specifically French word, but that this natural bond has been ruptured by the intrusion of that which is not specifically French. A discourse characterized by a defensive posture enhances its specificity by heavily emphasizing the otherness of the "alien" discourse. What is interesting here is a general tendency in Québec (mentioned in Brisset 1988a: 105), especially in French-Canadian radio and television, to anglicize all foreign names, whatever their origin may be. Since the English-Canadian community is the main representative of the threatening alien in Québec, this tendency suggests an attempt to unify all possible "aliens" under one heading. The threatening intrusion of the alien discourse is often characterized as an "invasion." Philippe de Saint-Robert, for instance, in his preface to the official French Guide des mots nouveaux (1985), states that a language has to defend itself against "the semantic invasion" (quoted in Calvet 1986: 25). This invasion makes the target discourse dependent on the intruding discourse: "il peut se développer un colonialisme culturel, par traduction interposée" [a cultural colonialism can be established via translation] (Robert Dubuc and Jacques Maurais, quoted in Simon 1990: 216). Etiemble (1985: 108a) cries out: "la France colonisée, colonisée par le babélien!" [France colonized by Babelian!]. This "colonization" causes a weakening, a degeneration of the threatened discourse: Tout ce que celle-ci [the target language] renferme d'idiomatique (...) tend à devenir connaissance passive (...). (Poisson 1977: 285) [Every of its [the target language's] idiomatic aspects tends to become passive knowledge.] Ultimately, this leads to a corresponding degeneration among the language's producers: (...) comment ne comprend-on pas que l'on ne peut pas sans péril mortel pour l'esprit et les moeurs laisser le libre-échange régir les rapports entre toutes les langues? (Etiemble 1985: 107a) [how is it possible not to understand that you cannot let free exchange rule the relations among all the languages without mortally imperiling mind and morality?] When this sense of threat is born out of a frustrated feeling of superiority, and especially when "representatives" of the invading culture (or of any alien group) exist within the threatened culture, it will generally lead to racist reactions. Thus the same rhetoric will be used against both foreign discursive elements and foreign people. While Philippe de Saint-Robert declares war against the "semantic invasion," Figaro Magazine publishes articles on the invasion of immigrant workers, and the novelist Jean Raspail writes about the forthcoming "invasion of France and the Western world by the spearheads of the third world masses" (quoted in Pucheu 1985: 15). An almost explicit incitement to racism is the link made by an illustration for Etiemble's Encyclopaedia Universalis article on the "corruption" of French by the intrusion of foreign languages. In the background of this photograph is a billboard advertising "Un autre big boy. The new brand of fast food. Ouverture bientôt," while pictured in the foreground is a black immigrant worker. In this context, translation can only be viewed in a negative light: Le brouillage de la langue d'arrivée, envahie [!] par les habitudes et les automatismes de la langue de départ, entraîne un appauvrissement des moyens d'expression et, en conséquence, un amoindrissement culturel, une déculturation. (Poisson 1977: 285) [The disruption of the target language, invaded by the usages and idioms of the source language, causes an impoverishment of the means of expression and, consequently, a cultural diminishment, a deculturation.] Two plausible reactions can be imagined here. First, conscious, explicit attempts can be made to keep alien elements out. Such reactions, even legislative ones, have occurred in France since the beginning of the eighties: [Il faut] imposer (...) à la presse de parler, d'écrire correctement; interdire partout aux publicitaires (...) de massacrer exprès les langues maternelles. (...) il faut exiger des mesures dirigistes. (Etiemble 1985: 107b) [The press must be compelled to speak and write correctly; advertisers everywhere must be forbidden to massacre deliberately their mother tongues. We have to demand stringent measures.] The other reaction entails transforming the alien elements in accordance with the conventions of the target discourse so as to preserve its identity. This is what happens in Québec. However, the situation there is quite complex. The official political-administrative Threatening