(Approaches To Translation Studies 40) Gisella M. Vorderobermeier (Ed.) - Remapping Habitus in Translation Studies-Rodopi (2014)

Remapping Habitus
in Translation Studies
APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION STUDIES

Founded by James S. Holmes
Edited by

Volume 40
Henri Bloemen
Cees Koster
Ton Naaijkens
Remapping Habitus
in Translation Studies
Edited by
Gisella M. Vorderobermeier
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014
Cover image: Quotes and central terms from Bourdieu and e.g. Aquinas
on habitus as a collage, designed by Konrad Vorderobermeier
With kind support by:
Cover design: Studio Pollmann

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3842-4
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-1086-7
Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam New York, NY 2014
Printed in The Netherlands
Contents
Acknowledgements .....................................................................................
Introduction: (Translatorial) Habitus A Concept that Upsets

(in Translation Studies)? ..............................................................................
Gisella M. Vorderobermeier (University of Graz)

PART I: GENERAL THEORETICAL ASPECTS
Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation

Studies?........................................................................................................ 29
Jean-Marc Gouanvic (Concordia University, Montral)
Translators Identity Work: Introducing Micro-Sociological Theory

of Identity to the Discussion of Translators Habitus ................................. 43
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy (Tel Aviv University)
PART II: INTRA-DISCIPLINARY INTERRELATIONS (RE)VISITED
Remapping Habitus: Norms, Habitus and the Theorisation of Agency

in Translation Practice and Translation Scholarship ................................... 59
Sameh F. Hanna (University of Salford)
Translatorial Hexis and Cultural Honour: Translating Captain

Corellis Mandolin into Greek .................................................................... 73
Kalliopi Pasmatzi (University of Manchester)
Interpreters in the Making: Habitus as a Conceptual Enhancement

of Boundary Theory? ................................................................................... 93
Nadja Grbi (University of Graz)
The Interface between Bourdieus Habitus and Latours Agency:

The Work Trajectories of Two Finnish Translators ..................................... 111
Kristiina Abdallah (University of Vaasa)
Contents
PART III: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEORY AND EMPIRICAL

STUDIES METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS
Oral History as a Research Method to Study Interpreters Habitus ............ 135

Torikai Kumiko (Rikkyo University, Tokyo)
The (Re-)Construction of Habitus: A Survey-Based Account of

Literary Translators Trajectories Put into Methodological Perspective ..... 149
The Influence of the Habitus on Translatorial Style:

Some Methodological Considerations Based on the Case of Yorgos
Himonas Rendering of Hamlet into Greek ................................................ 163
Vasso Yannakopoulou (University of Cyprus)
PART IV: POLITICAL AND/OR CRITICAL ASPECTS OF THE HABITUS
CONCEPT IN TRANSLATION STUDIES
Bourdieus Habitus and Deweys Habits: Complementary Views

of the Social? ............................................................................................... 185
Moira Inghilleri (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
The Historian as Translator: Applying Pierre Bourdieu to the

Translation of History ................................................................................. 203
Mara Carmen frica Vidal Claramonte (University of Salamanca)
Contributors to this Volume ........................................................................ 219

Index ........................................................................................................... 223
Acknowledgements
The present volume goes back to an international symposium, conceptualised
by its editor with Michaela Wolf as co-organiser and held in Graz in 2012. At
the same time, it is expanding the thematic scope at the core of that event. I
would like to thank everyone at the department for their help with organisational
matters. An especially heartfelt thank you goes to my former younger colleagues
at the Department of Translation Studies: Matthias Apfelthaler, Christina PeinWeber, Zrinka Primorac Aberer, Clara Reiter and Regina Rogl. They were a
great and reliable team (not only) in the context of the symposium, always
being there, when- and wherever help was needed. If the international symposium was so well remembered by its participants, this was to a considerable
part their merit.
With a view to the publication process, I would like to express my special gratitude to the anonymous peer reviewers for their thorough reading and their perceptive and insightful comments and helpful recommendations for the
individual authors. At Rodopi, I am grateful to the series editors, Henri Bloemen, Cees Koster and Ton Naaijkens, for kindly and enthusiastically welcoming
the volume into the series Approaches to Translation Studies as well as to Masja
Horn for competently and uncomplicatedly seeing through the whole publication process. Also, I would like to thank my brother, Konrad Vorderobermeier,
very much for most carefully copy-editing the volume as well as developing
the draft for its cover.
For generous financial support thanks are due to Steiermrkische Landesregierung, Referat fr Wissenschaft und Forschung and the individuals responsible there.
Graz, January 2014
Introduction: (Translatorial) Habitus A Concept that

Upsets1 (in Translation Studies)?
1. Bourdieus Habitus Concept Some Characteristics thereof and

Genealogical Remarks
Before delving into the wealth and fortunes of Bourdieus thought and of his
habitus concept in relation to translation studies in general and the rationale of
this volume in particular, it makes sense first to expound this Bourdieusian concept and its genealogy in some depth.2
Bourdieu himself acknowledges the Aristotelian-Thomistic roots of his habitus concept without letting us know much more beyond the passing comment
that he had completely rethought it (Bourdieu 1990a: 10). Part of this Aristotelian-Thomistic body of thought came to the fore in Bourdieus exegesis,
while some of it appears to have been lost or neglected.
Rist, in juxtaposing text passages from the writings of Aquinas and Pierre
Bourdieu, presented us with something akin to a little work on the genealogy
of the concept (Rist 1984: 212),3 as he chooses to call it. According to the author, one might easily form the impression that Bourdieus habitus concept, regardless of the fact that it reaches far back into philosophical tradition, in some
ways resembles a foundling [] of unknown origins, that our author has
adopted so thoroughly that it seems justified to ascribe to him paternity (ibid.:
202).4 Rist regards the commonalities with the Thomistic interpretation as being
merely on the conceptual level, based on the respective specific uses tied to
different preoccupations (ibid.: 210).5
The textual indications offered by Rist point towards five essential elements
which characterise the habitus concept and are common to the works of both
Bourdieu and Aquinas. In addition to the characteristic mediating position of
the habitus (ibid.: 204), which is expounded in more detail below, and to its inherent creativity (ibid.: 205206), further notable features include the stabilisation of the habitus as a generative principle for a diverse range of possible
deeds or actions that share a certain level of similarity (ibid.: 205). Rist goes
on to adduce the quasi automatic continuation of the effectiveness of the habitus
10
in this character as a generative principle geared to certain acts (cf. ibid.: 206),
whereby the habitus moreover proves to be hard to change (cf. ibid.). It is furthermore the case that both Aquinas and Bourdieu imply an amor fati, a tendency to make a virtue out of necessity and also both discuss the notion of a
second nature (ibid.: 207208). These common aspects could be extended
even further and complemented by others. The same applies to an even greater
extent to the aspects of changeability, (in)determinacy and (in)completeness of
the habitus, which in Bourdieus work no longer occupy a central place but are
nevertheless present. In a genealogical sense, it is necessary here to mention
passages in Aquinas works which revolve around the creativity of the habitus,
the freedom not to use or implement any of the activities made possible by the
habitus as well as the possibility to counteract ones habitus (Nickl 2001:
5253, n232; my translation). One element that is immediately apparent is the
perception in Bourdieuss thought of the habitus occupying a middle position
(cf. also the instances cited in Rist 1984: 204).6 The Aristotelian understanding
of movement as the reality of the possible as the possible might have resonated here,7 even if this supposition cannot be supported with concrete text
excerpts. The temporal relationship mentioned here certainly seems to have become rooted in the social sense within Bourdieus theory, as can be seen especially in his considerations of the (increasing) correspondence between
habitus with specific characteristics of a given field. In contrast, the thought of
a process towards human perfection, central to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, together with its embeddedness in ethics gives way, in Bourdieus
thought, to a more descriptive approach. Correspondingly, the idea of an entirety, for which habitus as a concept in its various interpretations by different
thinkers might stand, is not, in the first instance, something that might be attained or created but, here, is rather presented as being at the very basis of fundamental human existence qua social existence. This is also the case for other
aspects like the physical rootedness of the habitus; for Aristotle, the notion of
a potential dualism of body and soul did not yet pose a problem and (excepting
the problematic question of the boundaries between mind and soul) it was not
questioned by medieval philosophy either. The embodied character of the habitus as seen by Bourdieu also owes something to other more contemporary philosophical currents and thinkers (cf. Bourdieu 1990a: 10, 12). Regardless of the
detachment of an ethical (and consequently also individually anchored) and
theological concern, which we find in Bourdieu, the possibility envisaged in
the traditional doctrine of habitus of converting the strive for distinction, the libido virtutis, into distinguished striving, the virtus libidinis remains, as Nickl
states, in Bourdieus system in the form of questioning the possibility of selftranscendence (Nickl 2001: 219; my translation). The tension mentioned here
is not atypical for Bourdieus work as a whole.8 It can, for example, be seen in
Introduction
11
the question of his subscription to modernism with its claim to universal enlightenment on the one side, and in aspects of critique of reason and emphasis
on plurality, reminiscent of postmodern thought, on the other (cf. Schwingel
1995: 147163).
Bourdieus early works such as the ethnological studies on Algerian society
(Bourdieu 2000a, 2000b), the studies collected in Le Bal des clibataires, which
portray something akin to twin ethnographies to the Algerian studies and in
which Barns farming society is examined (Bourdieu 2002) or his epilogue to
the French translation of Panofskys classic work on the history of art, Gothic
Architecture and Scholasticism, all contain the habitus concept in its nascent
form. It grew and developed into the form Bourdieu ascribed it with as a result
of an ongoing effort to overcome the long-standing problematic and unproductive antonymous relationship between objectivism and subjectivism (cf. among
others Bourdieu & Wacquant 2006: 153, Bourdieu 1990a: 10).
Just like other key concepts such as field (and social space), capital, doxa,
hexis and illusio, with which it is inseparably associated, the concept of habitus
is subject to constant modifications throughout Bourdieus work, resulting from
the concepts status as a cognitive tool. Bourdieus treatment of his own constantly developing concept is hardly surprising when we take into consideration
his pragmatic behaviour (in the best possible sense), i.e. his approach void of
fetishism to the prominent theoretical categories and bodies of thought presented by other thinkers (cf. Colliot-Thlne 2005: 106109 with regard to
Bourdieu 1990a: 28; my translation). This approach includes, as in the case of
German phenomenology, the freedom not to subscribe to any related predominant, structured forms of exegesis rooted in the French academic field (cf. ibid.:
111).
One of the well-known and oft-cited definitions of habitus in Bourdieus writing
is this:
[S]ystems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to
function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize
practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without
presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively regulated and regular without being in
any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without
being the product of the organizing action of a conductor. (Bourdieu 1990a: 53; emphasis in the original)
The dispositions mentioned in the above quotation are reflected in common

schemes of perception, conception and action (ibid.: 60) which are embodied
in a silent pedagogic process whose unspokenness makes the embodying
12
process all the more durable. Thus habitus becomes a question of embodied
history, in contrast to the fields, which are history having become institution.
This is not to be understood as abstract in any way at all. As Bourdieu writes:
What is learned by body is not something that one has like knowledge that
can be brandished, but something that one is (Bourdieu 1990a: 73). Bourdieus
theory owes much, both in its psychological basis (and in the very fact of psychological thought being at its basis at all) and in the physical, embodied aspect
mentioned above, to Merleau-Pontys influence. The following passage can be
seen as programmatic, extending far beyond the scope of the publication in
whose introduction it was printed:
In keeping with the usual view, the goal of sociology is to uncover the most deeply
buried structures of the different social worlds that make up the social universe, as
well as the mechanisms that tend to ensure their reproduction or transformation.
Merging with psychology, though with a kind of psychology undoubtedly quite different from the most widely accepted image of this science, such an exploration of objective structures is at one and the same time an exploration of the cognitive structures
that agents bring to bear in their practical knowledge of the social worlds especially
the division into dominant and dominated in the different fields and the principles of
vision and division that agents apply to them. (Bourdieu 1996: 1)
In Bourdieus theory of practice as practice, the habitus takes on a key role

as a mediating factor between objective facts and subjective characteristics.
Habitus stands in constant relation to field, whereby the two notions are connected by a complicit ontologique (Bourdieu 1982: 47), which is to say that
field thrives on the habitus of its individual agents and exists as a result of the
investments made possible by habitus. Similarly, habitus, or at least specific
habitus, is to be considered in relation to field. Fields such as the literary, legal,
political and scientific fields that Bourdieu studied define themselves according
to their autonomy and rest on the positions which are held within them. Their
intrinsic logic is expressed in the weight ascribed to different types of capital
(economic, cultural, social, or symbolic capital) and the type of investments
(enjeux) required in order to succeed in a struggle to retain or improve a given
position.
2. The Habitus Concept in Translation Studies and the Perspectives

of a Sociology of Translation
Simeonis article (1998), albeit much criticised for its submissiveness-thesis,
remains the locus classicus in translation studies for any work pertaining to
translatorial habitus.9 It was already in this seminal article that the habitus
was decidedly not addressed as something which would lead us to dismiss
Introduction
13
other approaches (the author makes special mention of descriptive and cognitive
approaches in this regard), but as a concept with the power to enrich and, yes,
also to challenge those approaches (cf. Simeoni 1998).
One of the foremost critics of the ways in which the Bourdieusian tradition
has been applied to translation studies work, although he also combines approaches ascribable to Bourdieu and Gumilev to his primarily Luhmannian approach
as well, is Sergey Tyulenev. A rather scathing critique of his focusses on what
he terms, in best Luhmann tradition, being spellbound by the anthropocentric
vision of social processes (Tyulenev 2010: 165). He also finds some of the research undertaken to be wanting in its own terms: In fact, sometimes the term
habitus sounds rather like a sophisticated replacement for the pedestrian biography (ibid.: 167). He also contends, quite correctly, that some are tempted
to confound good intentions (i.e. good for the discipline, good for the practicing translator) with good in the sense of scientifically tenable and sound
(cf. Tyulenev 2012: 229).
Sociological research in the context of translation studies has been pursued
(explicitly labelled as such) for approximately one and a half decades.10 It
seems, now, timely therefore to delimit potential future developments as reflected in the use of one prominent concept and in the process to briefly look
into and analyse introductions to other related thematic volumes and special issues. This can help towards a deeper understanding of various different positions and various different manners of defining the contours of the new research
area, at least insofar as they are reflected in the respective names, labels or concepts envisaged, i.e. chosen to describe this new area of research, as well as
making it possible to trace shifts over the course of time.
Whilst a prevailing focus on a few selected conceptual frameworks might
have been de rigueur, perhaps even indispensable, in the first phase of the development of sociological approaches to translation and interpreting, Inghilleri
suggested in 2005 that a further diversification was to be expected, possibly even
to the extent of a certain eclecticism with respect to social theory or in the form
of an evolution of divergent and competing approaches (Inghilleri 2005: 142).
She also sees the gap in approaches to translating versus interpreting as possessing the potential to give way, in the aftermath or wake of future sociological accomplishments, to a meta-view, which might allow us [to] perceive them
instead as different but related socially and politically informed activities
(ibid.). Such expansion or broadening of scope could probably pave the way towards a stronger inclusion of translatorial activities other than literary translation,
which for a long time and for easily comprehensible reasons was the prime focus
of academic research (cf. also Tyulenevs critique in 2010b: 168).11 Of late, Tyulenev has postulated the following in regard to the state of the art and research
desiderata: The research should be both intensive and extensive: (1) we should
14
encompass more of the existing modern theoretical sociological thought and (2)
we should go deeper into each one of them (Tyulenev 2011: 203).
Kinnunen und Koskinens introduction to the thematic volume with the programmatic title Translators Agency, whose declared aim is to theoretically delimit the elusive notion of agency and to activate its functionality (cf. Kinnunen
& Koskinen 2010: 4), seems at first sight to be promising. The underlying definition of agency in the volume, as can be seen in the result of its constituent
studies, is willingness and ability to act (ibid.: 6). That the editors succumb
to questionable conceptual shifts in their delineation of agency from habitus
gravely limits the readers trust in the editors claims for the volume as formulated in their introduction. Milton & Bandias (2009) collective volume, on the
other hand, presents itself as conceptually open from the outset and includes a
number of valuable contributions as well.
It remains as hard as ever to ascertain whether sociological issues have progressed to the extent of becoming a core area within translation studies, as Wolf
(2007a: 6) finds desirable, rather than occupying a less influential position as a
sub-discipline or even as an aspect of a sub-discipline, just as it is hard to
ascertain whether such shifts in status can take place without sacrificing theoretical complexity. Wolf (2010a: 34) emphasises that sociological engagement
with translation as a phenomenon has already experienced a number of stages
which accumulate to justify the notion of a sociological turn.
The contribution of a sociology of translation (studies), or at least the potential contribution (cf. below), to the self-reflexion of the discipline can hardly
be overemphasised. Following Bourdieu, we could locate this contribution, for
example, in a socio-analysis of the translation scholar, by which means the position occupied or claimed by the scholar would be examined in relation to the
position within the scientific field from which he or she formulates his or her
theories (cf. e.g. Gouanvic 2007b: 9192 and this volume). The sociology of
translation can also become tangible in relation to the incitements of systems
theory where, relying on the Luhmannian concepts of first and second-order
observation, one begins to fundamentally problematize the relationship between the described and the one who does the describing (cf. Hermans 1999:
146147, 150).
3. The Aims of the Volume