Alien is English-dominated Canada. Since France is no political threat to Québécois autonomy, administrative language can be borrowed from the official French of France, making it possible to "keep out" the official English discourse. In literature, however, the Other is not only English-speaking Canada, but also culturally dominant France (Brisset 1988a: 93). In terms of literatur fiction, Québécois identity doesn't seem to be well enough developed to take a defensive stance. Therefore, translations of novels are presented as a way to supplement Québécois literature (Simon 1989: 80), that is, the limited cultural repertoire forces this part of the system to take a defective stand. The theatre system, on the contrary, does employ a distinctively Québécois feature: the local variant of French, or "Joual," . As Brisset (1988a, 1989, 1990) makes clear, the necessity of opposing Québec to France by means of Joual even leads to the creation of "fake" differences between French and Joual in Québécois theatre. which is a spoken language and therefore appropriate to the theatre (Brisset 1989: 10). Thus, while the English-Canadian "intruder" is kept out (almost no English-Canadian plays are performed in Québécois theatre, Brisset 1988b: 12), the texts from France are transformed through the use of a specific sociolect (Brisset 1988a: 100). Thus, the analysis of the Québécois attitude toward discursive migration shows that a "common threat" to the different discourses constituting a system doesn't necessarily mean that these discourses share the same attitude toward this threat. 2.3. The trans-discursive stand Without completely losing sight of its specificity, a discursive practice can consider itself explicitly as a part of a larger discursive domain: Wie in Europa een reële taalgemeenschap wil bevorderen, die samengaat met de vele nationale talen wier bestaansrecht niet meer bewezen hoeft te worden, zou er goed aan doen zich niet vast te pinnen op de aanvaarding van één enkele Cultuurtaal met een grote c, met al het taalpuritanisme en het culturele elitisme dat een dergelijke keuze insluit. (Frijhoff 1988: 728) [In order to promote in Europe a real linguistic community, which coexists with the many national languages whose right to exist doesn't have to be proved anymore, it would be wise not to stick to the acceptance of one single Language of Culture with a capital, with all the linguistic puritanism and cultural elitism that this choice implies.] This is an attitude prevailing in (though not really dominating) the "progressive" part of today's Flemish-Dutch culture. (Actually, the first basic option of this attitude is to stop separating "Flemish" and "Dutch" culture.) In this case, specificity is not heavily emphasized (anymore), but is seen from a more pragmatic viewpoint. Thus, when Frijhoff draws a parallel in the following passage between the "corruption" (the relativizing quotation marks are his) of Latin in the late Middle Ages and the situation of Dutch today, he clearly doesn't consider the Dutch language as a value to be protected in its own right, distinct from the requirements of efficient communication: Was deze "verbastering" in zekere zin niet de prijs die moest betaald worden voor een sterkere penetratie en de bevordering van een grotere bruikbaarheid als internationale contact- en cultuurtaal? (ibid: 724) [Was not this "corruption" in a certain sense the price that had to be paid for a stronger penetration and a greater utility as a language of international contact and culture?] A trans-discursive doctrine doesn't explicitly consider imported elements "other," or "alien," let alone "threatening." Both foreign discursive elements and those of "local production" are seen as equal contributions to a common goal. To quote Frijhoff again: Is het Europese Amerikaans van thans, juist door onze idiomen te besmetten, niet bezig zich de status van nieuwe lingua franca te verwerven, tamelijk los van zijn Britse zowel als Amerikaanse oorsprong? (ibid: 728] [Is today's European American, precisely by contaminating our idioms, not on its way to attaining the status of a new lingua franca, and this quite independently from its British as well as its American origin?] Thus, in the Dutch magazine Onze Taal ("Our Language"), J.J. Bakker (1987: 73) gives, in a very detached manner, a list of "respectable reasons" to allow the intrusion of foreign (especially English) words in Dutch communication: motives such as the absence of an appropriate Dutch term, the quest for variety, the need for a brief term, the imitation of a