What do we mean by remapping in the context of the current volume and
what might such an undertaking entail? If habitus already means a sense of
place (cf. Hillier & Rooksby 2002), how can it be remapped? Whilst the
habitus concept has long since made its way into urbanisation studies and ge-
Introduction
15
ography, thus becoming intricately connected with concepts pertaining to space

and place in various novel ways (cf. Bridge 2011), this, of course, is not our
focus here. Perhaps the spatial metaphor should not be stretched too far and we
ought instead to opt for a reshuffling along the lines of what has been achieved
to date and what challenges are awaiting us. Whereas Gouanvic could postulate
in 2002 that [t]he time has not yet come to criticise his [Bourdieus] social theory. The important task is, in the first place, to apply it to bring out its specific
contribution to translation studies (Gouanvic 2002: 159), this is no longer the
case today. Although it might well be a justified and important theoretical step
(and certainly one that cannot be skipped without endangering the entire scientific enterprise) to first reassure oneself of the theory on its own terms, it seems
artificial and even somewhat isolationist to separate Bourdieus thinking from
its critical reception in various different disciplines, geographical contexts and
last but not least in various different waves of reception (cf. with regard to the
latter amongst others Buchholz 2009, Frhlich & Rehbein 2009, Lizardo 2012,
Wacquant 1993; cf. also Frhlich 2009). This complexity of approaches and
considerations by no means simplifies our endeavour.
Bourdieus sociology, particularly his concept of the habitus, is firmly anchored within the sociology of translation, resulting chiefly from the works of
individual researchers (in alphabetical order Gouanvic 1999, 2007; Inghilleri
2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2006; Sela-Sheffy 1991, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010; Simeoni
1995, 1998, 2005; Wolf 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2012). This research has provided
an impetus for an increasing number of research projects which adopt the habitus concept as an analytical tool. In such cases, there is always a real danger,
lying in the temptation to pursue an application-centred approach with a tendency to neglect the fundamental commitment to a necessary interconnection
between conceptual and methodological aspects. The latter has been emphasised in a number of seminal works on translation sociology to date. This volume therefore aims to reassess the role and application of the habitus concept in
translation studies, not least in order to counteract a possible lack of methodological criteria and to tackle the theoretical arbitrariness which might otherwise
become more common in the ongoing empirical application of the habitus.
On the one hand, this publication deliberately concentrates on the reception
and application of habitus as an individual and highly influential concept in the
realms of the sociology of translation. On the other hand, by critically engaging
with this Bourdieusian concept, it aspires not only to re-estimate interdisciplinary interfaces but also to reassess various contrasting approaches within the
discipline. The possible points of contact between a sociology of translation inspired by Bourdieu or other sociologists and various theoretical approaches
within translation studies (e.g. Descriptive Translation Studies; approaches informed by cultural studies; cognitive approaches; work on translation and con-
16
flict and on social activism) need to be clarified, as does the question of the
added value these relations bring to the habitus concept. Furthermore, a profound and robust theoretical foundation in translation studies will help to foster
and strengthen the perception of the habitus concept beyond the realms of our
discipline. The overall intention of this volume, ultimately, is to contribute to
the consolidation of the strong conceptual and methodological claims made by
the sociology of translation in its undisputed role as one of the most essential
and productive orientations within our discipline today.
4. The Contributions
The collective volume is divided into four parts in an attempt to exploit to the
fullest possible extent the close interrelatedness which a concentration on one
predominant concept allows.
The contributions in Part I, General Theoretical Aspects, give voice to one
of the major concerns at the core of a volume like this, that is, the necessity of
examining various general assumptions surrounding the habitus concept. The
papers ask questions as to which of these assumptions are indispensable if we
want to study the social formation of translators and interpreters in a theoretically grounded way. This seems all the more important when we recall in what
stage of Bourdieus reception in general the development of a translation sociology taking its lead from the sociologists theory has gained theoretical and
empirical momentum. For we are currently at a point in time where one commentators assessment rings particularly true, namely that Bourdieus theory
of practice is now essentially free-floating, travelling widely across the disciplines and geographies, unmoored from the society in which it was developed
(Goodman 2009: 95).12 Who could possibly be more aware of and sensitised towards what such conceptual travels entail than a translation studies scholar (cf.
Susam-Sarajeva 2006)? At the same time, it is imperative to gauge the extent to
which the concept ought to be enhanced in its application to translation studies.
Jean-Marc Gouanvic, in his opening contribution, Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation Studies?, argues more from
a perspective of the inherent theoretical logic of the Bourdieusian theory than
from a reappraisal of the contexts of its development, based on the fact that
taking up the first aspect mentioned above (i. e. general assumptions) a close
reading of Bourdieu is required before being able to introduce elements of other
theories. Thus he also emphasises the necessity of not losing sight of the intricate intertwining of Bourdieus concepts, which he demonstrates with the
heuristic notions of field, habitus and illusio. The author raises the question of
Introduction
17
the habitus concepts (accession to) sociological legitimacy in translation studies. He goes on to discuss the fruitfulness of the habitus concept in translation
studies based on a comparison of the respective habitus of two famous twentieth-century French translators, Maurice-Edgar Coindreau and Michel Duhamel.
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy, in Translators Identity Work: Introducing Micro-Sociological Theory of Identity to the Discussion of Translators Habitus, is concerned with the necessary enhancement of Bourdieus theory of practice as
practice both on its own terms and in making sense of questions surrounding
translatorial habitus. Her experience as a translation studies scholar researching
the position, role and status of Israeli literary translators inspired her to try to
introduce notions of identity work into the discussion of translators habitus.
She makes reference to Erving Goffman and the American tradition of microsociology as a potentially useful tool to help gauging difference and change.
Thus the author addresses directly a long-standing criticism of Bourdieus theory: the oft-cited alleged inability to account for the multiplicity and the variability of dispositions in individuals belonging to the same group.
Part II, Intra-Disciplinary Interrelations (Re)Visited, is centred around explorations into the points of contact with other approaches in translation studies
as a whole (Descriptive Translation Studies with its norm concept) but also with
other approaches within translation and interpreting sociology (Latour and
Boundary Theory) and with those who engage directly with Bourdieusian sociology from a critical angle.
Sameh F. Hanna, in his contribution entitled Remapping Habitus: Norms,
Habitus and the Theorisation of Agency in Translation Practice and Translation
Scholarship, discusses his research on Arabian translators of Shakespeare and
demonstrates a necessary link between research aiming at the translators habitus and the tradition of the discussion of norms within translation studies. At
the same time, this contribution can be seen as a cyclical response to Jean-Marc
Gouanvics insistence, in the opening chapter of the volume, on using the full
array of concepts a Bourdieusian approach has to offer, as the author here once
again stresses the need to be aware of the interwoven character of Bourdieus
concepts, which he demonstrates with reference to the notions of doxa and
hexis. To this extent, his contribution arches back to the scope of the general
theoretical aspects addressed in the first section. Kalliopi Pasmatzis contribution, Translatorial Hexis and Cultural Honour: Translating Captain Corellis
Mandolin into Greek, is dedicated to an analysis of the translation of de
Bernires novel following the work of Charlston (2012) and engages one of
the lesser-applied notions within Bourdieus theory, hexis, to explain how the
translator adopted an honour-seeking stance within the text, which must always be seen in relation to (the intersection of) different fields; in this case, the
18
cultural, historiographic and literary fields as well as the wider social space
of Greece as a setting. The paper explicates why different textual elements or
outcomes manifest in the translation under scrutiny, such as euphemisation,
sanitising, hyper-correction etc., come about. Nadja Grbi uses boundary theory as coined by Thomas F. Gieryn in her paper Interpreters in the Making:
Habitus as a Conceptual Enhancement of Boundary Theory? to explore how
sign language interpreters in Austria go about the construction of their professional sphere. The complementary application of Bourdieus habitus to her research framework derived from boundary theory enables her to move further
conceptually, tracing processes of social change whilst continuing to examine
underlying forces and more stable dispositions whose specific shape affects the
dynamic processes. She ultimately arrives at the conclusion that both theories
are useful to glean a deeper understanding of group construction processes, particularly when applied to different phases in these processes. Kristiina Abdallah, in The Interface between Bourdieus Habitus and Latours Agency: The
Work Trajectories of Two Finnish Translators, measures the possibilities that
arise when interpreting her data from longitudinal interviews with Finnish translators not only within a Latourian framework, but also relying on the habitus
concept. She sees the added value of the habitus concept above all in the opportunity to shed light on dispositions of individuals including emotions considered as non-negligible in research on agency. The concept of hysteresis
allows her to explain better situations where (in Hirschmanns terms) the translators exert voice by leaving existing networks. Also and complementary to
this, the author reveals tendencies with regard to changes in the habitus of the
translators, whose trajectories she examined relying on their own statements.
Part III, The Relationship between Theory and Empirical Studies, focusses
on methodological aspects arising from the application of the concept to translation studies. It takes stock of which empirical material has been and is currently being used by researchers with regard to habitus within translation
studies. Ensuing questions are: How is habitus conceptualised in the (auto)biographies of translators and interpreters (whether deliberately or unintentionally)? What specific characteristics can we identify in surveys conducted
amongst translators and interpreters in terms of the habitus concept and what
insights do we gain from the reconstruction of the translatorial habitus resulting
from such empirical studies? Most importantly, the nature of the relation between empirical data and theory and how it can be applied usefully to the translatorial habitus must be clarified or examined again and again.
Generally speaking, the Bourdieusian theory implies an important warning
against succumbing to what he calls a biographical illusion, which is to say
the temptation to interpret into the trajectory post festum (with hindsight) an
Introduction
19
element of directedness which might not have been there in the first place. The
article Biographical Illusion (Bourdieu 1998) is a key text in this regard. It
has been much discussed in relation to biographical research and has also frequently been, seemingly at times almost deliberately, profoundly misunderstood.13 According to Bourdieu, the biographical illusion is not, as has often
been insinuated, primarily to be found amongst interviewees;14 rather it tends
to occur much more frequently among interviewers or researchers, who exhibit
the natural complicity of the biographer (ibid.: 76; my translation). This perception of a constantia sibi is encouraged by a society which has available all
sorts of institutions of integration and unification of the self (ibid.: 78; my
translation). Contrary to what some critics might suggest, the text contains neither a general nor a less categorical rejection of the biographic enterprise. For
Bourdieu, rather, the decisive point is the differentiation between the concrete
individual and the constructed individual, i.e. the person acting (ibid.: 83; my
translation), whereby the latter always acts within a given field. To accommodate this difference in ones research means to take upon oneself the task of
construction work,15 or even the prior reconstruction of the series of succesive
states of the field (ibid.; my translation)16 within which a life is lived, whereby
Bourdieu also talks of social aging in this regard (ibid.: 82). Thus the biographical events are themselves to be understood as as many placements and
changes of place in the social space (ibid.; emphasis in original and my translation), which itself is also in constant flux.
For the specific elucidation of the dispositions of translators and interpreters
which is central to the scope of this volume, such a prior reconstruction is further complicated by the limited extent to which the translatorial field can in fact
be considered to exist in its own right. It is therefore a particularly demanding
task to translate the existence of the field back from the level of theoretical, if
empirically saturated, argumentation to the basic needs of empirical research,
not least because of the sheer number of decisions involved. The perception or
recognition of the habitus itself is, indeed, challenge enough, as Bourdieu admits in the following passage, circumscribing habitus with the notion of practical identity:
But this practical identity reveals itself to intuition only in the inexhaustible series of
its successive manifestations, in such a way that the only manner of apprehending it
as such consists perhaps in attempting to recapture it in the unity of an integrative narrative []. (Bourdieu 2004: 78; my emphasis)
In this volume, the focus lies not only on the uses of oral history and the specificities of surveys, which must be taken into account when eliciting data from
which to study translators and interpreters habitus, but also on how insights
into a translators habitus might be connected with concrete textual instances
20
within the same translators work in a methodological sound and illuminating

way.
In her paper Oral History as a Research Method to Study Interpreters
Habitus, which is based on the example of five famous and pioneering simultaneous interpreters in Japan, Torikai Kumiko concentrates on the uses and
potential of oral history as a method to elucidate interpreters habitus. In so
doing she sheds light on what relevance methodological questions in qualitative
research such as truthfulness, representativeness, validity and reliability might
have in the context of research projects that aim at translators and interpreters
habitus. Ultimately, on the basis of her case study and with recourse to lifestory interviews, she is able to demonstrate the contradictions which might
arise between what interpreters say they do and how they act, thus shedding
light on the gradual evolution of an interpreting habitus as well as the ensuing
practices. My paper, The (Re-)Construction of Habitus: A Survey-Based Account of Literary Translators Trajectories Put into Methodological Perspective (Gisella M. Vorderobermeier), focusses on surveys as a means to this
end, emphasising the temporal dimension as laid down in Bourdieus differential anthropology of symbolic forms, where two approaches towards time
(project and protension) are distinguishable. The data I use to illustrate this
stem from a survey among literary translators in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I propose two methodological steps in the process of analysing such data,
in addition to devoting some thought to another time-related question in the
form of hysteresis. In Vasso Yannakopoulous contribution, The Influence
of the Habitus on Translatorial Style: Some Methodological Considerations
Based on the Case of Yorgos Himonas Rendering of Hamlet into Greek the
author proposes a way in which to grasp the interrelation between modus
operandi and opus operatum. She concentrates on the question of style both
in its presence in Bourdieus work and as a topic of discussion in translation
studies and proposes the notions patterns and deviance regarding expected
translatorial choices to shed light on how the translatorial habitus might be
traceable on a micro-level, i.e. on the level of the concrete textual production
of a given (literary) translator.
The rationale behind Part IV, Political and/or Critical Aspects of the Habitus
Concept in Translation Studies, is to give more prominence to questions pertaining to the political and critical potential of the habitus concept in translation
studies. These are questions which have seldom been addressed specifically
and in their own right in translation studies, beyond the fundamental acknowledgment of the Bourdieusian approach as a critical approach per se, along with
a general recognition of its importance to translation studies as a self-reflexive
discipline (cf. Gambier 2007).
Introduction
21
In his monograph, Strecker (2012: 84) endeavours to systematise concurring

approaches to power and arrives at the conclusion that Bourdieus theory represents the most promising theoretical framework for an unabridged notion of
social power (my translation). At the same time, the most laudatory commentator is nonetheless the severest and most fundamental critic, as he goes on to
accuse Bourdieu of not accomplishing his self-imposed programme (ibid.:
101104). According to Sonderegger, another author who examines the critical
or emancipatory potential of Bourdieus theory, both types of critique are
needed: that which she calls negative critique, which she sees exemplified in
Bourdieus works, and that which she names affirmative critique, which characterises de Rancires position as one of Bourdieus most fervent critics (cf.
Sonderegger 2011).
There is an abundance of literature referring to the various forms of habitus
specific to new social conditions beyond those studied by Bourdieu (e.g. in the
so-called knowledge-society), whether or not specific instances of such writing
take their lead from text passages in Bourdieu which describe the habitus clive
(cf. Bittlingmayer 2002).17 Schultheis, on the other hand, argues not only that sociology (and by extension Bourdieusian sociology) and its concomitant theorisations are especially tangible and open to evaluation in terms of their explanatory
power in times of crisis, but also, and by further extension, that the habitus is
particularly easy to gauge under such circumstances (Schultheis 2013: 105).
Usually, in the reception of Bourdieus work to date, the vis insita of the
habitus and more generally of various stable and not easily changeable properties in Bourdieus conceptualisations, has been subject to criticism pointing towards traces of determinism. Suderland (2004 and 2009a), however, established
that the hysteresis of the habitus can function as a resource with which human
dignity can be maintained in extreme conditions.18
Within the volume at hand, this enquiry into the critical potential of the habitus is undertaken from two vantage points. Moira Inghilleri, in Bourdieus
Habitus and Deweys Habits: Complementary Views of the Social?, juxtaposes
(dis-)similarities between Bourdieus notion of habitus and the notion of habit
as understood by the pragmatist American philosopher John Dewey. She uses
this theoretical background in her case study investigating the question of interpreters impartiality in a situation such as the much discussed Postville case.
Mara Carmen frica Vidal Claramontes contribution, The Historian as
Translator: Applying Pierre Bourdieu to the Translation of History, reads the
case surrounding a controversial entry on Franciso Franco, which was written
by the historian Luis Surez and included into the Diccionario biogrfico espaol, published by the Spanish Real Academia de la Historia (2011), through
a Bourdieusian lens. On the basis of these interpretations, she expounds on the
notion of history as translation.
22
All of the contributions collected in this volume, by engaging with the habitus
concept, lend expression to the conviction that it is indeed a concept which
upsets, i.e. a concept with the potential to make a difference to research agendas. Each paper being based on unique research experiences, they are cutting
across diverse traditions of Bourdieu reception within and beyond the discipline.
We do hope that this volume can help to find and maintain the delicate balance
between consolidating an area of research by insisting on methodological rigour
as well as on the sine-qua-non of a given body of thought on the one hand and
being critically inventive on the other.
Notes
1 The title of the interview to which I am alluding here, Une science qui drange, in the authorised English translation reads as A Science which Makes Trouble (Bourdieu 1993: 8).
2 For a more detailed account on the latter cf. Vorderobermeier 2013a.
3 In the French original : petit travail sur la gnalogie des concepts.
4 In the French original: une sorte d enfant trouv, la gnalogie inconnue, que notre auteur
aurait si bien adopt quil serait fond en revendiquer la paternit.
5 In the French original: uniquement au niveau de la dfinition du concept and li des proccupations diffrents respectively.
6 A position the concept attained as a result of Aquinas potency doctrine.
7 Aristotle, Physik, III, 1 (201a 1011) quoted in H. C. Weies translation in the Greek German
parallel text edited by Nlle (2008: 62); my translation.
8 This holds true for other aspects, too. For instance, as Gartman (2013) was able to show, there
was also a certain growing resemblance (to some degree and in some respects) between Bourdieus cultural sociology and notions entertained by the late Frankfurt School (especially Adorno).
9 However, cf. Sela-Sheffy 1991 and Gouanvic 1995 for an early discussion of the concept; cf.
also Simeoni 1995.
10 Cf. also Inghilleri 2009, Wolf 2010, Vorderobermeier 2013b.
11 In addition to some remarkable exceptions who ventured into other areas comparatively early
(cf. Vidal Claramonte 2005; Koskinen 2008), it is also worth mentioning Bielsa Mialet (2010)
in this context.
12 For possible explanations on why the reception of Bourdieu has set in relatively late in translation studies and translation as a phenomenon has been detected relatively late by sociology
see Simeoni 2005 and Wolf 2007a.
13 For an overview of the positions mentioned here, many of which studiously (for which read
also stubbornly) seek to find a sense of dualism to accord with the critical attitude of the researchers in question, see Engler (2001: 6669).
14 As should be evident, the insightfulness of the methodological statements is not limited to interview-based studies.
15 Engler, in a work focussing on the trajectories of university professors based on interview data,
does not regard it as being beyond dispute, whether this diversion through the social fields,
which is deemed to be necessary by Bourdieu in the sense of a pre-construction, really has to
take place (Engler 2001: 57; my translation). [In the original: ob dieser als notwendig ausgewiesene Umweg durch die sozialen Felder als Vor-Konstruktion geschehen muss, wie dies
Bourdieu meint.] The emphasis seems to lie more on the when than on the if at all; for
the author does not (arguably) doubt that it is a scientifically fruitful operation.
Introduction
23
16 The enormity of this research enterprise can be gauged above all from Homo academicus
(Bourdieu 1992b). From a point of view in literary sociology cf. with regard to these challenges
Jurt 1995 as well as the case studies in Pinto & Schultheis 1997. As far as the exclusive attention to either internal factors or external factors is concerned, Gouanvic arrived at a very
critical assessment in relation to translation sociology in 2005 and admitted few exceptions in
this regard (cf. Gouanvic 2005: 150).
17 It should be mentioned that Bittlingmayer is highly critical of the notion of a knowledge-society.
18 For a more general discussion of hysteresis cf. the authors entry in the Bourdieu-Handbuch
(2009b).
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PART I: GENERAL THEORETICAL ASPECTS
Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in