successful metaphor, and so forth. The only (common) norm seems to be efficient communication, and the only reprehensible way of dealing with foreign terms is their gratuitous use - precisely because this blurs understanding. Often, such an attitude is a reaction against what is seen as "unfruitful provincialism": the local production is not really considered defective, but is expected to reach beyond its local context. This attitude can be observed, for instance, in the Flemish and Dutch film industry today (and indeed in many European film industries). It is certainly not the case that contemporary films simply imitate foreign (say, American) models. They try rather to combine local elements with some sort of "international film language." Critics displaying the same attitude don't consider these films to be imitations, but present them as the contributions of a smaller film industry to a larger international one. Still, this attitude may lead to disavowal or neglect of local features and products. In such a case, we are no longer witnessing a local discursive practice establishing its position within a larger entity, but a larger, hegemonic discourse ignoring or denigrating local practices. The trans-discursive doctrine then becomes an imperialist one. Again, the type of reaction seems to depend on the position of a given discourse within larger structures. Thus it should not surprise us that recently one of the most extreme "internationalist" proposals imaginable was made with respect to Dutch universities. The Dutch education minister Jo Ritzen suggested that English be made the primary language of The Netherlands' universities. In our terms, this would imply cutting off the Dutch scientific discourse from local "discursive practices" and merging it completely with an international structure. It is not so much the proposal itself which is significant as the reactions to it of the Dutch opinion makers and public. Commentators in the country's two main newspapers, Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad, expressed themselves as cautiously favorable, as did some university administrators (Schrauwers 1990: 23). The editors of Onze Taal condemned the initiative, but not on the basis of any presumed "essence" of the Dutch language; rather they warned that certain discourse types would disappear from the system, causing a subsequent split between the country's intellectual elites and the general public (Redactie Onze Taal 1990: 24). However, even this relatively moderate position was criticized by one of the magazine's readers (Roessingh 1990: 76). Meanwhile, a similar debate has been going on in Flanders. Although quite inconsistent with actual practice, the official doctrine there is against the use of English in universities. This reaction is, again, a function of the superimposition of discourses: one of the first and foremost claims of Flemish nationalism (which is kept alive by the universities, among other institutions, for financial reasons and as a consequence of institutional inertia) was the people's right to be educated in their own language. As indicated earlier, a trans-discursive attitude is in se problematic. Every discursive practice tends to establish its autonomy by creating corresponding institutions, and a trans-discursive doctrine, by questioning the boundaries, is by definition a threat to the existence of those institutions, and thereby to order and stability. It will therefore provoke defensive reactions which usually take the form of purism, that is attempts to absolutize the conventions of the threatened discourse . See for instance Arno Schrauwers (1986: 66) in Onze Taal, and the almost immediate rebuttal by A.J.Onstenk (1986: 130-131), who exposes the internal contradictions of purist discourse.. A second relativizing comment to be made on the "internationalism" of the Flemish-Dutch linguistic doctrine has to do with interference from another discourse: that of the audiovisual mass media. Indeed, if more and more criticism can be heard of the "corruption" of the Dutch language, it is largely due to the defensive position into which intellectual discourse as a whole has been forced by the mass media. Intellectual elites (not only in the Low Countries, but anywhere in the Western world . For instance, in the United States, E.D. Hirsch has attempted to reestablish an officially sanctioned American canon of "cultural literacy." In this case, the threat to the literate discourse posed by the mass media is reinforced by the threat to white intellectual dominance posed by the (belated and