Translation Studies?
Jean-Marc Gouanvic (Concordia University, Montral)
This translation studies article aims to locate the notion of habitus within the context of the sociological theory of P. Bourdieu by defining it in relation to the other heuristic notions of field and illusio. Two illustrations in literary translation are provided in an attempt to show the relevance of
the notion of habitus within translation studies: those of the two major twentieth-century French
translators, Maurice-Edgar Coindreau and Marcel Duhamel. Under examination are the primary
and specific habitus of Coindreau and Duhamel in relation to each other. In order to define the notion of habitus, it is important to ask whether there is such a thing as a field (in Bourdieus sense)
of translation, because certain traits of translating are likely to be formed in the field on which the
translation depends. In fact, we do not believe that a field of translation currently exists, although
incipient signs of the emergence of such a field appear to be emerging in the technical and specialized domains. On the other hand, in translation studies it seems clear that a specific and autonomous
field emerged at the turn of the 1970s1980s. Almost on a daily basis, one can observe its effect in
the form of unified stakes of translation expressed in multiple structures (associations, symposia
and conferences, reviews and specific collections, etc.). We conclude with some remarks on the
habitus of the translation studies scholar/researcher while emphasising the reflexive return to be
performed in an effort to promote self-reflexivity (Bourdieu), one of the conditions of progress in
translation studies.
Keywords: habitus of translator, habitus of translation studies scholar/researcher, field of translation
studies, illusio, Maurice-Edgar Coindreau, Marcel Duhamel, Anglo-American literature, reflexive
self-analysis
1. Introduction
Our title may seem cryptic to a non-French-speaker with this metaphor of solubility and we would not have chosen it if it did not highlight an important aspect
of the subject with which we are dealing. Today the notion of habitus is relatively well established in translation studies, but one may wonder in what senses
it is established and, in particular, whether it really is the notion as Bourdieu
envisages it. The metaphor of the solubility of the habitus in translation studies
rests on an analogy between the solubility of a substance (sugar or salt) in a
liquid medium and the integration, the acceptability of the notion in translation
studies.1 To pose the question of the solubility of the habitus in translation studies raises the question of the legitimacy of the notion of habitus in the research
30
Jean-Marc Gouanvic
field of translation studies, legitimacy here being understood in the sociological

sense.2
In the accession of the habitus to legitimacy in translation studies, there is
an effort to confirm the status of object of research on the translators sociological subjectivity; however, this is difficult to achieve if one wants to problematize the role of the agent in the operation of translation. Thus, the notion
of habitus tends towards legitimacy, so that it necessitates reflection on questions, as much genetic as relational, that bear on the translating agent. The researcher should ask him- or herself whether the notion of habitus, tending
towards legitimacy, does not exercise effects of censorship in the field of translation studies. I will pose this question at the end of my reflections.
That said, it seems essential to interpret the Bourdieusian theory without
trying to transform it by introducing heterogeneous ideas into it. This is what I
will attempt to do, not because I am refractory to all exterior contributions (I
have already demonstrated that in my book of 2007 with notions borrowed from
Berman and from Meschonnic), but because I believe that, before criticizing a
model or a notion, it is important to follow its twists and turns and to try it out
in a practical way that is to say, by measuring its validity in theoretical practice. That being done one ought to be able to answer the question put in the
title: Is habitus as conceived by Bourdieu soluble in translation studies?
2. Habitus, Field, Illusio: Heuristic Models in Sociological Practice
First of all, let us ponder the epistemic status of the notion of habitus and of the
other notions of field and illusio. These are heuristic notions which are used in
order to construct theoretical discourse in sociology. This means that they do
not aim to represent reality strictly by putting an equals sign between these
notions and the targeted facts, but to supply an analogical point of view which
makes it possible to envisage these facts. Their mode of production is that of
the as if, which, as Bourdieu recalls (1990b: 90), is the very condition of theoretical discourse.
Synthesizing in the extreme, one could describe sociological practice in the
following way. Everything occurs as if the agents who embody a specific habitus
acted in a field3 (the literary field, for example) by helping to produce textual illusiones4 likely to place them in the best possible position for acquiring optimum
legitimacy and exercising a monopoly over what is sayable in the field. The
great strength of Bourdieus theory of culture lies in looking beyond sociological
rationality by specifying that the motor of action in any agent does not lie in
conscious deliberation but is situated at the level of beliefs, that is to say at the
deepest level of bodily dispositions (Bourdieu 2000: 177). It would be reductive
Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation Studies?
31
to define the action of agents as emanating from deliberate strategies whose

effects would depend on rational models, for example, on market research/studies in the publishing trades. Of course, there can be no question of rejecting all
rational behaviour in the agents actions; but what Bourdieu does emphasise is
the non-rational (we will not say irrational) dimension of social practice.
3. Construction of the Notion of Habitus, According to Bourdieu
Before getting to the heart of the matter, I will cite three passages where Bourdieu in 1987 (French original) explains how he appropriated the notion of habitus: In retrospect [...] the use of the notion of habitus, an old Aristotelian and
Thomist concept that I completely rethought, can be understood as a way of
escaping from the choice between a structuralism without subject and the philosophy of the subject (Bourdieu 1990b: 10). A bit further on in the same work,
Bourdieu mentions Hegel, Husserl, Weber, Durkheim and Mauss as being inspired by one and the same theoretical intention: to break with Kantian dualism in the case of Hegel, to escape from the philosophy of consciousness in
the case of Husserl, to account for the systematic functioning of the socialized
body for Mauss (ibid.: 12). Seeking to give to practice an active, inventive
intention, Bourdieu insists on the generative capacities of acquired, socially
constituted dispositions (ibid.: 13). All his work was guided by the desire to
reintroduce the agents practice, his or her capacity for invention and improvisation (ibid.).
What is habitus, therefore, according to Pierre Bourdieu?5 The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, writes Bourdieu,
systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to
presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively regulated and regular without being in
any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without
being the product of the organizing action of a conductor (1990a: 53; my emphasis).
There are agents who, by virtue of the dispositions of their habitus, find their
place in positions already formed; and there are other agents whose role in the
game played in the field is to create a position which is not yet instituted (Bourdieu 1984: 211). Some agents occupy a position in a field without being called
upon to produce anything novel, to be creators. Others bring out a position
in the field which is endowed with great innovative potential (the best example
32
Jean-Marc Gouanvic
of this being the Srie Noire in the field of the detective novel in the case of
Marcel Duhamel, founder and editor of the collection). The interest of the notion
of habitus is thus also to take the measure of the novelty instituted by an agent
within a field.
4. Outline of the Translators Habitus
The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence
immediately establish the generality of the habitus; in other words, each individual is characterized by the dispositions of this habitus, whose genesis is associated with belonging to his/her original group and what this would imply in
social and professional terms. For example, there are types of professional
heredity which are passed on from generation to generation. One observes artisans bequeath to their offspring the skills historically acquired through the
imprinting of types of habitus which reproduce the specific gestures that institute their trade. Similarly, families of diplomats transmit to their progeny the
dispositions to occupy civil servant positions, and families of international
diplomats form lineages of interpreters who are in their element in international
organizations. These social facts are relatively easy to mark out: they enter into
the social trajectory which offers agents positions that appear natural. The social
trajectory of a translator is generally more diversified; it may be much more
complex, as we shall see in the case of Marcel Duhamel (1972) and of Maurice-Edgar Coindreau (1974). One social fact is of capital importance in the
construction of the translators social trajectory, namely, the acquisition of bilingualism and biculturalism. This bilingualism may be acquired by multiple
means: learning at school, bilingual family, immersion in another society, or a
mixture of all these, etc. But in translation the determining phenomenon is the
learning of two languages, however these two languages may be imprinted.
These conditions are prior to the practice of the trade of a translator and to the
exercise of this trade. We say prior, because under no circumstances can we
speak at this stage of the habitus of translator nor say that these conditions make
the translator. In fact, Bourdieu suggests naming this preliminary stage of the
habitus primary habitus or original habitus. The habitus of the translator is
formed exclusively in exercising his or her trade, which is designated as belonging to the specific habitus.
Thus, what tends to define a translators specific habitus is bicultural disciplinary practice (acquired through training immersion, studies, disciplinary
symposia, internships, etc. all of these activities in synergy help to build the
habitus), which dictates what is and is not to be done, taking into account the
sets of themes concerned (what Bourdieu calls illusio). One does not translate
33
in the same manner in law, in science, in literature, even if there are points of
convergence among the different manners of translating.
5. The Habitus of Marcel Duhamel: A First Exemplary Case
In order to analyse how a translators specific habitus is formed, I will take two
examples which I regard as particularly convincing namely, those of Marcel
Duhamel and Maurice-Edgar Coindreau and I will examine them in a relational way.6 First of all, let us consider the case of Marcel Duhamel. In order to
analyse his social trajectory, I will trace his biography.
1) The primary habitus of Marcel Duhamel consists in his very humble social
origins. He was born in Paris in 1900 where his Picardian father was the
matre dhtel of a restaurant managed by his brother. However, in 1904,
his father had to return to his home region in order to recover from an illness
so that Marcel lived among the peasantry of Picardy for ten years. He would
carry the values imprinted by this way of life marked by extreme poverty
deep within him for the rest of his life.
2) He then completed his elementary education with a grant from the state that
enabled him to attend upper primary school; he continued until the declaration of the 19141918 war by which time he had completed second grade.
3) In 1915, he accompanied his half-sister to Manchester, where she went to
work in a hotel (Midland Hotel) owned by his uncle. He was given odd jobs
in the hotel and within one year he was amazed (he said) to find himself
speaking English fluently. His learning of English occurred through immersion and imprinting, not at school. Thus his knowledge of English was
solely of a vernacular nature.
4) Having returned to France after the war, he performed his military service,
part of which took place in Turkey. There he met two people who were to
remain his friends throughout his life, Jacques Prvert and Yves Tanguy.
They were to play a significant role in his activities until the outbreak of
Second World War.
5) In the 1920s, his uncle appointed him to the management of the Grosvenor
hotel and subsequently of the newly-build Ambassador hotel.
6) While he was manager of the Grosvenor hotel, he set up one of the first
Surrealist Phalansters in 1924 at 54 rue du Chteau, with Jacques Prvert,
Yves Tanguy and the latters wife. Numerous Surrealists dropped by: Benjamin Pret, Malkine, Desnos, Breton, Aragon, M. Leyris, Soupault, Queneau, Naville, Man Ray and Morise. The tenants of the rue du Chteau lived
off his salary and, for this reason in particular, Duhamel played an important
role in the emergence of Surrealism.
34
Jean-Marc Gouanvic
7) During this period he tried his hand at translation for the first time. He translated Green Ice by Raoul Whitfield (which would be published by Gallimard after the war and then in the Srie Noire), then Little Caesar by W.
R. Burnett (published in Paris-Soir) and, finally, Tropic of Cancer by Henry
Miller, at the end of the 1930s, which would never be published. Although
these translations were made as a leisure activity, they led to his profession
as a cinema dubber. From this time onwards (coinciding more or less with
the translation of Green Ice), with the success of his translation, he considered pursuing a career in translation and his habitus steered towards this
professional activity these are no doubt the first signs of a specific translators habitus.
8) Indeed, the publication of Little Caesar in the serial form in Paris-Soir
demonstrated his knowledge of familiar English idiom and slang and his
talents as a translator. Under these circumstances, he was hired by the Tobis
Klangfilm Company as a dubber of American and English films such as Je
suis un vad, 42e rue and Chercheuse dor, with actors such as James
Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Paul Muni. He dubbed around a hundred
films before 1940.
9) In 1944, Marcel Achard Duhamel was part of the theatre troupe Octobre
which put on a play by Achard had him read two detective novels by Peter
Cheyney, This Man is Dangerous and Poison Ivy, and one by James Hadley
Chase, No Orchid for Miss Blandish. Out of enthusiasm, he translated them
without having any specific outcome in mind.
10) At Gallimard publishers, where almost nobody knew English, he gained
the confidence of Gaston Gallimard, who appointed him his agent in his
relations with authors and literary agents in England. In this capacity he
travelled to England in February 1945 and met Cheyney, Chase and the literary agents of Caldwell, Steinbeck, Hammett and Chandler.
11) He suggested that Gaston Gallimard create a collection of detective novels
along the lines of the three novels he had translated, to which Gallimard
agreed. Jacques Prvert invented a name for the collection, the Srie
Noire. The first number appeared in 1945, Poison Ivy by Cheyney.
Duhamels bosses were Claude Gallimard and the director of Hachette, Guy
Schoeller. At that time, Hachette was in charge of the marketing and distribution of Gallimards productions.
Marcel Duhamels specific habitus, that is to say, his habitus as a translator and
as editor of the collection, can be inferred from his social trajectory. His habitus
already took shape in the translations of the hard-boiled novels of Whitfield,
Burnett, Cheyney and Chase and in the dubbing of films noirs for Tobis Klangfilm. He blossomed in narratives endowed with an illusio of their own by com-
35
parison with the classic detective novels, in particular, the mystery novels of
Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. These narratives stage situations in which
guilt is not focused on one character but is shared by all of those who wield
power, the gangsters, police forces, municipal councillors and government officers, trades unions, bodies in charge of administering justice, and so forth.
The detective is generally the only character who represents justice, truth and
friendship and who makes sure that the values of goodness, truth and fairness
win through. It goes without saying that this success is not easily won. The
model par excellence of illusio of the noir can be found in the novels of Dashiell
Hammett. This type of novel appeared in the pulp magazine Black Mask in the
1920s with the authors Daly and Hammett, as opposed to the mystery novel,
which had dominated the entire field of the detective novel until the Second
World War. Gradually the roman noir gained ground in the United States and
France. Until 1949, the Srie Noire exercised a monopoly in the French noir
detective novel. This domination would be maintained until Sven Nielsen (who
created the Presses de la Cit at the end of the war) founded the Un Mystre
series in 1949, which blatantly encroached on the territory of the Srie Noire
by signing up some of its authors at much better conditions than those offered
by Gallimard. This intense and open competitive struggle stimulated the field
by making it evolve: from the moment Un Mystre appeared, the output of
translations and publications reached record figures.
Duhamels case shows that the habitus rests on the primary habitus until the
rue du Chteau period, follows the trajectory of amateurism in translation (translations done for pleasure) and, as the first sign of a specific habitus, settles on
the profession of cinema dubber, in order to establish itself permanently in the
field of the detective novel. One can see that the specific habitus of a translator
is not dissociable from the stake of the field for which he translates and from
the illusio of the Srie Noire narratives. Not every translator, however, is endowed with a habitus that is easily delimited.7 One can think in particular of
the cohort of technical and specialist translators (to which, incidentally, the author of the present paper belonged in the 1970s), of whom it can be said that
they exercise their trade without a particular state of mind. While their primary
habitus can be easily delimited, their specific habitus is no doubt linked to the
social doxa and to the structures that uphold the socio-economic, scientific and
technical apparatus (IT in particular): private, public and semipublic, national
and supranational structures.
There is a doxical dimension to Duhamels habitus,8 in so far as the detective
literary field constitutes a unified market in which publishers and distributors
engage in a competitive struggle to occupy the best possible position among
the reading public. The habitus of Duhamel, as series editor, was thus defined
in opposition to the habitus of Albert Pigasse and his series Le Masque, which
36
Jean-Marc Gouanvic
published Agatha Christie, and was also defined in opposition to Sven Nielsen
and his series Un Mystre, who published the same authors as Duhamel. The
habitus of Sven Nielsen was not as innovative as that of Duhamel, for Nielsen
limited himself more or less to following Duhamel, who in a sense mapped out
the route for him. Nielsen was known as a businessman who published what
was likely to be successful and who would have published any other type of
fiction provided that it found a readership. Duhamels specific habitus is that
of a pioneer and, among translator personalities, he can be compared to Maurice-Edgar Coindreau in his knack for discovering and promoting mainstream
American literature in French translation.
6. The Habitus of Maurice-Edgar Coindreau: A Second Exemplary
Case
Coindreau is generally presented as the one who introduced American literature
into France in the 1930s, the literature of the south of the United States,
Faulkner in particular. How did he become the translator of these American authors? In other words, how did his specific habitus develop? Coindreau came
into contact with American writers in Madrid, which he visited in 1920 in order
to prepare for his Spanish agrgation and where he met Dos Passos, who at the
time had published almost nothing.9 Coindreau moved to the United States in
1923, where he accepted a post at Princeton. There he translated his first novel,
Manhattan Transfer by Dos Passos, which introduced him to American slang.
The novel was published in translation in 1928. The discovery of Faulkner by
Coindreau occurred around 1930. Coindreau had published an initial article
about Faulkner in 1931 in the NRF. He then published the major novels of
Faulkner in French: Tandis que jagonise (1934), Lumire daot (1935) and
Le Bruit et la fureur (1938). Why did Coindreau feel such a predilection for
writers from the south of the United States? What is there in his habitus that
led him to value these writers at the expense of Hemingway, his former friend
Dos Passos, Steinbeck, etc.? The answer to this question can be found in his
primary habitus.
Born in the Vende region, Coindreau deeply internalized the counter-revolutionary ethos of the Chouans and he drew a homologous parallel between the
failure of the war of secession of the Confederacy in the United States and the
failure of the Chouannerie uprising against the French Revolution. Faulkner
was very familiar with the bloody Chouans episode: he had read Balzacs Les
Chouans and when Coindreau alluded to the Chouans in Faulkners presence,
the latter replied: So, yours too have gone through this (1974: 19; my translation).
37
Thus, Coindreaus specific habitus is based on two historical series with no