already eroding) legitimation of ethnic minority discourses.), whose position is entirely legitimized by appeal to the age-old authority of literate written discourse as social discourse-maker, now see their dominance threatened by the growing influence of audio-visual media discourse, which they do not dominate and have never learned to deal with . For a more extended discussion of intellectuals' defensive reactions toward mass media culture, see Robyns 1991.. As I indicated, there is probably no better incentive for presenting age-old conventions as absolute than a threat to the dominant position of age-old institutions legitimized by them. 2.4. The defective stand. Finally, a discursive practice may ackowledge that it lacks the necessary components for renewing itself, for adapting to a changing social context. It will then take a "defective" position, turning to "alien" discourses and importing discursive elements from them (see Even-Zohar 1978: 18 . I prefer the term "defective" to "weak" or "dependent," which Even-Zohar currently uses.). Since this immigration is seen as an enrichment of the target discourse, these discursive elements will generally be explicitly introduced as alien. Since the target discourse's repertoire is seen as insufficient, the imported elements will not be transformed in accordance with target discourse conventions. Translation, then, will be viewed positively. It is this attitude which has completely determined the evolution of the literary subsystem of the detective novel in postwar France. Again, the position taken by the subsystem is a function of the interaction among various discourses. Before the second World War, the French detective novel constituted a rather weak system: it had a very limited tradition at its disposal (mainly the late 19th century feuilleton author Emile Gaboriau, and Maurice Leblanc, the creator of Arsène Lupin), and an equally limited contemporary production. Most detective novels were imported from Britain and were published in the dominant series Le Masque, whose major authors were Agatha Christie and Patricia Wentworth. If the local production succeeded in maintaining any autonomy, it was due solely to the French-speaking Belgian Georges Simenon, who totally dominated the genre. He integrated the whodunit formula with the French bourgeois novel of the early twentieth century and thereby succeeded in staking out an ambiguous position between detective novels and "serious" fiction. In his novels and those of his epigones, the mystery took a backseat to melodrama, psychologism and solid petit-bourgeois values and lifestyle. Functioning as a prototype of the French entre-deux-guerres detective novel, Simenon would remain for years the favorite butt of attacks by a new generation of hard-boiled French writers. As late as in 1973, the Magazine littéraire summarized the period before and immediately after the Second World War in the following polemic terms: La France? Silence... Simenon (Georges) règne. Depuis les années 30. Il produit. Du fini. Du cousu main. A la virgule. Une ration annuelle de Simenon. Simenon roman. Simenon Maigret. (...) Du comestible, du surgelé. (...) Des bourgeois qui produisent pour les bourgeois en se rassurant. (Ysmal 1973: 25). [France? Silence... Simenon (Georges) reigns. Since the thirties. He produces. Craftmanship. Polished. To the comma. An annual ration of Simenon. Simenon novel. Simenon Maigret. Edible, deep-frozen. Bourgeois production for bourgeois tranquilizing.] Meanwhile, the Anglo-American detective novel was undergoing profound changes: the dominant model of the British whodunit was (violently) attacked by American authors such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. For the American reader of the 1920s and 1930s in a nation haunted by organized crime and institutionalized corruption, murders in the libraries of peaceful English countryhouses obviously had lost their appeal. Hence the appearance of the hard-boiled detective novel, which would gradually relegate the mystery to the background in order to emphasize violent action scenes. Some of those novels (by Hammett and Raoul Whitfield) had been translated in France during the 1930s. However, they were excluded from the genre of the detective novel by being published (with little success) in the collection Chefs d'oeuvre du Roman d'Aventures. Thus the autonomy of the French "literary" detective novel was preserved. This fragile (because static) equilibrium was shattered after the war. The image of the United States as the victor of the war and the protector of Western Europe, as well as its economic influence through the Marshall Plan (1947) and its cultural domination via control of the media (with the European print and broadcast media systems still to be reestablished), led to an unprecedented vogue of "buying American." The local governments attempted to curtail this influence. For instance, after the war, France (like Italy and Spain) imposed import quotas on American films while heavily subsidizing the local film industry. In 1949, a censorship law on comic strips was passed in France. Although officially aimed at the moral protection of youngsters, it was clearly tailored to American imports. However, these measures had an effect only in areas where France could fall back on a solid local tradition. This was not the case with the detective novel. Supported by the parallel development of the film noir, the genre took an extremely defective stance toward Anglo-American imports. As Marcel Duhamel, the creator of the new but highly influential Série Noire, made clear in his introduction to the first issues of his series, the new models to be opposed to the Simenon tradition were British and American. (...) nous avons fait appel aux grands spécialistes du roman policier mouvementé: Burnett, James Cain, Hadley Chase, Peter Cheyney, Horace McCoy, Dashiell Hammett, Don Tracy, Raoul Whitfield etc. (1947, quoted in Dupuy 1974:43-44) [we have appealed to the great specialists of the hard-boiled detective novel:...] The shift of models couldn't have been more radical. To quote Duhamel again: L'amateur d'énigmes à la Sherlock Holmes n'y trouvera pas souvent son compte. (...) il reste de l'action, de l'angoisse, de la violence - sous toutes ses formes et particulièrement les plus honnies - du tabassage et du massacre. (ibid.) [The devotee of Sherlock Holmes enigmas won't very often find anything to suit him. What remains is action, fear, violence - in all its forms and especially the most infamous ones - brawles and massacre.] As stated above, a defective stand treats imports from other discourses as enrichment and therefore emphasizes its alien character. With respect to the detective novel, an extreme form of the defective stand occurred: the French production denied its local character and presented itself as translated. Thus the series Minuit, created in 1941, published only pseudo-translations. Its directors, Louis Daquin and Louis Chavance, themselves took the pen names Lewis MacDackin (!), Irving Ford, and Jack River. Some authors, such as Léo Malet and Jean Meckert, who would later become two of the main exponents of the French roman noir, started out as "Americans." Likewise, San-Antonio, who would later monopolize the parody of the hard-boiled detective novel, published his first novels in 1947 under the pseudonym Kill Him... Translations dominated the genre until the late 1960s: 75% of the Série Noire novels were translated. That translation was also viewed positively is hardly surprising, since the target discourse no longer had its own models to oppose to the imported texts. It also meant that translations could only be "faithful" to the original (i.e. to the hard-boiled model's features), as there was simply no alternative. It would take French authors almost two decades to develop a distincly French version of the hard-boiled novel: the roman noir. Gradually, the number of translations dropped (especially in new collections), and the imported texts were, as is normally the case in France, once again adapted . For a more detailed study of translation strategies in this period, see Robyns 1990.. In the 1970s, another shift of models occurred (roman noir became néo-polar), but this time it was the initiated by the local production. So, in 1973, the editors of the Magazine littéraire could look back on the history of thedetective novel and conclude: Il est né en Angleterre au XVIIIe siècle, mais, dans l'Amérique des années trente, il est réapparu, transformé. (...) ce roman noir est venu chez nous, traduit par la Série Noire. Puis des auteurs français l'ont compris, repris, et nous expliquent, avec l'humour du roman noir, ce qu'est, d'une certaine manière, la France d'aujourd'hui. (1973: 10) [It was born in England in the eighteenth century, but, in the America of the thirties, it reappeared, transformed. This roman noir has come to us, translated by the Série Noire. Then French authors have understood and adapted it, and explain to us, with the humor of the roman noir, what is, in a certain sense, today's France.] Although it fit into a general socio-cultural tendency