apparent link to each other and he fantasised a homology between the two. It
may be said that this habitus finds its resources in both the source field and the
target field, in both the novelistic illusio of Faulkners uvre and the historical
illusio of the Chouans revisited by Coindreau.
From where did Coindreau draw the more purely linguistic dimension of
his translators trade? At school, he had shown dispositions for textual analysis:
as a grammar school student, I acquired, he said, what you might think a
gift and which is nothing but training. The exercises I preferred when I was in
class were textual analyses (1974: 132; my translation). It is well known how
important textual analysis was in the French school tradition. This exercise had
the secondary function of preparing for professions that involve language and,
in particular, the analysis and comprehension of written cultural practices. In
his Spanish agrgation (the most prestigious degree/competitive examination
at French universities at the time), Coindreau inherited to a high degree of learning the traits of this education, which in the interwar period led quite naturally
to the traditional values of good style la franaise.10
7. Contrastive Analysis of the Habitus of Duhamel and of Coindreau
It is possible to make a comparison between the habitus of Duhamel and that
of Coindreau. This comparison is not abstract or theoretical: it is occasioned
by an encounter between Coindreau and Duhamel over the translation of an
American novel, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.11 This translation
was begun by Coindreau, who translated about fifty pages before abandoning
it; Duhamel took up the rest. Duhamel happily adapted himself to the mould
of Coindreaus translation, as corroborated by the latter after the completion
of the translation (Duhamel 1972: 533). In fact, Duhamel felt reverence for
Coindreau, the translator par excellence during that period (ibid.). One can
say that he reproduced the dominance that he felt in the traits of his habitus:
Coindreau was a qualified academic at the university and Duhamel had merely
a primary school certificate; Duhamel had an active, practical knowledge of
English; Coindreau, for his part, had acquired knowledge through study,
through books, a knowledge one could call academic (which Duhamel no
doubt considered superior to his practical knowledge). Coindreau was of a
much higher social origin than Duhamel, who had assimilated plebeian ideas
diametrically opposed to those of Coindreau; Coindreau had an exclusive interest for high realist literature (William Faulkner, William Goyen, Flannery
OConnor), in which the stake is almost philosophical reflection, whereas
Duhamel turned immediately towards lighter literature, of which the stake is
38
Jean-Marc Gouanvic
less philosophical reflection than playful pleasure not devoid of social criticism.
It is as if Coindreau and Duhamel had, by tacit agreement, concurred on the
translations to be performed in the literary fields, the realist field being reserved
to Coindreau (who began his translation career ten years before Duhamel) and
the field of the detective novel being reserved for Duhamel. This division of
literary translation ensured that these two translators never clashed.
*
The two cases of Coindreau and Duhamel tend to show that the notion of habitus as Bourdieu conceives it is suited to translation studies where it finds a specific application as translation is fundamentally founded on the practice of two
languages/cultures (see Section 3, above). Thus, before the practice of the translating trade and the emergence of the habitus specific to translation, the potentialities of the translator may be described in the form of primary habitus
opening onto plurivalent social trajectories which would become specific in
translation. The mode of learning of the language in question, at the stage of
the internalization of the primary habitus, acquires a crucial importance for the
practice of the subsequent profession of translator. Other notions can be associated with the notion of specific habitus, such as those of experience
(Berman 1989) or decentering (Meschonnic 1973) in translation studies.
8. Conclusion: Habitus, Self-Analysis and Field of Translation Studies
One question remains unanswered: does there exist a field of translation (in the
Bourdieusian sense)? The question deserves some attention, for it also touches
on the delimitation of the specific habitus. In fact, I do not believe that, at present, translation constitutes an autonomous field whose stakes are specific and
unified and in which translating agents struggle to achieve an optimum position
at the expense of other translators.12 In order to perform their task, translators
of necessity must position themselves in relation to the field to which the text
to be translated belongs, and their manner of translating is defined, too, in relation to the other texts published in the field aimed at by the translation. A
translator who is accustomed to translating detective fiction must perform a
slight adjustment of the rules in order to translate a realist or a science fiction
novel. The same translator, if he or she wishes to translate a non-fiction text,
must perform a greater adjustment of the rules in order to move to an economic,
or technical text, the doxical traits of which are expressed in the economic or
technical field, assuming that his or her habitus predisposes him or her to this.
It is highly improbable that Coindreau (and even Duhamel) would exercise
39
technical translator professions, their habitus having steered their trajectory towards literature, more precisely towards that of the Southern United States in
the case of Coindreau.
Therefore it appears that the manners of translating specific to a translating
agent originate in the specific habitus inculcated during the acquisition of the
primary habitus (social milieu, school, family, etc.) and in the knowledge of
the stakes of the fields to which the texts and the subject areas to be translated
belong. The boundaries between some fields are, admittedly, porous and a translator whose habitus leads him to translate literature will be able to pass from
one genre to another without experiencing any real difficulties. If his/her habitus
leads him/her to translate in the financial field, he or she will also be able to
translate at least certain types of texts in economics without too much adaptation.
It remains that, as things stand, translators habitus is not completely formed
in the field of translation, which exists only in an embryonic state. The habitus
confers on the translator the status of agent taking a position in a pre-existing
post, where the post is fully instituted by the fact that the agent holds it. Translation is the product of multiple conditionings and determinants situated at the
confluence of the history of the field (the field associated with the activity in
question) and of the habitus of the translator. Does the translating activity enjoy
full-fledged recognition? In a survey, Isabelle Kalinowski (2002) records the
personal insecurity suffered by a significant proportion of translators belonging
to the Association des Traducteurs Littraires Franais (ATLF). As a matter of
fact, one notes that the habitus of literary translators is quite generally what
Bourdieu calls a destabilized habitus,13 models of which one finds particularly
in the dominated professions that do not enjoy a legitimate status, such as the
temporary employees in the entertainment industry in France.
Is habitus as conceived by Bourdieu soluble in translation studies? We
have attempted to show that the notion of habitus exhibits sufficient rigour and
plasticity when it is conceived in relation to the fields and their productions
(the illusio of their productions). While the field of translation may not exist
(yet), the same does not apply to the field of translation studies. Translation
studies achieved the status of a specific autonomous field at the end of the 1970s
and the beginning of the 1980s, and today it is very dynamic and is expanding.
The notion of habitus is likely to play an important role in our field. As it strives
for doxical legitimacy, we may ask ourselves whether the notion does not mask
some hidden agendas (not necessarily deliberate ones) among those who are
its users. In an effort to overcome this concealing effect, there is in the operation
of analysing the translational habitus a second (or double) operation, that of a
self-reflexive analysis by the translation studies researcher. This analysis aims
at bringing to light the translation studies habitus which draws the trajectory of
40
Jean-Marc Gouanvic
the translation studies scholar, opening on knowledge in the field. One can thus
establish a double horizon for the habitus of the translating agent and for the
habitus of the agent in translation studies, the former expressing itself in the
fields of specific activities, and the latter expressing itself in the translation
studies field. The self-reflexive return onto oneself as a knowing subject conditions the accession of the translation studies agent to knowledge, through selfanalysis, of his/her habitus. To embark upon the analysis of the habitus of a
translator involves, as Pierre Bourdieu implies, embarking upon the self-analysis of the habitus of the translation studies scholar. In order to achieve genuine
knowledge of the translators habitus, the translation studies scholar cannot
shun what is at stake in the translational object aimed at and he/she exposes
him/herself to the process of the biter being bit,14 the habitus of the knowing
subject being party to the object of knowledge. In conclusion, let us cite Bourdieu again, in a formula that summarizes the sense of what the analysis of the
translation studies habitus enables us to achieve:
Bringing the subject of science into history and into society [which is accomplished
by self-reflexive analysis of the habitus of the translation studies scholar15] does not
mean condemning oneself to relativism; it means preparing the conditions for a critical
knowledge of the limits of knowledge which is the precondition of true knowledge.
(1993: 45)
Notes
1 Parenthetically, the metaphor is current in French. It is applied on the Internet to vitalism
that is soluble in science, to feminism that is soluble in the blogosphere, to democracy
that is soluble in Islam, and so forth.
2 Bourdieu writes: An institution, or an action, or a usage is legitimate when it is dominant but
not recognized as such, in other words tacitly recognized (1993: 70).
3 Bourdieu has expressed himself on the notion of field many times. In Some Properties of
Fields, he writes: A field even the scientific field defines itself by (among other things)
defining specific stakes and interests, which are irreducible to the stakes and interests specific
to other fields (you cant make a philosopher compete for the prizes that interest a geographer)
and which are not perceived by someone who has not been shaped to enter that field [...]. In
order for a field to function, there have to be stakes and people prepared to play the game, endowed with the habitus that implies knowledge and recognition of the immanent laws of the
field, the stakes, and so on (1993: 72).
4 Bourdieu defines this notion thus: The literary illusio, that originating adherence to the literary
game which grounds the belief in the importance or interest of literary fiction, is the precondition almost always unperceived of the aesthetic pleasure which is always, in part, the
pleasure of playing the game, of participating in the fiction, of being in total accord with the
premises of the game (Bourdieu 1996: 333334). The notion of illusio based on translation
studies concepts such as signifiance (Meschonnic) is of capital importance in translation: it
enables the social materiality of the translated text to be related to the source text and to draw
social determinants from the contrastive study.
41
5 The sociologist continued to explore this notion more deeply throughout his work. See, in particular, Pascalian Meditations (2000; orig. 1997).
6 Refer to our work (2007), where we approach the habitus of Maurice-Edgar Coindreau and
Marcel Duhamel.
7 For example, technical and specialist translators, interpreters and localisers who are less disposed (even less so than literary translators) to analyse what led them to exercise their profession.
8 As in the habitus of other agents from the field of detective fiction.
9 The first novel by Dos Passos was published in London in 1920. This was One Mans Initiation-1917, which was translated into French by Marc Freeman and published in 1925 by Rieder
under the title LInitiation dun homme, 1917.
10 One may wonder how the habitus and its particular features can match the formal traits of
Faulkners uvre (cf. my work from 2007, where I deal with this question).
11 The Grapes of Wrath (1939) was published in French by Gallimard in 1947.
12 One exception seems to be when translators compete to translate a specific author, Melville or
Kafka, for example. In that case the translational stake is to tell the truth of the work through
the translation. The question is raised likewise, although in a different manner, in the technical
and specialist domains. The globalization of communications and the professionalization of
translation (and other trades of interlinguistic transfer) tend to create national and supranational
groupings that unify the issues and stakes.
13 Bourdieu (2000: 160) recalls destabilized habitus, torn by contradiction and internal division,
generating suffering. [Original: lexistence dhabitus clivs, dchirs, portant sous la forme
de tensions et de contradictions la trace des conditions de formation contradictoires dont ils
sont le produit (1997: 79).] According to Isabelle Kalinowski (2002), the translators work in
the 2000s generates economic and psychological precariousness, which is likely to create social
dependency that generates suffering (cf. Bourdieu 1997: 160).
14 Larroseur arros, as Bourdieu says.
15 For the time being, it seems that there are very few publication media devoted to this exercise
of self-reflection in translation studies (except maybe digital media). The analysis of the knowing subject in translation studies may be divulged in translation journals comparable to that of
the Association des Traducteurs Littraires Franais (ATLF) TransLittrature in the form of
interviews with translator members of the ATLF. One can only hope that media publishing the
findings of self-analysis will be founded some day and help researchers achieve the status of
agents in the translation studies field endowed with its own stakes. As far as I am concerned,
and for lack of appropriate publication media, I have attempted to produce a self-reflexive
analysis, which should be available on the Web soon.
References
Berman, Antoine. 1989. La Traduction et ses discours in META 34(4): 672679.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Questions de sociologie. Paris: Minuit, coll. Documents.
. 1987. Choses dites. Paris: Minuit, coll. Le Sens commun.
. 1990a. The Logic of Practice (tr. Richard Nice). Cambridge: Polity Press.
. 1993. Sociology in Question (tr. Richard Nice). London: Sage.
. 1996. The Rules of Art. Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (tr. Susan Emanuel). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
. 1997. Mditations pascaliennes. Paris: Seuil, coll. Liber.
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Jean-Marc Gouanvic
. 2000. Pascalian Meditations (tr. Richard Nice). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Coindreau, Maurice-Edgar. 1974. Mmoires dun traducteur (Propos recueillis par C. Giudicelli).
Paris: Gallimard.
Duhamel, Marcel. 1972. Raconte pas ta vie. Paris: Mercure de France.
Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. 2007. Pratique sociale de la traduction. Le roman raliste amricain dans
le champ littraire franais (19201960). Arras: Artois Presses Universit, coll. Traductologie.
. 2014. Sociologie de ladaptation et de la traduction. Le roman daventures anglo-amricain
dans lespace littraire franais pour les jeunes (18261960). Paris: Honor Champion.
Kalinowski, Isabelle. 2002. La Vocation au travail de traducteur in Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 144(2): 4754.
Meschonnic, Henri. 1973. Pour la potique II. Paris: Gallimard.
Translators Identity Work: Introducing Micro-Sociological

Theory of Identity to the Discussion of Translators Habitus
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy (Tel Aviv University)
Criticisms of the concept of the habitus put forward its disregard of the multiplicity and variability
of same-group individuals dispositions and question its potential to account for differences and
change. In this connection I find problematic the disregard of individuals intentions and self-perception in conceptualizing the habitus. Both of these topics are central concerns of identity research.
In this article I propose the integration of the notions of identity work, particularly as inspired by
Erving Goffman and the American micro-sociology traditions, within the discussion of translators
habitus, to elaborate on the micro-level, situation-dependent ongoing negotiations of translators
role and translators competence by the individual actors. Focusing on the question of status and
self-worth, this perspective helps better accounting for Bourdieus idea of the logic of practice and
the cultural capital as crucial for understanding not only translators construction of their professional role-image(s) but also their tendency to employ translation norms in their work performances. Looking at identity talk allows tracing the interplay between actors habitual tendencies and
professional self-images, that is, between their background cultural baggage and the repertoire imposed by the field, as identity resources that form these actors occupational habitus. Examples are
based on findings from my research on the field of Israeli translators.
Keywords: habitus, practical logic, symbolic capital, identity work, identity negotiations, selfworth, professional role-image
The growing use of Bourdieus theory within Translation Studies in recent

decades marks a further step in the re-introduction of a socio-historical perspective into this field. Specifically, Bourdieus notion of the habitus has been
embraced so as to develop a research focus on translators as cultural agents
(Buzelin 2011). In Bourdieus theory, the habitus concept stands for his heroic
attempt next only to that of Norbert Elias to synthesize the zoom-in and
zoom-out perspectives on culture, namely, to frame the actions of the individual
on the micro-level within the grand-scale durable social structures. Consequently, in the realm of Translation Studies, while the study of norms renders
a map of depersonalized translation tendencies so to speak, the study of the
habitus should account for how these norms are incorporated in the minds and
practices of individual translators (Gouanvic 2005, Wolf 2007), reflecting the
specific social field within which they act.
Yet among Bourdieus concepts, the habitus in particular has been widely
criticized, mainly on the basis of its alleged determinism (Reay 2004). Critics
44
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy
emphasize its disregard of the multiplicity and variability of individuals dispositions (Lahire 2003, 2011). No less problematic I find its disregard of individuals motivation and self-perception in conceptualizing the habitus. Both of
the latter aspects are central concerns of identity research. However, while
habitus and identity have much in common as research agendas, as conceptual tools they have been differently oriented, according to two separate traditions. While the habitus concept has been developed within a European
historical sociology, to be later integrated into Bourdieus structuralist view of
fields, conceptualizing identity is anchored in several fields of study that lie at
the intersection between sociology and psychology. One central source of inspiration for identity research has been the symbolic-interactionist theory that
has flourished in recent decades mainly in the environment of American microsociology.
Surprisingly, so far meager attempt has been made to bridge the gap between
these two approaches (see however Adams 2006). My own work on the habitus
of translators has led me to integrate aspects of these two theoretical perspectives. Taking translation as an important agency of culture transfer and change,
I have become growingly interested in the enigma of the apparent discrepancy
between the enormous potential of translators cultural power and their actual
feeling of being deprived of it. This paradox finds expression in their unclear
occupational status and suspended professionalization (Sela-Sheffy 2010).
Since I find no obvious reason for this discrepancy in the so-called objective
circumstances of this profession, I have looked at their habitus for explanation.
However, like many others who have dealt with this concept, I have stumbled
on the fact that there was obviously diversity among translators in terms of their
social backgrounds and working conditions, as well as their personal and professional dispositions. To deal with this diversity I find the conception of dynamic identities and identity negotiation (Burke & Stets 2009) very useful. In
what follows I will outline my view of how this conceptual framework complements what the discussion of the habitus leaves obscure, using examples
from my work on Israeli translators as illustration.
1. Habitus
1.1. Translators Competence: The Logic of Practice
Central to the habitus concept is the logic of practice, which challenges the basics of a rational-action theory (Collet 2009). What people do and how they do
it is in most cases neither the result of rational calculations nor the application
of explicit rules, but rather directed by what Bourdieu (1990a) calls, borrowing
Translators Identity Work
45
from Erving Goffman, a feel for the game, which is acquired through socialization. In this view, translators, like all other social agents, are disposed to certain ways of doing things that suit their sense of who they are and where they
belong.
Moreover, this holds not only for how they do translation but also for how
they have become translators. The primacy of social learning over explicit instructions has long been recognized with regard to all forms of training, including institutionalized professions (Wenger & Lave 1991). The notion of
community of practice (cf. Bucholtz 1999, Holmes & Meyerhoff 1999) has
been initially introduced to account for the informal interactions through which
people acquire knowledge related to their job. This is certainly all the more applicable with regard to under-professionalized trades such as translation, where
in many cases obligatory formal schooling and supervision hardly exist. At least
in Israel, most of the practicing translators never had recourse to systematic
training, such as mushrooming diploma programs or workshops, and those who
did are unable to say why. In this sense, translation can be viewed as a natural
practice (cf. Robinson 1997), in which as Gideon Toury (2011b) already suggested with regard to how A Bilingual Speaker Becomes a Translator people
develop competence through social feedback as part of their life routines, the
same way they learn to cook or garden.
Furthermore, as has been repeatedly lamented, translatorial competence is
largely undefined: what is the expertise demanded from an apt translator? Israeli
translators find it hard to specify. This, too, is by no means unique to the field
of translation. Social learning research shows that what people learn during
work is above all a general feeling of how to be who they are, which implies,
beyond professional qualifications, a complex set of personal traits, sentiments
and stances that characterize them as a person (Holmes & Meyerhoff 1999, cf.
Sela-Sheffy 2005). For example, a nurse is expected to be a caring person; professors preferably be leftists and modest in appearance. Similarly, as I have
shown elsewhere (Sela-Sheffy 2008), Israeli literary translators believe they
must be profoundly knowledgeable, creative, devoted and non-conventional,
whereas commercial translators are inclined, if less typically, to claim a wider
range of personal traits, including, in addition to knowledge and creativity, also
punctuality, efficiency and flexibility (Sela-Sheffy 2010).
1.2. Habitus Regulation: Translators Fields and Repertoires
This kind of social learning is related in Bourdieus theory to class ethos: people
internalize mental and practical schemes and make choices according to what
feels right for people like them in view of their social background (cf. Willis
1977; Swidler 1986). Yet here is where the habitus concept raises the strongest
46
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy
criticism: critics from various disciplines ask how this view explains diversity
of dispositions between individuals with a similar background (Lahire 2003),
and how it explains change (Polletta 2008). Obviously, not all those who practice a certain profession share a similar social background; but even those who
do share such a background do not always have the same attitude towards their
work or arrive at similar achievements. Thus, to continue what Bernard Lahire
(2011) argues with regard to school, while social background is an important
factor, its power in predicting translators trajectories and work tendencies is
not unselective. Rather, it is dependent on many other factors that influence the
social creativity of the individual. For instance, as far as Israeli translators are
concerned, whereas top literary translators usually display a clear linkage between their intellectual education and their trajectories and role-images, such a
link is much less typically identifiable in other, non-elite translation sectors.
In fact, Bourdieu attempts to avoid the trap of determinism when dealing
with the habitus precisely by stressing the idea of the practical logic, emphasizing that: [] the habitus goes hand in glove with vagueness and indeterminacy. As generative spontaneity which asserts itself in an improvised
confrontation with ever-renewed situations, it obeys a practical logic that of
vagueness, of the more-or-less (Bourdieu 1990a: 7778; emphasis added).
Nevertheless, concerned primarily with class inequality, Bourdieu focuses on
the reproductive effect of the habitus in perpetuating social distinction rather
than on the dynamism of cultural repertoires and the improvising individual
agents.1 Moreover, his notion of class ethos often betrays, against his intentions,
a sense of essentialism, in that the conversion of life conditions into mental
schemes and practices is taken as an almost intrinsic, naturally-bounded deep
structure (Sheffy 1997). This misleading sense of essentialism often emerges
from his account on the distinction between those endowed with cultural capital
and those who lack such capital, as emerges for instance from his analogy: Just
as animals with feathers are more likely to have wings than animals with fur,
so the professors of a substantial cultural capital are more likely to be museumgoers than those who lack such capital (Bourdieu 1985: 727). Such a view
conceals the efforts on self-fashioning often invested by individuals, for instance
in coping with stigmatized social categories that are imputed on them (such as
low-status occupations), or, conversely, while moving between social spaces,
including embarking on highly demanding careers. So much so, that Greg
Noble and Megan Watkins (2003), referring to Bourdieus own lower-class
background, ask So, How Did Bourdieu Learn to Play Tennis?
The problem seems to be that the habitus concept is somehow detached
from Bourdieus own notion of fields in the sense of differentiated arenas where
action is constrained by different repertoires. Bourdieu opens leeway for ambiguity by accounting for at least two different generative principles of the habi-
47
tus, namely, the class habitus (pertaining to dominating vs. dominated social
classes) and the field habitus (e.g., occupations, clubs, intellectual or artistic
circles, etc.) However, he fails to account for how these two generative principles interact in the formation of the habitus of an individual (Sheffy 1997; such
a discussion with reference to translators has been developed by Inghilleri 2003,
Sela-Sheffy 2005, Simeoni 1998, Wolf 2007 and others). Now, this problem
may appear as less pressing in loosely defined occupations such as that of translation, since, at least as reported by Israeli translators, entering this field is often
experienced as a natural process, hardly involving efforts on self-transformation. Yet translators stories of becoming reveal considerable differences with
respect to the interplay between their background and field habitus. While many
of them recount a contingent trajectory of one thing has led to another that
suited their life conditions and line of education, betraying a weak sense of
personality compatibility (Sela-Sheffy 2010), others, by contrast, accentuate
their distinctive personality type that allegedly destined them from childhood
for this vocation. The stories of the latter are usually more dramatic in implying
that their vocational choice was made against all odds and in spite of obvious
drawbacks (such as hard work and low wages), expressing a stronger sense of
agency and commitment.
These two different occupational narratives, adopted by different actors,
thus appear to be two legitimate options of a job perception, assigned to different positions in the field (ordinary translators on the one hand and top literary
ones on the other). My point here is that even in loosely institutionalized fields
like that of translation, the habitus of the actors, in the sense of personal histories constructed throughout life (cf. Meylaerts 2011), is inevitably constrained by and adjusted according to specific repertoires, on which people must
draw for acting competently and legitimately in any given context.2
It follows that in this view, professional attitudes and trajectories may be
considered as resources that are at stake in the ongoing struggles within a given
occupational field, as part of the legitimate habitus of actors in this field. To
take again the issue of translators under-professionalized profile as an example,
their lack of formal training is certainly not merely a matter of objective material
circumstances (in fact, as my findings about Israeli translators reveal, a predilection for informal learning largely persists even today, when diploma programs
and academic courses proliferate). Rather, training opportunities constitute a resource which is being negotiated, that is, embraced or rejected by actors in the
field. While a restricted circle of Israeli translators, who strive for professionalization, invest efforts in promoting obligatory training, the majority of translators in Israel remain indifferent to or unaware of such training options, while
others are explicitly hostile to them. Top literary translators show utter contempt
for systematic learning, stressing inspiration and intuition instead (Sela-Sheffy
48
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy
2008). Similarly, these translators are not simply unable to define translatorial
competence, but rather take pains to avoid definition, evoking the vague idea
of personal aptness instead. All this bundle of attitudes is generated by two different field ethoses, which are contested by translators in accordance to their
positions in this field, namely, professionalism and anti-professionalism.
1.3. Translators Symbolic Capital: The Question of Status
From the above it follows that personal dispositions hinge on the question of
status. Peoples choices appear logical only insofar as they confer value on
them. This value is contingent upon what Bourdieu (1985) calls a market of
symbolic goods. Bourdieu describes this logic with reference to linguistic behavior (1992): people obey the inexplicit rules of a linguistic market in which
different linguistic options have different prices. And these prices are negotiated by those who are recognized as legitimate members of a speech community, that is, those who know how to speak. This symbolic economy is not
just a nice metaphor. Similarly to what Bourdieu shows with reference to other
loosely defined fields (notably the arts), accumulating the fields symbolic
(rather than material) capital is a very real force that determines translators
chances of being considered competent, getting a job and bargain for conditions
and payment. In his sort of self-help book, Becoming a Translator, Doug
Robinson reflects on the priority of this kind of capital in translators sense of
occupational self, to the point of claiming a reversed economy:
[F]or the translator or interpreter a higher consideration than money or continued employability is professional pride, professional integrity, professional self-esteem. We
all want to feel that the job we are doing is important, that we do it well, and that the
people we do it for appreciate our work. Most people, in fact, would rather take professional pride in a job that pays less than get rich doing things they dont believe in.
Despite the high value placed on making a lot of money (and certainly it would be
nice!), a high salary gives little pleasure without pride in the work. (Robinson 1997:
24)
Accordingly, in order to understand the performance of translators and their