of the postwar period, the defective attitude of the French detective subsystem was mainly motivated by intrasystemic needs. This is not a necessary condition: a specific superposition of discourses can also cause a shift toward a defective stand. Wolfgang Bauer (1964) describes how the communist takeover in China, based on a total rejection of the political-social-cultural system, forced the entire "market of symbolic goods" to take a defective stance toward the Soviet Union from the late 1940s to the end of the 1950s. (This meant of course that the Chinese cultural system was simultaneously forced to take a trans-discursive stance with respect to the overall sociopolitical discourse.) An enormous translation apparatus was developed, with thousands of translations (and retranslations!) of Russian texts produced in every field from literature to the natural sciences and engineering (Bauer ibid.: 6-12). The defective stand toward the Soviet Union even determined the selection of Western authors to be translated into Chinese, as Bauer clearly demontrates (ibid.: 22-26). He quotes a 1959 group statement by Chinese Communist scholars: In promoting the wide establishment of Socialism the literature of the most advanced Soviet Socialism and Realism fits best to our intellectual education and our continuously increasing need for cultural borrowing. (Bauer ibid.: 18) It would be difficult to find a more telling demonstration of some of the main hypotheses put forward in this paper: the explicit acknowledgment of "enrichment" via discursive migration as typical of the defective stand; the importance of power relations between discursive practices; the need to study discourses instead of texts, let alone exclusively literary texts. 3. By way of conclusion If we expand the notion of translation to include the migration and transformation of discursive elements; if we stop limiting our studies to (literary) texts; if we see interdiscursive power relations as the main factor in determining whether translation will be considered as a "threat" to discursive autonomy and identity, then we cannot avoid raising the same questions about our own discourse. For one thing, applying the same approach to both our research topic and our own discourse may save us from the illusion of "neutral science," and at the same time allow us to meet what I consider one of the basic goals of contemporary cultural sciences: the maximal thematizing of historical-contextual factors with respect to both the object and the subject of discourse. More specifically however, the phenomenon of identity construction seems particularly important within the field of translation studies. Indeed, the unity and identity of this "semi-autonomous (inter-)discipline" (Toury and Lambert 1989:1) are not at all self-evident. Many recent attempts have been made to integrate the various approaches: books such as Snell-Hornby's Translation Studies. An Integrated Approach (1988); journals such as Target (founded in 1989); and conference proceedings such as Translation Studies: the State of the Art (van Leuven-Zwart and Naaijkens 1991). Still, the heterogeneity of those publications reveals precisely the constructed character of the so-called "discipline". Three branches of the humanities form the basis of this construct: linguistics, translation training and comparative literature. All three of them have been competing for a hegemonic position in the field and have often taken a more or less "imperialistic" stance toward each other. Thus Snell-Hornby (1988) appropriates various approaches and concepts without ever transcending the purpose of translator training - perhaps in reaction to the tendency among many translation scholars to reject the possibility of a science of translation didactics. Similarly, in their introduction to Translation, History and Culture, Bassnett and Lefevere (eds., 1990: ix) claim to be addressing translation in general, but then immediately and implicitly reduce "translation" to literary translation. Thus the "cultural turn" advocated in this volume often appears instead to be an attempt to impose the models of literary translation on the discipline as a whole. On the other hand, the lack of a distinct identity for the "discipline" of translation studies has often led to a defective attitude toward other disciplines, with concepts and models thus being imported from various other discourses . A similar diagnosis has been made by Roda P. Roberts (1988) and by Dirk Delabastita (1991).. However, because of the need to preserve the problematic autonomy of