impeded functioning as cultural agents we need to reveal the hidden rules by
which translators negotiate their symbolic assets in their everyday conduct. The
question thus arises: How do people negotiate? And how can we trace these negotiations? While the notion of the habitus suggests general group-tendencies
based on large amounts of objective data (including statistics on lifestyles;
e.g., Bourdieu 1986), it needs to be fine-tuned by the strategies individuals use
to improvise with the cultural resources available to them for maintaining selfworth and status.
49
2. Identity
This kind of negotiation strategies are a central concern of the constructionist
identity research. Although identity theory is far from being unified, the imprint
of Erving Goffman on many related studies is evident. While Bourdieu readily
acknowledges Goffmans influence, his grand-scale notion of the habitus takes
an opposite perspective to Goffmans. Goffman focuses on micro-level interactions, from the perspective of the playing individual. By contrast to Bourdieu,
his micro-analysis is often accused of disregarding the broader social context.
Needless to say that, despite this common criticism, in Goffmans view, the performance of individuals is inconceivable without the broader social context. In
his view, individuals performances always employ familiar routines (1956)
and are perceived according to shared framings (1974) known to the actors and
their audience. Nevertheless, Goffmans analytic attention is clearly drawn to
the acting agent in a specific setting rather than to the broad social structures.
Much under Goffmans inspiration, the notion of identity work, in the sense
of the range of activities individuals engage in to create, present and sustain
personal identities (Snow & Anderson 1987: 1348), has been suggested for
dealing with how individuals negotiate their being who they are in their ordinary life. Such negotiations occur all the time, in different, institutionalized
and less institutionalized social settings, including occupations, organizations
or social movements (cf. Bernard 2012, Foley 2005, Kreiner et al. 2006, Kuhn
2006, Padavic 2005, Reger et al. 2008, Snow & McAdam 2000, Stryker et al.
2000, Watson 2008, Wieland 2010). Unlike the structural notion of the impersonalized habitus, identity work inevitably involves the persons own perception
of oneself, which is not always identical with the social identity imputed to this
person by others. It is precisely the ongoing interplay and calibration between
the persons perception of oneself and the way he or she is assumedly perceived
by others that creates their sense of self (Snow & Anderson 1987, Watson 2008).
Now, social identities are often the roles one is expected to play for instance, as a parent, a student, or a professional. These roles are seen as resources
with which the persons sense of self is constructed. Occupation is certainly an
important role. However, the ways and intensity in which one relates to it, and
relates it to other components of their identity, vary according to the different
contexts, depending on the status of the occupation and the position of the individual in it (Snow & Anderson 1987; also e.g., Foley 2005, Padavic 2005).
In other words, much in common with Bourdieus idea of symbolic capital,
self-worth is seen as the basic drive for embracing or denying an occupational
role as an identity resource. To paraphrase Goffmans concepts, identity work
can be described as a negotiation of ideal selves, in the sense of normative expectations for whom one should be in a given locale (Wieland 2010: 511).
50
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy
Studies of identity work thus analyze the strategies individuals employ in avowing or disavowing desired or less desired given social identities in a way that
sustains their self-conception that provides them with dignity (Snow & Anderson 1987). Such negotiations are performed by a group through complex ways
of affirming or contesting the value of recognized role-images that serve as
identity resources in the relevant social space.
Evidently, identity work occurs all the time, but as also accentuated by Goffman (1963), it seems to be especially critical in cases where individuals or
groups must cope with an impaired or threatened status. Although translators
are by no means a stigmatized group, their occupational status is largely uncertain, in view of such parameters as low and insecure income, instability and irregular working conditions, mistrust of editors or clients, etc. In the absence of
regulation and measures of achievement, they are much more dependent, in
comparison with established professional sectors, on identity work for producing and maintaining their symbolic capital (cf. Bernard 2012). Consequently,
assuming that in their identity negotiations they obey an unwritten logic of their
field, we should ask what specific role-images translators identify as their valuable resources, and what occupational ethoses they maintain so as to make sense
of their job and claim occupational dignity.
Given that identity work is performed through a range of both physical and
discursive activities, it often invites ethnographic research. However, since in
the case of translators the physical visibility of their performance is minimal (see
however Abdallah 2012, on ethnography at translators workplace), the analysis
concentrates on their identity talk. This calls for a refined discourse analysis to
trace rhetorical strategies individuals use to evoke or distance themselves from
certain role-images, and the moral justifications they assign to these roles.
Based on this kind of analysis, elsewhere (Sela-Sheffy 2005, 2006, 2008) I
have identified three main role-images that are mobilized and negotiated by Israeli top literary translators, so as to maintain their working ethos and signalize
their privileged status. These role-images are: the cultural gate keeper, the cultural mediator and the artist. They are produced and reproduced by a restricted
circle of around 30 elite translators, who share a more or less similar intellectual
habitus, with highbrow cultural taste and direct access to the literary world (they
often serve as editors in publishing houses, critics or university professors, or
enjoy the reputation of poets and authors). All of these elite literary translators
make recourse to one or more of the abovementioned role-images in their identity discourse, depending on their position in their restricted field. Those with
a stronger command of elaborate Hebrew (often belonging to an older generation of Hebrew translators) tend to embrace the role of cultural custodians and
educators. Conversely, those with a more cosmopolitan background and knowledge of a greater variety of languages often tend to claim their role as ambas-
51
sadors of foreign cultures, in charge of improving the provincial local taste. All
in all, however, they all embrace the image of the translator-artist, whose prime
asset is their inborn talent and unique personality, and whose prior commitment
is purely aesthetic. All this amounts to displaying a vocational ethos of devotion,
personal attachment, inspiration and creativity, as well as despise for material
considerations, which, in their eyes, distinguishes them from their allegedly
merely language technicians, materially oriented peers.
As much as this identity discourse creates a strong sense of distinction, my
findings from the field of Israeli translators at large show that, to some extent,
negotiations of these same role-images transcend the exclusive circle of elite
translators and infiltrate the identity discourse of the less defined group of nonelite translators. Nevertheless, these findings also show that embracing a vocational ethos still signalizes a boundary that sustains the status of top literary
translators as a world apart (Bourdieu 1990b). My analysis of identity talk of
a wider population of Israeli translators (Sela-Sheffy 2010) reveals, on the
whole, a weak and ambivalent claim to the abovementioned role-images on the
part of non-elite translators, with no significant distinction between the different
translation sectors (i.e., commercial/technical or literary translators, subtitlers,
conference interpreters, etc.). The avowal or disavowal of these professional
images thus corresponds with, and actually outlines, the basic status structure
of this field, differentiating between elite literary translators on the one hand,
and all the other non-elite translators, be their jobs literary or technical translation, on the other. It is also revealed that elite literary translators serve as the
uncontested image-brokers for the field at large (Sela-Sheffy 2010). However,
while their discourse is focused and exclusive in adhering to a highly aspiring
vocational ethos, the identity talk of non-elite translators is for the most part
ambivalent, wavering between embracing and dissociating themselves from
this ethos for maintaining their professional dignity.
3. Identity and Habitus: Concluding Comments with some Further

Observations from the Field of Israeli Translators
The habitus is conceptualized as the way durable social structures are embedded
in the individuals minds and bodies, regulating their judgments and actions.
As such, it is what defines the resources with which individuals construct their
sense of self and self-worth in their specific social settings. Identity work, located in the individual and context sensitive, is thus habitus dependent, as well
as an important channel of habitus formation.
The complex identity discourse of Israeli translators naturally makes use of
many aspects of their life, beyond those specifically relating to their translation
52
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy
work. Their discourse reveals the mobilization of various habitus-based resources, including personality traits (e.g., many translators talk about ambition,
individualism, creativity, a sense of self-improvement, etc.) or background cultural baggage (e.g., they often describe their educated family, early age acquisition of foreign languages, or cosmopolitan experience; Sela-Sheffy 2010). All
of these personal resources often become codified properties mobilized by
translators to construct their ideal profile(s) of a competent translator. This
common pool of (personal and professional) resources constitutes a symbolic
market, however fuzzy, that defines the boundaries and hierarchy of the field
for those who work as translators. Such an invisible field structure is revealed,
for instance in the Israeli case, through analysis of the ways non-elite translators
claim status by appropriating, however ambivalently, identity resources of privileged literary translators, without challenging the hierarchy between them.
Finally, without trying to define a one-dimensional unifying logic for all the
choices a person makes as a translator, I suggest that the negotiation of identity
resources is relevant to understanding translators professional choices. That is,
translators identity talk offers an insight into their ways of doing translation,
specifically their translation norms. For example, it reveals that the value attached to domestication or to foreignization is dependent on the role-image
claimed by the translator. Let me conclude with a final, brief example: my findings on elite literary translators suggest that those who claim the role of cultural
custodians usually consider foreignization a flaw, associating it with ignorance
and lack of talent. At the same time, for those who claim the role of cultural
mediators, the same norm of foreignization may sometimes be considered (if
less commonly) a merit, associated with a pioneering attitude and cosmopolitanism (Sela-Sheffy 2008). However, in the identity discourse of non-elite
translators, foreignization is quite consistently rejected, condemned as a symptom of a word for word mechanistic translation, and associated with lack of
creativity, incompetence or laziness.
Analysis of translators identity discourse thus sheds more light on the generally accepted hypothesis that domestication is a dominant norm of translation
(Toury 2011), revealing the habitus-based range of translators flexibility in employing norms. It suggests that maneuvering between translation norms is a
privilege of elite translators alone. Further, it shows, as already claimed by
Even-Zohar (1990), that this maneuvering hinges on how such norms are justified in terms of their commitment to their role-image as cultural mediators.
When their identity as cultural mediators is blurred, however, as is the case of
the majority of non-elite translators, foreignization seems not to be a recognized
option at all. I suggest that this identity dynamics generates a habitual statusquo that underlies not only translators suspended professionalization, but also
their impeded functioning as agents of cultural change.
53
Notes
1 This is how Bourdieus theory has been received in the Anglo-American world, namely, as a
theory of cultural reproduction and social distinction carried through education and related
practices. Moreover, in fact, while American sociologists of culture embraced and problematized the ideas of cultural capital and taste boundaries, the notion of the habitus (and related
notions, such as the practical logic and embodiment) has been much less addressed by them
(see discussion between Lamont 2012a, 2012b, Lizardo 2012 and Mische 2012).
2 In fact, this transformative aspect of the habitus is implied by Bourdieus discussion (1995) of
what he sees as an ongoing calibration between the taste incorporated in the person and the
taste incorporated in practices. It thus seems not incorrect to say that even though Bourdieus
focus of interest lies elsewhere, the variability and changeability of cultural repertoires, and
individuals ability to maneuver between them, are not entirely irreconcilable with his view.
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Swidler, Ann. 1986. Culture in Action in American Sociological Review 51: 273286.
Toury, Gideon. 2011a. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia:
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Watson, Tony J. 2008. Managing Identity: Identity Work, Personal Predicaments and Structural
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Wieland, Stacey M.B. 2010. Ideal Selves as Resources for the Situated Practice of Identity in
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PART II: INTRA-DISCIPLINARY INTERRELATIONS (RE)VISITED
Remapping Habitus: Norms, Habitus and the Theorisation of

Agency in Translation Practice and Translation Scholarship
Sameh F. Hanna (University of Salford)
The recent shift from translation studies to translator studies marks the increasing interest in
the field in understanding the modes of translators agency and the different theoretical and practical
issues these modes raise. The Bourdieusian concept of habitus and the explanatory power it wields
have been instrumental in developing new conceptualisations of agency in translation. This article
seeks to achieve a double purpose: first, siting the concept of habitus as used in translation studies,
shedding light on the (dis)continuities between it and the concept of translation norms; second,
siting the meta-language we use in defining the concept and delineating its impact on both the epistemology and methodology of translation studies. As such, the article critically engages with the
project of remapping which motivates this volume with the aim of highlighting its potentials and
limitations. The case of the Arabic translations of Shakespeares drama, especially the early Arabic
translation of Hamlet by Tanyus Abdu, is used to illustrate the implications of habitus for understanding the agency of both translators and translation scholars.
Keywords: habitus, translation norms, agency, remapping, Shakespeare, Arabic
1. Introduction
While I was compiling the corpus for my study on the sociology of the Arabic
translations of Shakespeares tragedies in Egypt, I came across a photograph
of one of the earliest translators of Shakespeare in Egypt and the first to translate
Hamlet into Arabic (1901). In the photograph, which was published in the only
poetry anthology he left, Tanyus Abdu (18691926) poses for the camera, with
a serious look, eyes slightly diverted from the viewer and without the pensive
hand-on-chin pose which later came to be associated with established and
canonised authors. At the bottom of the photo and in Arabic mono-rhyming
verse, Abdu humorously addresses the readers of his poetry and translations,1
saying:
What you see is my picture; say whatever you want about it, it does not see you,
Do not bother about my upset face; it has been happier before it saw you,
The person with this face only joined a profession where people are destined to be just
like that. (Abdu 1925: 2; emphasis added; my translation)
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Sameh F. Hanna
Figure: A photograph of Tanyus Abdu (18691926) with three lines of Arabic

mono-rhyming verse in which he briefly profiles his career as poet and translator.
To write a sociology of Shakespeare translation in Egypt is to capture the dynamics of this profession which make people like Tanyus Abdu look just
like that. In other words, this sociology is only possible when the still picture
of Tanyus Abdu is made to speak, when the diverted eyes of the translator are
made to look straight into the eyes of the sociologist and respond to questions
about translatorial agency, translation practices and decisions which are socially
as well as historically conditioned. However, this agency can only be reconstructed when the body of the translator, i.e., his habitus this embodiment
of personal and collective histories (Bourdieu 1977: 7879) , is taken out of
the still picture and located within the socio-cultural space where and when it
functioned and produced translation. It is through the interplay between the
habitus of the individual translator and its field(s) of activity that translatorial
agency is best understood and explained.
Within the wider context of the sociology of Shakespeare translation into
Arabic, this paper seeks to shed some light on translatorial agency, using as its
spring board the two concepts of habitus and norms. The proposed project of
remapping the concept of habitus will be critiqued, exploring the implications
of the concept for a slightly different understanding of agency in translation.
61
2. Understanding Habitus: A Few Theoretical Implications

of (Re)mapping
Before looking into the theoretical relevance of translatorial habitus to translation norms, it is useful to reflect critically on the conceptual framework that
motivates the whole project of remapping habitus. Of particular interest is
the spatial metaphor used in conceptualising the notion of habitus. To think of
habitus in terms of a geographical site that needs to be (re)mapped, implies a
number of assumptions that need to be consciously considered in any discussion
of the perceived limitations or potential value of the concept for the study of
agency in translation. Although the idea of mapping tends to project the concept of habitus as a territory,2 or as a static space with a timeless, changeless
topography, the notion of remapping suggests a changing vantage point, a
different angle from which the concept is viewed and a historically-conditioned
position from which the concept is made sense of. The remapping, however,
does not necessarily involve de-mapping, in the sense of a radical rupture with
the theoretical assumptions underlying habitus; it only means, as far as this contribution is concerned, casting a new view at the use value of the concept in the
study of translation, exploring new theoretical aspects in its relation to other
sociological concepts and to different linguistic and socio-cultural dynamics.
If habitus in the context of this volume is taken to be particularly relevant
to translatorial agency, the idea of (re)mapping invokes another type of
agency that has not attracted much attention; not the agency behind the practice,
but the agency behind the study of practice, or what Simeoni (1995: 452) calls
the scholarly agency. Like translation practice, the scholarly study of translation practice is conditioned by a socially and professionally shaped habitus
that is equally worth our critical reflection. I will get back to this later.
Any (re)mapping of the concept of habitus in translation studies needs to
be sensitised to a number of considerations:
First, the concept needs to be remapped within the whole conceptual apparatus
where it originates and functions. One of the theoretical limitations of the spatial
metaphor of mapping is that it invokes conceptual boundaries and frontiers that mark habitus off other concepts. It is almost impossible to appreciate
the explanatory power of habitus without locating it within the complex nexus
of such key Bourdieusian concepts as field, capital and illusio. Furthermore,
within the context of translation studies, the concept cannot be fully appreciated
in isolation from the concept of translation norms which has long been used in
the field as a tool for explaining the decisions made by translation agents. Any
scholarly programme for a conceptual remapping of habitus that is geared to
translation studies should be premised on a double-lens critique of Bourdieus
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Sameh F. Hanna
understanding of agency in cultural production and consumption, on the one

hand, and the dominant paradigms that have been developed in translation studies for understanding the linguistic, cognitive and social dynamics of decisionmaking in the translation process, on the other.
Second, translation scholarship needs to invest in other related and under-used
Bourdieusian concepts which have not yet been elaborately tested in the study
of translation. There are aspects of translatorial agency which cannot be fully
accounted for without using the habitus concept in conjunction with such other
related concepts as distinction, doxa and hexis. What habitus-generated practices are used by translators to achieve distinction for their products? How does
the habitus of a translator negotiate doxic beliefs and practices, especially when
they become the object of tension between orthodox and heterodox discourses?
How do the unconscious dispositions of the translators find expression in their
hexis, i.e., their specific ways of speaking, writing, their peculiar usage of lexical and syntactic patterns and stylistic preferences, and also the way they see
and represent themselves and their roles in the field, across different fields and
in the social space at large? The answers to these questions are possible when
our application of habitus to translation is grounded in a broader view that extends the conceptual boundaries of habitus beyond field and capital to include
other equally relevant and useful concepts.
Third, given that Bourdieus sociology is premised on a theory of practice, it
is pre-requisite for any remapping of the concept of habitus to be informed with
and fine-tuned to the modes of socio-cultural practice in translation and interpreting. These modes, though sharing a common ground with practices in other
cultural fields investigated by Bourdieu, are conditioned by different field dynamics and different forms of capital which need to be echoed in any re-conceptualisation of habitus. To tie our understanding of the social practice of
translation and interpreting to an a priori conceptualisation of field and habitus
goes against Bourdieus sociological view which is motivated by a critique of
theoretical reason and an advocacy of theorisation that is informed by and
grounded in the dynamics of practice (Inghilleri 2005b: 127). Inghilleri (ibid.:
129) rightly admits that the starting point for any attempt to objectify translation or interpreting should not be to try to define any intrinsic properties of
translation or to apply, a priori, scientific concepts like field or habitus. It is
this alertness to the dynamics of translation practice that guarantees a renewed
understanding of habitus and legitimates any future remapping of the concept
that is necessitated by new empirical investigations of these practices. The different conceptualisations of habitus in the work of both Simeoni (1998) and Inghilleri (2003, 2005a), for instance, provide an example of a reconceptualisation
63
of habitus that is triggered by investigating a different translation setting, with

a different mode of agency. While Simeonis general understanding of written
translation leads him to endorse a global subservient translatorial habitus, Inghilleris analysis of interpreting in the context of asylum seekers leads her to
conclude that interpreters are not forever trapped inside their socially constituted selves and that the social dynamics of interpreting in asylum seeker contexts reveal distinctive, contradictory and conflicting habitus (Inghilleri 2003:
261).
Fourth, the conceptual remapping of habitus needs to be sensitised to the interplay of time and socio-cultural space. This has its methodological implication.
In reconstructing translatorial habitus, the social cannot be dissociated from the
historical and the dynamics of the field at a specific moment in time cannot be
elaborated in isolation from both the collective history of the field and the individual histories of the involved agents. In Bourdieus words, the separation
of sociology and history is a disastrous division, and one totally devoid of epistemological justifications: all sociology should be historical and all history sociological (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 90). In view of this understanding of
Bourdieus sociology, any reconstruction of the translation field or translatorial
habitus is necessarily an exercise in writing a social history of translation
(Hanna 2005).
3. Translatorial Agency: Norms or/and Habitus

It is safe to assume that Tourys theorisation of translation norms marks a significant shift from the study of translation as a linguistic activity (linguistic approaches to translation), an end-product fulfilling a certain purpose in the target
language/culture (functional approaches) or as part of a deterministic system
of competing genres (polysystem theory) to its study as a human-governed behaviour. Norms is a heuristic concept that aims to describe the collective behaviour of translators at a specific point in time. The normative behaviour of
translators indicates what is deemed appropriate by both consumers and fellow producers of translation; it specifies, according to Toury (1995: 55), what
is prescribed and forbidden as well as what is tolerated and permitted in a certain
behavioral dimension. Despite the significant usefulness of norms as an analytical tool that focusses scholarly attention on human behaviour, rather than
texts, models and repertoires, it falls short of fully accounting for the individual
agency of translators. The systemic orientation of norm-based studies makes
the study of collective, depersonalised behaviour of translators more important
than the investigation of individual translation agencies. As an analytical con-
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Sameh F. Hanna
cept, norms only sets the regulatory aspect of translation behaviour against
which the translators individual decisions can be seen (Hermans 1999: 79).
Norm-based studies of translation do not seem to be able to answer questions about how individual translators negotiate what is generally accepted as
a normative translation behaviour and to what extent translators can be seen
as producers of new norms or reproducers of already existing and dominant
ones. How are norms internalised by translators and under what conditions are
they maintained or challenged is not exactly clear. Methodologically, Tourys
objectivist conceptualisation of translation does not seem to be able to guarantee
an objective reconstruction of translation norms. Our descriptions of norms,
Pym rightly observes, are far from neutral. When we describe, we immediately
participate. This means that as various social groups negotiate the norms of
translation, we are not merely observers on the sidelines (in Schffner 1999:
112).
As a number of studies (Inghilleri 2005a, Meylaerts 2008, Sela-Sheffy 2005,
Wolf & Fukari 2007) have already demonstrated, Bourdieus sociology of cultural production in general, and his concept of habitus in particular can be seen
as filling the gaps left unfilled by Tourys translation norms. Two key contributions can be thought of as corrective of Tourys understanding of norms: first,
addressing the subject-object and agent-structure dichotomies which are inherent in the conceptualisation of norms; second, turning the scholarly I of translation researchers into an object of analysis through the critical lens of
Bourdieus reflexive sociology. Central to our understanding of these two contributions is the concept of habitus. The fact that habitus is both constituted by
and constitutive of the objective structures and the institutional norms in the
field of translation makes it a good candidate for dissolving this age-old dichotomy of agent-structure (or individual agency vs. collective normative behaviour). The dialectical relation between translatorial habitus and translation
field safeguards against the agent-less and deterministic understanding of translation that is inherent in most systemic approaches, on the one hand, and the
subjectivist conceptualisation of translation agency that is typical of some cultural approaches to translation, on the other.
This understanding of translatorial agency, as premised on the dialectic of
habitus and field, invokes another dialectic between reproduction and
change which the concept of translation norms falls short of explaining. Being
conditioned by objective social and institutional structures which are incorporated in the body and mind of the individual translator, the habitus generates
practices which relate to these structures. Relating to social structures, and
hence partially reproducing them, is what makes the practices of individuals
mutually intelligible, and what creates the relative homogeneity (Bourdieu
1990: 58) needed for the emergence and maintenance of any field, including
65
the translation field. However, reproduction of social structures and institutions,

according to Bourdieu, is not a process of replication, but rather of appropriation, by means of which the habitus of individuals not only reactivates structures
and revives the sense deposited in them, but also imposes revisions and transformations (Bourdieu 1990: 57). This formulation of the relation between habitus and social structures counters the objectivist formulation in which the
practices of individuals conform to and assert the structures which originally
conditioned them. This circular representation renders the relation between social structure and practices deterministic, and excludes the possibility of change.
By positing habitus as a mediating mechanism between social structures and
practices of individual agents, Bourdieu seeks to disrupt this determinism.
In view of an understanding of translatorial agency that is informed by Bourdieus concept of habitus, I would like to elaborate a few more thoughts related
to the context of Shakespeare translation in Egypt. Looking at the genesis of
the field of drama translation in Egypt in late 19th and early 20th century, a number of indicators about the agency of Shakespeare translators can be identified,
which can furnish a wider scope of habitus and hence allow for a remapping
of the concept:
1. It would be hard to assume a universal and singular habitus that conditioned
the translation decisions of all the early translators of Shakespeare in Egypt.
Although all drama translators at that time were required to meet the normative expectations of the then emerging theatrical culture, the various social, ethnic, religious and political backgrounds that these translators came
from conditioned their dispositions, and hence their different ways of responding to normative theatrical expectations. Most of the early translators
of Shakespeare in Egypt immigrated from what is present-day Lebanon, for
religious and economic reasons. Although they were native speakers of Arabic, their linguistic habitus was not identical with that of Egyptian translators of Shakespeare. Their reformative approach to the Arabic language,
inspired by the linguistic contributions of such Lebanese intellectuals as
Ibrahim al-Yaziji (18471906) and Butrus al-Bustani (18191883), and their
secular orientations made them tend to free their usage of Arabic from the
features characteristic of Islamic religious discourse. Khalil Mutran (translator of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, among other things)
admits in the introduction to his 1912 translation of Othello that his strategic
use of pre-Islamic Arabic is motivated by his belief that using classical Arabic, that is free from religious as well as regional allegiances, is indispensable for the political unification of Arab nations.
2. The linguistic habitus of early Shakespeare translators in Egypt was constituted by their involvement in different fields of cultural activity, mainly
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Sameh F. Hanna
journalism and the translation of popular fiction. In the case of Tanyus Abdu,
for instance, his use of an accessible variety of Arabic that verges on the
border between standard and colloquial is due to a linguistic habitus that
was structured in the two fields of journalism and translated popular fiction.
The mode of large-scale production that is characteristic of these two fields
induces a linguistic habitus that is closer to the conversational than to the
rhetorical.
3. Another field which had a significant impact on the linguistic and translatorial habitus of the early translators of Shakespeare in Egypt is the field of
popular culture. The co-producers of Shakespeare translation were actively
involved in such other cultural fields as mainstream theatre and pop singing.
Leading actors and actresses some of them were the famous pop singers
of the day were known to have a say in the final stage version of any Arabic Shakespeare play produced at that time. In translating Shakespeare for
the mainstream theatre-goers at that time, theatre translators knew that the
actors and actresses having the leading roles were known to their Egyptian
audience more as pop singers than as actors. In a profit-oriented cultural
market where the box-office success was prior to the prestige conferred by
theatre reviewers, the translatorial habitus was conditioned to cater for the
expectations of both theatre performers and theatre audience. This explains
Tanyus Abdus tendency to translate Hamlets tragic monologues into
melodramatic lyrics to be sung by the singer-cum-actor Salama Hijazi who
played the role of Hamlet during the 1910s.
4. The agency of early Shakespeare translators and how it was negotiated in
relation to the expectations of both co-producers and consumers of theatre
translation in Egypt was conditioned by the economic status of theatre translators. The fact that the first generation of Shakespeare translators were freelancers induced a habitus that was both subversive of the source text
(henceforward ST) and subservient to the needs of co-producers and consumers. The second decade of the 20th century saw the rise of a second generation of Shakespeare translators who did not rely on translation for a
living. This induced a translatorial habitus that was more inclined to be subversive of the dictates of the market and subservient to the authority of the
ST. This mode of translatorial agency was then accommodated by the publishing, not the theatre market.
These four denominators of the agency of Arabic translators of Shakespeare in
turn-of-the-century Egypt underline a number of theoretical assumptions that
need to be taken into consideration when re-mapping the concept of habitus in
translation studies. The fact that habitus is both socially and historically conditioned cannot be overemphasised. The difference in modes of agency between
67
Levantine translators and Egyptian translators of Shakespeare in early 20th century, despite sharing Arabic as the language of translation, is attributed to different dynamics of the socio-cultural spaces of Egypt and the Levant during
that time and the different histories of these two fields of translation. Similarly,
the different translation practices of the first and second generations of the Arabic translators of Shakespeare are due to the change of translatorial habitus over
time. If habitus is conditioned by space and time, it is also constituted across
different fields of activity. The dispositions of a translators habitus are not only
the outcome of the objective structures in the translation market, but they are
equally fashioned by other cultural markets or fields in which translators are
involved. The study of the fields of popular culture, literature, journalism and
the academic field is indispensable when studying the genesis and development
of the habitus of Shakespeare translators into Arabic.
4. The Habitus Made Visible: Translatorial Hexis and

Translational Doxa
One area that has not yet been fully brought to the scope of scholarly mapping
relates to the conditions under which the unconscious and invisible dispositions
constituting translatorial habitus become visible and subject to conscious consideration. Although habitus functions below the level of consciousness and
language (Bourdieu 1984: 466), the discursive practices and representations
it generates are revealing of the modes of agency exercised by translators, the
various ways they fashion their own professional/social persona in the field and
the strategies they use in negotiating doxic beliefs and practices, especially
when they become the object of tension between orthodox and heterodox discourses. The two Bourdieusian concepts of hexis and doxa might be helpful in
addressing these issues.
Body hexis, according to Bourdieu (1977: 87, 9394) is the pattern of individual specific postures including ways of sitting, walking, tilting ones head,
facial expressions, as well as the styles of speech and using tones of voice. This
pattern of postures, which is generated by ones habitus, is charged with a host
of social meanings and values (ibid.: 87). It is these meanings and values which
give individuals (and their cultural products) their distinctive positions in the
social space at large and in the fields of cultural production they are involved
in. In this sense one can speak of the body hexis of adults and children, men
and women. In the same sense we can also speak of the hexis characteristic of
poets, sports people, politicians, academics, etc.
The notion of hexis has the potential of explaining modes of translatorial
agency in one of two ways. First, it can be employed in providing a sociological
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Sameh F. Hanna
insight into the distinctive style of translators, achieved through their specific
use of lexical, syntactic and stylistic patternings. One example of using hexis
to explain the micro-dynamics of the lexical choices of translators is the study
by Charlston (2013) of James Baillies English translation of Hegels Phenomenology of Mind (1910/1931) in which the meaning of hexis as the conscious
embodiment of dispositions through ones physical posture is metaphorically
extended to explore the linguistic stance taken by translators within the text.
Viewing the text of translation as a linguistic body through which the translator adopts a visible stance in relation to both the ST author/culture and his/her
fellow translators in the target field is useful in providing a sociological explanation of such translational and textual choices as the use of initial capitals,
spatial metaphors (e.g. the use of the spatial adjective high in denoting the relation between mind, spirit and Spirit in Hegels Phenomenology), rhetorical
use of pairs of target language (TL) verbs, footnotes, etc. (Charlston 2013).
These lexical choices, as Charlston (ibid.: 57) rightly observes can be interpreted as gestures, like the gestural hexis analysed in Bourdieus ethnographic
work. In Bourdieusian terms, these textual gestures can only be understood as
honour-seeking gestures that are made in an honour-endowing field. These
textual gestures are nothing but the translators strategies to gain recognition
in the field s/he is translating into. The use of hexis as a conceptual tool for explaining translatorial agency within the text of translation, however, can pose a
methodological challenge. The fact that the published translation text is the collaborative work of the translator with other agents, including editors and language reviser, might make it difficult to decide whether the specific
linguistic/stylistic patterns in the translation are actually his/her textual hexis.
Second, the notion of hexis can also be useful in explaining the translators
representations of themselves and their work. These representations, which are
also generated by the translatorial habitus, are indicative of their perceived
agency vis--vis the source culture/text/author. The tendency of the early generation of Shakespeare translators in Egypt to designate themselves on the front
covers of their published translations as authors rather than translators is
in line with their subversive position toward the ST. Some other translators describe their work as ta3rib (i.e., arabization) to denote their active agency in
appropriating the Shakespearean text according to the codes of the host culture.
Some of these arabizers further highlight their active agency by replacing the
names of characters by Arabic names, changing scenes, settings or plots to bring
them in line with the taste of Egyptian mainstream theatre-goers and consumers
of popular culture at that time.
The linguistic hexis adopted by translators in their translational texts and
their representations of their social and professional persona could be challenged by other agents in the field. For different reasons and in different ways,
69
gate-keepers in the translation field tend to question and sometimes re-engineer

the linguistic and representational hexis of translators. In reaction to the subversive stance taken by the early Shakespeare translators in Egypt in their relation to the source author, theatre reviewers who started to be active in the field
since the 1910s tended to place increasing constraints on the work of theatre
translators. This they did by projecting and promoting a different stance for theatre translators, a different posture that places translators in a hierarchically inferior relation to the foreign author. This posture can be described for want of
a better term as a subservient hexis. In a series of narrative articles published
in 1920 with the title Trial of the Playwrights, M. Taymur uses the setting of a
court trial to describe the practices of playwrights and theatre translators at that
time. Theatre translators in this trial were represented as defendants charged
with the distortion of the foreign texts they translated. Significantly, members
of the jury were the foreign writers whose texts were allegedly distorted by
these translators. The jury included Corneille, Racine, Goethe and Shakespeare.
This representation of the theatre translators promoted a specific hexis that emphasised the accountability of the translator to the foreign authors. Due to a
number of field dynamics, including the professionalization and academicization of Shakespeare translation, this subservient hexis later substituted the
subversive hexis.
The dispositions of translatorial habitus are also brought to consciousness
and become visible when at certain moments in the history of the field translators start to question translation beliefs and practices that have long been taken
for granted and when they consciously and critically reflect on what Bourdieu
would call translation doxa (1977: 164). It is at this moment when the translatorial habitus becomes self-reflexive and turns against itself to speak out what
has, for different reasons, been muted about translation and its practice. This
self-reflexive move of the translatorial habitus could explain translation cases
where translators go against the grain and use iconoclastic strategies that diverge
from established translation doxa. One illustrative case is Moustapa Safouans
translation of Othello (1998) in Egyptian colloquial Arabic which has always
been seen as a heterodox practice in the field of drama translation in Egypt.
Safouan introduces his iconoclastic translation by a detailed discussion in which
he critically reflects on the long-held assumption that classical literary Arabic
is the only acceptable register that can accommodate Shakespeare for Arabicspeaking readers and spectators. Here, Safouans translatorial hexis, embodied
in his choice of a specific language variety, is buttressed by a conscious uncovering of doxic beliefs about Shakespeare translation into Arabic. In this case,
Safouans translatorial habitus is only reconstructed through capturing both his
textual hexis and his conscious engagement with orthodox discourses about
Shakespeare translation into Arabic (Hanna 2009).
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Sameh F. Hanna
5. Conclusion: Mapping the Mapper

Back to the photograph of Tanyus Abdu: the fact that I can see him without him
seeing me, that I can narrate and construct his habitus without him questioning
my narrative, is itself revealing of a problematic that is not dissociated from
our discussion of habitus in translation and the overall question of a sociology
of translation. It is true that Abdu and many other translators like him are historical agents that had their own objective existence in a field of objective relations. But, it is nonetheless true that the reconstruction of Abdus habitus is
itself conditioned by the historical position of the sociologist and the methodological tools s/he uses. Bourdieus self-reflexive sociology needs to be exercised in connection with the research tools and methodologies employed in
translation studies. The methods used by translation scholars in constructing
their objects of enquiry can themselves constitute the object of study. In addition
to making translation scholars aware of the constructedness of these tools, a
self-reflexive study of the habitus of translation scholars would enhance our
awareness of the epistemological and methodological limitations of these tools.
These limitations include the very criteria set by translation researchers for selecting their material, categorising them in lists and genres and periodising them
in certain time frames. These tools also include the very concepts translation
scholars devise in order to make sense of phenomena and even the back-translations of these translational phenomena in order to make them eligible for discussion in the lingua franca of modern-day academia. In conclusion, the
historical positioning of the translation sociologist should itself become the object of socio-historical investigation. In other words, the habitus of the mapper
should not itself escape mapping.
Notes
1 Here Abdu addresses readers of both his poetry and translations, as he included in this anthology some extracts from his translations of Shakespeare which he rendered in verse.
2 This invokes similar images which are used in academic discourse such as re-visiting, where
concepts are territorialised and seen as a fixed, static location.
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in Target 15(2): 243268.
. 2005a. Mediating Zones of Uncertainty: Interpreter Agency, the Interpreting Habitus and Political Asylum Adjudication in The Translator 11(1): 6985.
. 2005b. The Sociology of Bourdieu and the Construction of the Object in Translation and
Interpreting Studies in The Translator 11(2): 125145.
Meylaerts, Reine. 2008. Translators and (their) norms: towards a sociological construction of the
individual in Pym, Anthony, Miriam Shlesinger and Daniel Simeoni (eds) Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in homage to Gideon Toury. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 91102.
Schffner, Christina. (ed.). 1999. Translation and Norms. Clevedon: Mutilingual Matters.
Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet. 2005. How to be a (recognized) translator: Rethinking habitus, norms, and
Simeoni, Daniel. 1995. Translating and Studying Translation: The View From the Agent in Meta
40(3): 445460.
. 1998. The Pivotal Status of the Translators Habitus in Target 10(1): 139.
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia:
John Benjamins.
Wolf, Michaela and Alexandra Fukari (eds). 2007. Constructing a Sociology of Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Translatorial Hexis and Cultural Honour:

Translating Captain Corellis Mandolin into Greek
Kalliopi Pasmatzi (University of Manchester)
This article examines the Greek translation of Louis de Bernires historical novel, Captain Corellis
Mandolin (1994) from a Bourdieusian perspective and in light of the various social and ideological
forces that made up the wider social space at the time of its translation in 1995. The themes of the
Axis Occupation of Greece and the subsequent civil war, which form most of the historical period
in which the action of the novel transpires, bring home well-documented conflicts within the historiographic, literary and wider social space of Greece. The Greek Civil War (19461949) was as
much a political conflict as it was a clash between different world views, generating conflicts across
the political field, the wider social space and, notably, the sub-fields of cultural production. This
article will discuss how de Bernires novel is subjected to confrontations and struggles that inform
those fields logics once it crosses national boundaries. Furthermore, it will discuss particular translatorial outcomes in light of the social forces that engendered them, as those are processed and reproduced through the translator. Following Charlstons novel use of translatorial hexis (2012),
which focuses on textual outcomes as instances of the translators honour-seeking position-takings,
this article examines specific translatorial decisions. These are regarded as the textual and discursive
reproduction of the translator as well as the publisher and editors embodiment of cultural knowledge, culture-specific notions and cultural norms in the pursuit of honour in a variety of cultural
fields.
Keywords: translators hexis, dispositional plurality, Captain Corellis Mandolin, Greek Civil War,
historical fiction
1. Introduction
Bourdieus theorization of cultural phenomena has proven a fruitful methodology within Translation Studies for understanding translation as a social act. A
theoretical and empirical orientation towards agency has generated numerous
studies on the translators habitus. The social and individual aspect of the habitus has engendered two main trends in Translation Studies research, namely a
more comprehensive approach, which seeks to identify collective attributes of
translators and an individual orientation, which takes individual subjects as its
starting point. Researchers such as Inghilleri (2003) and Sela-Sheffy (2005) examine social and field-specific determinants as well as the translating/interpreting context with the view of understanding the extent to which translators as a
professional group draw from a pool of specialised competences (Inghilleri
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Kalliopi Pasmatzi
2003: 245), resources, forms of capital and conventions in shaping their professional habitus. These researchers acknowledge the translators socialization
within the wider social field and the influence that socialization bears on their
translational practice, while recognizing their formation as a cultural group
within a field with its own stakes and sources of prestige. On the other hand,
Gouanvic (2005, 2010) and Hanna (2005, 2006) focus on particular translators
and their past socialization and intellectual trajectory within the wider cultural
and social fields as sites of chief habitus-shaping experiences. Both look at how
previous experiences to a certain extent determine the translators trajectory in
the field, in terms of their predilection toward particular cultural products and
in some cases linguistic and stylistic strategies.
As observed above, most Bourdieusian approaches to translation study the
habitus in its macro-manifestations. This article, however, is interested in micromanifestations of the habitus and will therefore throw light on specific textual
features of the translation of Captain Corellis Mandolin (henceforward CCM)
as a reflection of the social context which produced them, observing how the
latter is refracted through the translators habitus. This article is therefore not
interested in investigating the habitus as a shared body of dispositions (Jenkins 2002: 80) amongst translators nor does it look to investigate the subjective
habitus (ibid.: 79) of CCMs translator. This article rather shifts focus from an
agent-oriented approach to a product-oriented one and interprets the relationship
between the social world and the translation of CCM as one of reflection and
reproduction.
As will be discussed shortly, CCM is situated at the intersection of a number
of closely linked fields in the target culture: the politico-ideological and literary
fields, the field of history-writing and the broader social space of Greece. The
task of translating it engenders a multiplicity in the translators habitus, in the
sense championed by Lahire (2003), whereby multiple social orders are imprinted upon the habitus through the translators socialization within these
fields. The translator is therefore required to possess a variety of cultural competences during the act of translation, as has been well-documented within
Translation Studies (e.g. Simeoni 1998, Inghilleri 2003, Meylaerts 2010). However, this paper examines this multiplicity not as the ontological state of the
translators habitus, but in its reproduction within the text, which fosters the
necessary specific conditions (Lahire 2003: 342) for the translators plural
mental and affective structures to emerge in specific translational outcomes.
The text will, therefore, be examined alongside the context in which the translation occurs and the translators broader cultural habitus1 to determine how
text, context and habitus produce a given translatorial stance (hexis) in the translation. Following Charlston (2012), translatorial hexis is defined as the stance
the translator assumes textually in pursuit of honour and prestige. Looking at
Translatorial Hexis and Cultural Honour
75
particular examples from the Greek translation of CCM, this article will examine how the translators stance is triggered by her cultural habitus which recognizes and reproduces what is considered honourable within the wider social
and cultural fields of Greece and which is shared by publisher and editor.
2. Historical Background to the Translation

CCM is a historical novel that traces the life of doctor Iannis and his daughter
Pelagia on Cephalonia during the Axis Occupation of Greece (19411944) and
the ensuing Greek Civil War (19461949). Early on in the novel, Pelagia gets
engaged to a local villager, Mandras. The subsequent Italian occupation of
Cephalonia, however, occasions the meeting of captain Corelli, a humanitarian
and a pacifist, and Pelagia. They gradually fall in love, but are separated only
to meet approximately fifty years later. Pelagias liberal and educated character
sharply contrasts Mandras character, a fact which eventually leads their engagement to failure. Mandras character changes dramatically once he joins the
communist resistance against the occupiers and to a certain extent depicts the
victimization of individuals by ideology, representing the damage done by extreme politics (Cox 2003: 46).
Dr. Iannis greatly enables de Bernires to voice the novels underlying
conceptual thesis on the ontology of historical knowledge through his strenuous and failed attempts to write The New History of Cephallonia (CCM
1994: 5). The novel assumes a self-reflexive attitude toward history, which is
seen to yield to different epistemological, moral or further diktats. Using a
variety of registers and styles, ranging from epic, history book, bombast, satire
(Cox 2003: 64) and multiple narrative viewpoints of characters of varying nationality, sexuality, religion, social and political background, de Bernires
presents history as fragmentary. Above all, the novel critiques heroic concepts
of History (Sheppard 2002: 51), using the aforesaid and further postmodernist
techniques to undermine metanarratives,2 such as Fascism and Communism,
that impose a totalizing vision of the world. For example, the narrator summarizes Communism as The Most Noble Cause Ever to Attract the Highest
Proportion of Hooligans and Opportunists (CCM 1994: 361). CCM, however,
engages very explicitly with Greek history. Through its take on the civil war
and the communist resistance, CCM was accused of historically divesting the
Left of its ideological and social directives and nullifying its role in the resistance against the Axis occupation. Critically, the text confronts existing historiographic poetics and literary aesthetics that underpin a section of the
domestic production of history-writing, civil war fiction and the wider public
discourse.
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Kalliopi Pasmatzi
In the decade following the civil war, a struggle occurs in the literary field
over the interpretation of the traumatic experiences (Apostolidou 2010: 137),
which was highly politicized, particularly in relation to the space of critics rather
than literary production per se (ibid.). At least within that decade, the aesthetic
possibilities of the Left orthodoxy demanded idealistic narrations and positive
heroes that glorified the partisans bravery (ibid.: 135),3 while more problematized accounts of the traumatic experience of the war and the Lefts defeat
were resisted (see ibid.: 64).4 Within Left circles, the aesthetic struggles between
the orthodoxy and a more heretical faction map onto the over-arching struggle
for the definition of legitimate art with orthodoxy espousing an art that furthers
ideological and societal goals and heterodoxy championing for an art stripped
of ideological dictates (see Apostolidou 2003). In relation to historical fiction,
while Left orthodox authors, predominately exiled, focused on articulating a
grand heroic narrative of the resistance, writers that have been identified as
Centrist or Right-wing distanced themselves from the discourse of the contending factions (Apostolidou 2010: 136). However, the fall of the Junta in
1974 paved the way for a more personal attitude toward history in fiction,
with the publication of Alexandrous Mission Box (1974), which was instrumental in deconstructing [] the grand narratives of the Greek Left (2003:
46). At the same time efforts were made to innovate the Lefts historiographic
poetics, as suggested by Apostolidou (see 2003: 248 257). Despite such developments, historical events such as the Junta, the previous exclusion of the
Lefts identity from public discourse, their intellectual marginalization and the
need for a political interpretation of the recent past fostered a highly politicized
climate in the 1980s wider public space. The narrative of the civil war acquired
a central role within the field of power in the 1980s, when a clear shift occurred
in the political field with the socialist party, PASOK, coming into power and
recognizing the Left resistance (Marantzidis & Antoniou 2004: 225). A wave
of left-wing memoirs was published during that decade (ibid.) and the Lefts
grand narrative for the historical events began to gain dominant status. In the
1990s, a revitalized interest in the civil war, at least among scholars, strove to
renegotiate its dominant narratives and its modes of representation. This gave
rise to what could be described as a heterodox historiographic current that
attempted to renovate previous historiographic poetics that sought for overarching national truths, heroizing or demonizing political factions and which
introduced a revisionist, more self-reflexive perspective that accommodated
for smaller-scale narratives, championed by a small group of newcomers,
mainly Kalyvas and Marantzidis (see Paivanas 2005; Kalyvas and Marantzidis
2004).
The translation of CCM occurs within this context and as prominent Greek
author Thanasis Valtinos publishes his controversial civil war novel Orthokosta
77
(1994). Like de Bernires, Valtinos highlights the biased and elusive nature of
history and undermines a purely Marxist interpretation of the war by de-ideologising civil war violence, illuminating other motives beyond the class struggle.5
Critically, Orthokosta set the boundaries of aesthetic and ideological acceptability in historical fiction on the war, eliciting fervent attacks from the orthodox
gate-keepers. According to Paivanas (2005), these attacks were connected to
the aforementioned historiographic struggle and concerned postmodernist, relativist and revisionist approaches to the civil war, which became contentious
conceptual positions that threatened the integrity of political identities formed
on the basis of previous heroic narratives.6
The discourse generated from this struggle dominates the Greek reception
of CCM with Left critics accusing de Bernires of adopting a Nietzschean perspective that there are no objective historical events (Sakkatos 1996: 20).7
What this signifies is that CCM asserts a relativism that threatens established
historical and political truths and ideological identities. Eleftheratos goes as far
as to situate CCM amongst all the postmodernist nonsense that have come into
fashion in recent years while spotlighting the ideological danger of the winsome definition of the science of history that the book puts forward (2002:
17). Within this context, a radical charge of infidelity is brought against CCM,
with reference to the revisionist or relativist approach to narrating the war,
which is simultaneously aesthetic and ideological.
This is profoundly interconnected with another aspect of CCM which concerns the question of whether it is a legitimate participant in the dynamics of
the sub-field of civil war fiction: such a falsification of history, our history,
even within fiction [] accords the general climate of our times, whose leaders
destroy everything (Sakkatos 1996: 20). The possessive our history signifies
an act of repossession of something profoundly idiosyncratic to Greece. This
repossession is not limited to the space of critics but emerges as part of the publisher and translators hexis, revealed in the translation, as they exercise anticipatory strategies of how the text will be read in the target milieu. Those
strategies are to a certain extent driven by the function the historical novel performs in the Greek context, which is connected with collective memory, collective identities and historical and political struggles or with subjective
experiences of a domestic historical, social and political space (see Mackridge
1988, Tziovas 2003: 4146). This position, therefore, could be said to involve
notions of historical heritage, memory and participation in collective struggles,
even if to illuminate the subjective experience. The foreign gaze of CCM renders membership to this position problematic, which is recognized both by de
Bernires, who sanctioned the changes in the Greek translation,8 and by the
publisher who resorts to strategies to disassociate it from the politico-historical
aspect of the civil war.9 At the same time, the publisher seeks to emphasize the
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Kalliopi Pasmatzi
literary purity of the text while undermining its alignment with any socio-ideological current.10 The remainder of this article investigates how the translator,
Maria Angelidou, assumes a certain stance in the translation which is enabled
and understood within the author and publishers over-arching decision to adjust
CCM to the expectations of the Greek readership and to distance it from domestic literary production on the civil war, which played a more urgent role in
recording and negotiating the memories of the war. In a high-profile positioning
of the text on national television, Angelidou remarks:
No [it is not a document], it is a novel. [] The choice of the historical background
could have been any other []. I believe the intention of this author of historical fiction
was to show [] through a literary work the human side of all the participants [],
to give an end to the impression [] that there were the good guys, on the one side,
and the bad guys, on the other side. He might do that a bit awkwardly in the case of
our civil war, because we are much better informed and with raw memories.11
A defensive stance emerges which frames the text within more universal categories and distances it from domestic memories and national trauma, which appears as a semi-conscious response to the conflicts, stakes and struggles that
informed the historiographic, literary and wider social space of Greece. This
gesture is determined by the publishers positioning of CCM in the Greek context and the translators understanding of her role in the process.
3. Socialisation, Habitus and Hexis

The notion of hexis can help shed light on translatorial outcomes in CCM as
defensive and honour-seeking stances based on the dynamics of the aforementioned fields and Angelidou and the publishers anticipation of the translations
readership. Bourdieu introduced hexis to identify and describe those ritualised
and regularised bodily stances of the Kabyle people of Algeria that were the
corporeal performance of social order. More specifically, Bourdieu used the notion to describe how sexual politics found host in gestures and mutated the
body into political signification:
Bodily hexis is political mythology realized, em-bodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable manner of standing, speaking, and thereby of feeling and thinking.
The oppositions which mythico-ritual logic makes between the male and the female
and which organize the whole system of values reappear, for example, in the gestures
and movements of the body. (Bourdieu 1977: 93; emphasis in original)
The habitus of the male and the female, as collective and socially-constituted
entities, found expression in a hexis which dictated that a steady walking pace
79
was most honourable for the Kabyle men, while a bent, submissive walk was
more appropriate for women. Hexis is therefore the embodiment of a set of social principles linked to a collectively recognized social order which are performed individually by members belonging to that social order in pursuit of
honour. Hexis appears as the embodied and socially-conditioned knowledge
of what is honourable and dishonourable in a given context. Similarly, in Pascalian Meditations, Bourdieu claims of the waiters hexis (gestural manner and
gait) that it is evident in his body, which contains a history [] which [the
waiter] has never seen except incarnated in bodies, or more precisely, in the
uniforms inhabited by a certain habitus, that are called waiters (2000: 154; my
emphasis). Bourdieus statement renders hexis as a sort of interface between
the habitus and a given field, whereby the individual observes the gestural and
corporeal stance adopted by a given habitus and (consciously and unconsciously) mimics that stance to participate in the game of waitressing in the
most honourable manner. The fundamental difference between habitus and
hexis is, therefore, that hexis is a manner of standing and speaking and so relates to stance and form, while the habitus is a manner of feeling and thinking
and therefore a collectively affective and cognitive faculty characterized by
transposability, durability and generative qualities.
A collective habitus that is attuned to a given field is rendered observable
and therefore to a large extent open to mimicry through the corporeal constraint[s] (Bourdieu 2000: 152) it imposes on the body. Hexis, in other words,
is the perceptible-through-the-senses reproduction of the social world as somatized by the habitus and enacted and re-enacted by the individual to arrive at
honour and prestige. Hexis and the notions of honour and prestige remind us
of symbolic capital in a given field of practice and are therefore closely associated with the game and the strategies agents employ to maximize their symbolic profits. This sense of honour, however, need not be merely attached to the
individuals sexuality, as suggested by the example of the Kabyle, but involves
multiple, overlapping or contesting identities, such as cultural, national and
other identities. Standing straight during a given national anthem, for example,
is a way to act out ones national identity.
Similarly, honour is not merely sought through the bodily enactment of social norms, but can take on a symbolic form reproduced discursively. Charlston
(2012) introduces the notion of translatorial hexis to illuminate various textual
choices in Baillies English translation of Hegels Phenomenology, such as the
use of footnotes and capitalization, as symbolic attempts to achieve honour in
a variety of fields, such as the field of philosophy and that of politics. This calls
attention to the translators inculcation in a variety of fields and his/her sensitivity to their controversies, indeterminacies and tensions, which produces the
translators stance. Charlston adopts a definition of translatorial hexis as a no-
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tion analogous to the habitus but embodied in the text (2012: 46). Therefore,
hexis can be metaphorically performed and enacted on a symbolic level as
much as on a corporeal one. Relating to prestige and honour, hexis becomes
closely associated with Bourdieus concept of practical sense which offers
agents a sense of what is appropriate in the circumstances and what is not
(Thompson 1991: 13), whereby agents, and in this case translators, semi-consciously adopt an honour-seeking stance (Charlston 2012: 41) that will secure
them the largest symbolic profits.
The concept of appropriateness raises a lot of questions in relation to the
translators habitus and the stance embodied in the actual translational product.
As in Charlstons case, where the translator adopts a stance which seeks honour
in a variety of fields, any study on the translators habitus and stance needs to
define what are considered appropriate, prestige-bearing practices in each
case. For example, the researcher needs to clarify whether an upright, honourable hexis is associated with the translators (textually manifested) commitment to the author (see e.g. Gouanvic 2005) or to the target reader and the target
culture; whether, after Venuti (1995), a visible or invisible stance is more
appropriate, or whether s/he should reproduce existing ideologies as encoded
[in texts] [] or to dissociate [himself/herself] from those ideologies (Baker
2006: 103), which are always socially-determined. In that sense, a reworking
of a text is not a betrayal of the original text, as traditional notions of faithfulness would have it, but a stance, the corporeal manifestation of the habitus
interaction with the wider context. This is what is suggested by Charlstons conclusion that evaluating translations based on consistency and equivalence
could mask [] the complex priorities involved in the translation of philosophy (2012: 38) and translation in general.
Taking the metaphor of the stance a bit further, then, the translators hexis
is visualized as being imprinted on the cultural product as orientation, another
capacity of the body, whereby, the translator is oriented toward the source or
target culture or considering the embeddedness of the text and the translator
in a variety of fields toward the political, the cultural or any other field.
Charlstons definition of translatorial hexis therefore brings the cultural product
to the forefront, rendering the translation as an interface where the social world,
as internalized by the translators habitus reveals itself along with the translators reading of the text and his/her perception of his/her role. The translators
perception of his/her role is very important for understanding translational practices, as Charlston highlights (2012: 60). In trying to articulate Angelidous understanding of her role, I depended on an interview with her.12 Angelidou is a
well-established literary translator and an author of childrens books in Greece.
An orientation towards the domestic culture emerges as a defining aspect of
her habitus, as one of her core principles is that the final recipient of the work
81
[she does] is the Greek reader. Translational outcomes for Angelidou are further:
a matter of character, personality, knowledge, manner of speaking, how many roots
one has in this language, in this time, in this era, in this generation, in the next one, in
the previous one and from then on, it is a matter of conscientiousness and how much
one wants to transfer a certain author in ones language, that is, to respect both interested parties, both the author and the reader.
The above statement highlights how translatorial behaviour stems from the
translators perception of the relationship s/he contracts with the complex web
of cultural and social structures in which s/he is embedded. The notions of
conscientiousness and respect to both author and reader further highlight
how the concept of hexis and its relating vocabulary of stance, gesture and orientation can prove helpful, as each translatorial task can be seen to evoke a
different (although consistent with the habitus) stance. In the case of CCM,
the translator seems to understand her role as that of a cultural agent who orients her body towards the domestic Greek culture. This stance is not a permanent translational stance emanating from principles specific to the field of
translation in Greece but is enabled by Louis de Bernires concerns about the
reaction of the Greek readership which are matched by the publishers concerns and addressed by Angelidous authority in Greek culture. Initially, Angelidou would not recommend any changes to the book as her personal
reading of it emerges as predominately literary, with her positive evaluation
of de Bernires as an author. However, when the author turned to her and the
Greek publisher to determine the acceptability of predominately historical depictions in the text then she is enabled to take an authoritative stance and exercise her sensitivity to the demands of the market and the struggles within
the relevant interconnected fields. Reflecting the publishers and her own
judgements regarding appropriateness for the anticipated readership, Angelidou adopts strategies that would produce a culturally-acceptable and honourable text within the target culture.
4. Hexis, Culture and Euphemisms