translation studies, these borrowings have always been partial. For instance, the introduction of the sociological concept of "norm" by Gideon Toury (1978) has undoubtedly had a decisive influence on the field - but most scholars, out of a firm determination to restrict translation to a binary relationship between texts, have ignored the social-institutional aspects of the concept. More recently, sociocritical notions such as "discourse" have been imported (by Annie Brisset, among others), but again at the expense of its institutional aspect. So it appears that the postulated unity and autonomy of translation studies is based on a specific "doxa" and reinforced by institutional factors such as translation teaching programs, although it is a doxa that severely restricts the questions that may be raised. Indeed, the only common ground for linguists, students of comparative literature, and translation teachers seems to be the (interlinguistically) translated text. Therefore, the existence of a unified discipline demands that all other aspects (i.e. other cultural/ discursive interference, discourse on translation, institutional factors...) be relegated to a "context" which to which appeals may be made a posteriori in order to explain something, but which can never be an actual object of study. I hope to have demonstrated here that such a reductivism is untenable: one cannot distinguish translation from other forms of "discursive migration," translation strategies from discourse on translation and the "alien," or textual procedures from institutional strategies. From this point of view, "translation studies" would proceed as follows: starting from the provisional identification of a discursive practice, we would study the ways in which that discourse constructs its identity, its position relative to other discourses, the various types of interference between them, the ways in which it (or any of its participants) deals with interference, and the relations between those attitudes and the social-institutional positions of their advocates. This "trans-discursive" doctrine (which was already formulated in 1981 by Even-Zohar in his "Call for Transfer Theory") does not seek to be another "theory of translation"; on the contrary, it questions the very possibility of an independent theory or discipline of translation. References and Related Works Angenot, Marc 1989 1889. Un état du discours social (Québec: Le Préambule). Bakker, J.J. 1987 "Tien redenen," Onze Taal 56 (6): 73. Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere, eds. 1990 Translation, History and Culture (London/New York: Pinter). Bauer, Wolfgang 1964 Western Literature and Translation Work in Communist China (Frankfurt-Main/Berlin: Alfred Metzner). Brisset, Annie 1988a "Translation & Parody. Quebec Theatre in the Making," Canadian Literature 117: 92-106. 1988b "Le public et son traducteur. Profil idéologique de la traduction au Québec," TTR I (2): 11-18. 1989 "In Search of a Target Language. The Politics of Theatre Translation in Québec," Target 1 (1): 9-27. 1990 Sociocritique de la traduction. Théâtre et altérité au Québec (1968-1988). (Québec: Le Préambule). Bruguière, Michel 1985 "Langue et culture françaises: les éléments d'une politique internationale," in Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. Symposium, 1018-1024 (Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis S.A.). Calvet, Louis-Jean 1986 "Le français dans tous ses états," Le français dans le monde 203: 24-25. De Geest, Dirk 1992 "The Notion of 'System': Its Theoretical Importance and its Methodological Implications for a Functionalist Translation Theory," in Geschichte, System, Literarische Übersetzung/ Histories, Systems, Literary Translations, edited by Harald Kittel, 32-45 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt). Delabastita, Dirk 1991 "A False Opposition in Translation Studies: Theoretical versus/and Historical Approaches," Target 3 (2): 137-152. Dirckx, Paul 1990 "Notre littérature non pas lue, mais vue par les Français," in Les relations littéraires franco-belges de 1914 à 1940, edited by Robert Frickx, 13-27 (Brussel: VUB Press). Dupuy, Josée 1974 Le roman policier (Paris: Larousse) Edwards, John 1985 Language, Society and Identity (Oxford/ New York: Basil Blackwell). Etiemble, René 1985 "Le babélien," in Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. Symposium, 105-109 (Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis S.A.). Even-Zohar, Itamar 1978 Papers in Historical Poetics (Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics). 1981 "Translation Theory Today: a Call for Transfer Theory," Poetics Today 2 (4): 1-7. 1990 Polysystem Studies, special issue of Poetics Today, 11 (1). Fishman, Joshua A. 1989 Language & Ethnicity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective (Clevedon/ Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters Ltd). Frijhoff, Willem 1988 "Nationale talen, contacttalen, cultuurtalen. Lessen uit een geschiedenis," Kultuurleven 55 (8): 722-728. Lambert, José 1987 "Un modèle descriptif pour l'étude de la littérature. La littérature comme polysystème," Contextos V (9): 47-67. 1989 "La traduction, les langues et la communication de masse. Les ambiguïtés du discours international," Target 1 (2): 215-237. Lambert, José and Clem Robyns 1992 "Translation," in Semiotics. A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture, edited by Roland Posner, Klaus Robering and Thomas A. Sebeok (Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter). Kundera, Milan 1968 La plaisanterie. Traduit par Marcel Aymonin (Paris: Gallimard) 1985 La plaisanterie. Traduction entièrement révisée par Claude Courtot et l'auteur. Version définitive (Paris: Gallimard). Lanson, Gustave 1923 Histoire illustrée de la littérature française (Paris: Hachette). Onstenk, A. J. 1986 "Mijn huis met auto-afdak?" Onze Taal 55 (10): 130-131. Pécheur, Jacques 1986a "Francophonie: état d'urgence et état des lieux," Le français dans le monde 201: 27-28. 1986b "Création d'un Secrétariat à la francophonie. Un front populaire," Le français dans le monde 203: 23. 1990 "Français: un rendez-vous et un renouveau à ne pas manquer. Entretien avec Bernard Aubert," Le français dans le monde 230: 26-28. Poisson, Jacques 1977 "La traduction, facteur d'acculturation?," in La traduction, une profession/ Translating, a Profession. Actes du VIIIe congrès mondial de la Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs, edited by Paul A. Horguelin, 281-291 (Ottawa: Conseil de traducteurs et interprètes du Canada). Pucheu, René 1985 "Question d'identité: Touche pas à mon pote!," Le français dans le monde 195: 14-15. Redactie Onze Taal 1990 "Engels als instructietaal," Onze Taal 59 (2-3): 24. Rédaction Le Magazine littéraire 1973 "Le roman noir," Le Magazine littéraire 78: 10. Roberts, Roda P. 1988 "The Need for Systematization of Translation Theory," in Translation, Our Future, edited by Paul Nekeman, 117-223 (Maastricht: Euroterm). Robyns, Clem 1990 "The Normative Model of Twentieth Century Belles Infidèles. Detective Novels in French Translation," Target 2 (1): 23-42. 1991 "'Er Zijn Geen Waarden Meer'. Populaire cultuur vandaag," in De prins en de kikker. Interacties tussen populaire en gecanoniseerde cultuur, edited by Joris Vlasselaers, 14-32 (Leuven/ Antwerpen: VAL). 1992 "Towards a Socio-semiotics of Translation," Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 1992 (1/2): 211-226. forthc. "Defending the National Canon: the French Intellectual Establishment and the Battle against Franglais," in Kanonisierungsprozesse, edited by Andreas Poltermann, 1994 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt). Roessingh, Marius 1990 "Engels aan de universiteit," Onze Taal 59 (5): 76. Schrauwers, Arno 1986 "De veramerikaansing van onze taal," Onze Taal 55 (5): 66-67. 1990 "De strapatsen van Ritzen," Onze Taal 59 (2-3), 23. Simon, Sherry 1989 L'inscription sociale de la traduction au Québec (Québec: Office de la langue française). 1990 "Paradoxes du discours québécois sur la traduction," Meta XXXV (1): 214-218. Snell-Hornby, Mary 1988 Translation Studies. An Integrated Approach (Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Toury, Gideon 1978 "The Nature and Role of Norms in Literary Translation," in Literature and Translation, edited by James S. Holmes, José Lambert and Raymond Van Den Broeck, 83-100 (Leuven: Acco). 1980 In Search of a Theory of Translation (Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics). Toury, Gideon and José Lambert 1989 "On Target's Targets," Target 1 (1): 1-7. Van Leuven-Zwart, Kitty M. and Ton Naaijkens, eds. 1991 Translation Studies: the State of the Art. Proceedings of the First James S. Holmes Symposium on Translation Studies (Amsterdam/ Atlanta: Rodopi). Wauters, Stef 1991 "Langue, littérature, traduction dans la France romantique. Le discours sur la traduction dans l'Encyclopédie des Gens du Monde." M.A. diss., Romance Languages, K.U.Leuven. Weinreich, Uriel 1966 [1953] Languages in contact (The Hague: Mouton). Ysmal, Pierre 1973 "Du nouveau dans la Série Noire," Le Magazine littéraire 78: 25-27. PAGE 428 Poetics Today 15:3