In Language and Symbolic Power, Bourdieu observes how bodily hexis enacts
the linguistic habitus through pronunciation, voice, pitch and further features
which correspond to the class and linguistic community in which the individual
was socialized. Language is a par excellence symbolic system that can be used
to produce a symbolic hexis, as it is capable of generating gestures and stances
through the lexical, syntactic and grammatical choices speakers make. Like the
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body, therefore, language is a bearer of social distinction, which is not an inherent quality of language. Rather, it is in relation to a market that the complete
determination of the signification of discourse occurs (Bourdieu 1991: 38) and
therefore it is in relation to a cultural and social context that discourses become
politically significant. This explains the significance attributed by Bourdieu to
euphemisms (see his 1991). Bourdieu associates particular euphemisms with
different languages of authority and discourses, each one seeking to impose
their vision of the world, by producing their own vocabulary or seeking to impose new and idiosyncratic usages on particular lexis. This is the reason why
Bourdieu identifies euphemization as the predominate strategy to act out social
constraints and exercise symbolic power while maintaining honourable conduct,
as the very act of euphemizing is meant to disguise and conceal to the point of
imperceptibility the rootedness of speech, ideas and discourses in political, ideological or other heteronomous forces.13
With reference to the translation of CCM, the translators hexis is identified
in relation to the strategies of euphemization, discourse sanitizing, hyper-correction and omissions used in the text. These reflect the translators pursuit of
producing an honourable text, validated in the cultural, politico-historical and
social fields of Greece. These strategies are sanctioned by the publisher and at
times some instances could presumably be attributed to the editor. However,
they must have been endorsed by Angelidou whose name features in the Greek
edition as the translator. Much like Bourdieus analysis of euphemization
and elevated style in academia (see Charlston 2012: 56), these strategies suppress the politico-ideological significations that emerge from the text while
guarding its literary quality. These strategies do not derive their symbolic meaning solely in relation to the translators habitus, but in the homology between
the text, the translators habitus and the cultural and linguistic market which
vests them with their specific social force. CCM attempts to construct the historical narrative of the civil war as well as a cultural narrative of Greekness
which situate it in multiple arenas literary, ideological, historiographical and
socio-cultural upon its import. Assuming the stance of the cultural agent, Angelidous translational outcomes are interpreted as an acknowledgement of the
stakes and struggles in these arenas as well as the author and publishers pursuit
for material profits and literary prestige in the Greek publishing space. Having
been asked to mediate between text and context, Angelidou resorts to her ingrained knowledge structures and cultural schemes to reproduce in the text cultural perceptions of Greekness as well as socio-ideological structures that
resonate well with the domestic social space guided by her sense of readers
expectations.
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4.1. Euphemization, Sanitizing and the Greek Civil War

As discussed earlier, the narrative of the civil war altered in Greece as the scales
within the political space and field of power shifted, while, each ideological
camp defended their own contested historiographic truths, each fostering a
politico-historical discourse buttressing their political identity. The military triumph of the National Army and the moral victory of the Right, that put an end
to the civil war, was not only a political victory, but further led to the exclusion
of the Left from the public narrative of the civil war. During the far-Right military junta (19671974), the Left Resistance was silenced, while official discourse discredited the left-wing participants of the civil war as bandits (Close
2004: 258), perpetuating their exclusion from the official narration of the war.
In other words, the official narrative form of the war, which gave an account of
a power struggle between Good and Evil, imposed its own taxonomies, which
were reinforced through the namings it employed to describe the entities involved (e.g. bandits for the Left resistance fighters). Similarly, what the Left
tried to classify as a struggle of the classes, and all the subsequent classifications
that it implied (e.g. Left struggle as a predominantly social struggle) was classified on the other side as a struggle for political dominance. After the fall of
the Junta, a new public emerged, which sought the rehabilitation of the Left in
public discourse. The general political climate of the 1980s gave the Left narrative visibility and transformed the form of the war narrative into a narrative
of civil and fratricidal war, which reflected the new social order and alleviated
the classifications that had previously emerged due to the skirmishes in the field
of power.14
This shift in the narration of the war reflected and in its turn cultivated a
new sense of space for the Left. This new orientation found host in a new
form of narrating the war, namely, as a proper civil war, which to some extent
meant the use of a new vocabulary. Through the shift of power, a new myth
was created to explain and organize historical experience. The translators
awareness and sensitivity to [this] tension of the market (Bourdieu 1991: 83)
generated some translatorial choices in CCM that reinvented the text within a
culturally acceptable and honourable paradigm. As the translator comments:
[M]ost of what [Louis de Bernires] writes is one-sided, meaning that it was not objective or clearly factual; or rather that it wasnt the whole story. It wasnt lies [] but
it wasnt the whole truth. Some truths were missing from the book.15
Anticipating that beyond a literary work, the text would be read as representative
of history and culture, Angelidou responds to de Bernires aforementioned
concerns by applying a civil war frame to what in the book appears a one-
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sided description of Left violence. Emphasis therefore was placed on foreseeing the function the book would fulfil for Greek readers. According to
Angelidou, the translational shifts in the book materialize in one main
change in the whole book of basically three words. The subject was changed
in all dogmatic sentences. This is in reference to Chapter Sixty-Three,
entitled The Liberation, which depicts the end of the German Occupation
of Greece and the beginning of the civil war, where the communist faction is
accused of a variety of atrocities. There, in a passage that spans over little
more than a page, the subject was changed to implicate both Left, governmental and right-wing entities.
Textual evidence suggests that lexical choices of the translator further empower the new narrative of the war, which sanitizes and neutralizes the ideological distinctions emanating from de Bernires account. Before the civil war
transpires in the novel, Mandras decides to join the Greek resistance against
the Axis occupation. To that end, Mandras is made to articulate that [he is]
going to join the partisans (CCM 1994: 177). In the translation, however,
Mandras join[s] the resistance (CCM 1995: 250). By referring to the resistance groups as partisans in this instance, de Bernires introduces an anachronism which might imply a pre-existing ideological orientation on behalf of
Mandras.
Similarly, during the occupation, the Greeks talked fierily about the
partisans, about forming a resistance (CCM 1994: 164), while in the Greek
text they talk about taking to the mountains, about starting the resistance
(CCM 1995: 234). The partisan teams of left-wing EAM and republican
EDES were officially formed in September 1941, so from a cultural perspective
it would be hard to determine whether a partisan consciousness would
already be instilled in those planning the resistance. Furthermore, the term
andartes (partisans), which generally signifies irregular troops in warfare,
has been predominately identified with Left Resistance forces in Greece as it
is strongly connected to the civil war narrative, not merely the resistance
against the occupation.16 For the Greek reader, the use of the term andartes
would perhaps highlight ideological priorities rather than the notion of
resistance. While the terms are generally maintained in the Greek translation,
when, for instance, reference is made to the andartes or partisans by a third
person narrator, in these two instances, it is removed. In this manner, the
notion of resistance and defence are prioritized. In a similar case, when the
Italian Acqui Division decides to resist the Germans, the communist andartes
of ELAS [] [do not] shake themselves out of their parasitic lethargy (CCM
1994: 308). Angelidou does not translate the parasitic nature of ELAS involvement in the resistance and opts for blissful instead (CCM 1995: 438).
This is also evidenced in Chapter Sixty-Three, where the narrator attributes to
85
the Communists a wartime policy of doing absolutely nothing (CCM

1994: 361), which is omitted in the translation (CCM 1995: 513). The blight
of millions of lives is further attributed to those hooligans (CCM 1994:
361), referring to the Communists, whereas the Greek text attributes it to the
maelstrom of the civil war (CCM 1995: 513).
These examples embody actualizations of a past socialization within the social space of Greece, which has vested the translator (and the editor) with the
cultural knowledge to anticipate what is considered culturally honourable. In
the 1980s, the Left is recognized as the power that took on its shoulders the
burden of the resistance while the Right is identified with its absence from
the national struggles (Rori 2008: 305). This sharply contrasts previous narrations of the war as well as what is suggested by the narrator above. Therefore,
Angelidous pre-existing classificatory schemes manifest themselves in the different ideological frame she introduces to the narration of the Communist entity
in her translation. This frame mitigates classificatory distinctions between the
two factions previously fostered, offering a narrative version legitimated within
post-Junta social, political and historiographic fields. The translatorial interventions, then, take on their full meaning in relation to domestic historiographic
and socio-ideological discourses. These euphemistic expressions serve in the
translation as antagonistic variants of the original expressions, transferring onto
the translation the translators acquired schemes from the aforementioned contexts. Similar to the Kabyle male that assumes an upright body stance and a
steady gaze, so do those euphemisms or neutralized expressions signal an upright, honourable cultural stance, rehabilitating the Left. Both parasitic and
hooligans locate the Left Resistance in a low and dishonourable position in
historiographic and cultural space, a position which is subverted in the translation. The translators stance textually performs, therefore, conceptual frameworks and perception schemes which are deemed as orthodox in the Greek
culture. At the same time, the translation embodies a defensive gesture, repossessing the narration of the civil war, which in the original text appears to have
been alienated, within established narrative forms. This further highlights the
reciprocal relationship between translator and reader.
4.2. Euphemization, Hyper-Correction and Greekness
The inward bodily orientation of the translator, toward the Greek culture and
the pursuit and validation of honour therein, is further revealed in instances that
revolve around aspects of culture, domestic history and Greekness. This honour-seeking outlook finds its bodily posture in the form of sanitizing strategies
and euphemisms, as in the following example, where a sign on a wall is described in the novel:
86
Kalliopi Pasmatzi
Original
ENOSIS (union) fought for space with ELEPHTHERIA (freedom), Long live the
King cohabited without apparent anomaly with Workers of the world unite, Wops
fuck off abutted with Duce, Eat my shit. (CCM 1994: 164; my emphasis)
Translation
UNION and FREEDOM were competing each other to see which one would take up
the last inch of the whitewashed wall. The sign Long live the king cohabited without
apparent difficulty with Workers of the world unite. [The sign] Wops go home was
written next to Mussolini, you fool!. (CCM 1995: 233; my emphasis)
As the translator has stated, the above sign is simple fiction, these expressions might be part of his arsenal of the English language but they do not represent what happened. This is by no means an accusation but a token of
recognition of the fact that a domestic readership more erudite in the specific
historical period has certain expectation of the feel of that era. More strikingly, Mussolini, you fool! [ ] is directly borrowed from
the same-titled song against Fascist Italy produced in Greece in 1940, which
ironically borrowed its melody from an Italian song and is recognizable by virtually every Greek reader.17 Instances of the sort suggest that historical aspects
are domesticated while the translator offers her reader more recognizable alternatives, in anticipation of what the Greek public would deem more legitimate.
In other words, the translators habitus draws on its acquired domestic conceptual categories to interpret the fictional world portrayed in the book and further
reproduce itself. This engenders a defensive posture in relation to the representation and discursive reproduction of Greekness.
Another occurrence of a similar euphemization strategy relates to Dr. Iannis
description of the ancient God Apollo as hyperbolically bisexual (CCM
1994: 5). In the translated text, Apollo seems to inspire love to both men and
women to a hyperbolic extent (CCM 1995: 19; my translation), instead. The
explicit designation of Apollo as bisexual is perhaps not so widespread in
mainstream Greek culture, while it appears to have fuelled the English imagination and particularly Victorian fin-de-sicle authors who refashioned Classical myths [] [giving] same-sex love something more than respectability
(Vicinus 1999: 85).18 The explicit homoeroticism/bisexuality of the original appears merely as a subtle suggestion in the translation. The above examples, as
well as some further instances of mitigating and at times erasing negative extremities suggest that a defensive stance is adopted which carves the specific
token of Greekness constructed in the book into an acceptable and honourable
stance. A variety of instances occur where a certain vulgarity is mitigated,
whereby a given ethos is distilled into representations of Greekness. That ethos
87
is not a personal possession of the translator, but reflects on her understanding

(as well as the editor and publishers understanding) of cultural acceptability
as a collective possession shared by all members of the cultural community.
This translatorial stance by no means signifies the translators own value systems, but constitutes a gesture towards the prospective reader, indicating knowledge of the fact that the text will be weighed against domestic social dictates
and pre-empting the audiences reading of the text as a representation of history
and culture rather than pure fiction.19
Notably, the translators hexis further realizes itself in strategies of hypercorrection associated with instances of historical value. For instance, de
Bernires places eighteen divisions (CCM 1994: 13) under the command of
General Guzzoni, while the translation affords him twelve divisions (CCM
1995: 29) in total. Some historical sources I have encountered attribute the assemblage of twelve divisions on behalf of Italy for the invasion of Greece by
Fascist Italy (e.g. Schreiber et.al. 1995: 410), which might be a potential source
of this translational instance. Similarly, while De Vecchi reports the attack of
two submarines at Zante by the British (CCM 1994: 13), in the Greek version
they are presumably attacked at Corfu (CCM 1995: 30).20 This hyper-correction often leads to instances of historical explicitation, as for example when
Horatius Cocles held the bridge of Porsenna against a whole army (CCM
1994: 344), whereas in the translation he [on his own] managed to fend off
the Etruscans of Porsenna and save Rome (CCM 1995: 489). Angelidou mentions that historical accuracy was important to herself and the editor and presumably the publisher. This attentiveness suggests an honour-seeking stance
through what appears as a commitment to the ethical seriousness and pedagogic
function of the historical novel in the Greek context. Exercising anticipatory
strategies, Angelidou depends on her social sense as to what is deemed honourable within the complex literary, historical and social context of Greece.
Translatorial decisions, therefore, suggest the projection of the translators
cultural hexis which is embodied in the keen awareness of cultural and historiographic issues relevant to the text. These translational strategies relate to the
over-arching decision of the publisher, sanctioned by the author, to approach
the translation with a certain degree of attentiveness in relation to historical and
cultural instances. In fact, to encourage a more literary reading of the text and
defend it against any historiographic liability, an authors note where de
Bernires states to have tried to be as true to history as possible and a bibliography of historical sources that appears in the first Anglophone editions (e.g.
CCM 1994: 436, 437) is removed by the publisher from the Greek edition.
Therefore, any political and ideological orientation is suppressed both in the
paratext and the text. The above strategies of a form of hyper-correction and
attentiveness to historical detail embody a defensive stance toward potential
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Kalliopi Pasmatzi
readers that is justified within the dynamics of the domestic historiographic and
literary fields where historical consistency mattered and would potentially be
assessed.
5. Conclusion: Hexis and Cultural Prestige

Ones relationship to the social world and to ones proper place in it is never more
clearly expressed than in the space and time one feels entitled to take from others;
more precisely, in the space one claims with ones body in physical space, through a
bearing and gestures that are self-assured or reserved, expansive or constricted.
(Bourdieu 1986: 474)
In situating her body in relation to the translation of CCM, Angelidou, with

an expansive gesture, opts for the position of the cultural connoisseur to accommodate for both hers and the publishers anticipation of readers responses.
Carving the narrative of the civil war into the socially-determined and culturally-acceptable form, she reproduces in the text those values and interpretative schemes that she identifies as legitimate and honourable within the field
of historiography as well as the wider social space of Greece. Her gesture is
expansive textually, as the cultural knowledge and sensitivity to social forces
possessed by the translator dominate the foreign perspective. This was the
authors intention when he sought the publisher and translators cultural expertise. These translatorial interventions are further sanctioned and performed
by publisher and editor, highlighting the fact that these discourses and beliefs
observed in the translation are collectively recognized as honourable.
As Charlston has highlighted, the translators self-reflexive reading or interpretation of his/her own role or agency within the process of translation
(2012: 60) is a pivotal aspect of the hexis as it can explain how translatorial decisions relate to the translators rationalization of his/her role. In this case, the
translatorial choices discussed in this article are harmonious with Angelidous
perception of the act of translating as dependent upon the way in which one is
rooted in this time, in this era, in this generation, in the next one, [] This
brings cultural awareness to the forefront, drawing attention to her textual practices seeking honour within the cultural, historiographic and social fields. The
translators hexis emerges in the gestures she performs textually in response to
the texts interaction with larger social structures and phenomena (discourses,
narratives, concepts) and the publishers desired distance that CCM as a cultural
product is to maintain from historical and contemporary ideological and historiographic debates and conflicts. Being closely associated with Bourdieus notion of the game and honour-seeking position-takings, hexis proves a very
helpful conceptual tool for capturing the dynamic and shifting relationship be-
89
tween the agent and a multiple context. This relationship is revealed through
the formers corporeal or symbolic stance in the text. Hexis is furthermore very
telling of the translators vision of the texts position within and interaction with
the complex and plural context of the target culture.
Notes
1 The concept of cultural habitus here is based on Elias notion of the national habitus (see
1996: 18). Elias observes how the past fortunes (ibid.) of a given nation are sedimented in a
variety of state and other institutions which in their turn instil them in the habitus of each individual member. Similarly, the cultural habitus internalizes a variety of cultural myths and
narratives, historical conflicts, perceptions of ones place in the world, socially and culturally
determined discourses and cultural knowledge.
2 Briefly, metanarratives are used here as defined by theorist Lyotard (1984) as narratives that
seek to organize and legitimize all experience and knowledge according to some grand, overarching and all-encompassing principle (e.g. the metanarrative of Enlightenment, Marxism,
etc.). This article further refers to narratives in the sense used by sociologists as modes of sharing, shaping and disseminating knowledge.
3 See also Davvetas (2002) and Raftopoulos review (1955) of Kotzias The Siege (1953) and
Kasdaglis The Teeth of the Millstone (1955).
4 This tendency was not necessarily the choice of authors but was fostered by the party which
was wary of themes and perspectives that could be used as a weapon in the hands of national
propaganda (Apostolidou 2003: 64).
5 This point is elaborated very well by Paivanas (2005).
6 For an idea on postmodernism in Greece see Gazi 2002, Paivanas 2005.
7 For Nietzsches view on history see Sinclair, http://www.richmond-philosophy.net/rjp/back_issues/rjp8_sinclair.pdf [last accessed 21 January 2014]. It should be noted that the critics that
attacked CCM belonged to the wider circle of journalism rather than literary criticism.
8 I am not sure if de Bernieres supervised all changes or slight translational shifts in the translation but as he has stated [he] agreed with [his] publishers and translator that some of [his]
language and opinions should be moderated. The Greeks dont need some foreigner sticking
his oar in when they can, and do, perfectly well argue among themselves. See http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jun/04/books.booksnews [last accessed 21 January 2014].
9 De Bernieres mentions this himself. See http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jun/04/
books.booksnews [last accessed 21 January 2014].
10 See the publishing houses response to accusations raised against CCM by Lefteris Eleftheratos
(1999: 35), where the novels literary quality is foregrounded (1999: 26).
11 This statement was made at Vasilis Vasilikos literary talk show Axion Esti which aired on 25
October 1995.
12 Interview with the translator on 15 April 2008 and 19 July 2008. Any subsequent quotes and
opinions posited in this article are taken from this interview.
13 See Charlstons discussion of Bourdieus Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger (1991) where
he discusses Bourdieus view of euphemization as a way to avoid the appearance of political
commitment in philosophical texts (2012: 56).
14 The skirmishes between Left and Right were recognized as a civil war as late as 1989 (Rori
2008: 304).
15 This is in reference to the civil war narrative. Interview with the translator on 15 April 2008.
16 For example, within the civil war narrative the term andartes denotes the Democratic Army
90
17
18
19
20
Kalliopi Pasmatzi
of Greece and its supporters, which was the postwar successor of ELAS, the armed force of
the left-wing movement EAM.
According to Sarantakos, this was the second adaptation of the song in Greek, whose original
title was In Rome, but has survived as Mussolini, you fool!. See http://sarantakos.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/reginella/ [last accessed 21 January 2014].
According to Laity, Victorian critics such as Richard Dellamora and Linda Dowling are currently exploring [] forms of desire created by Victorian Hellenists who skilfully maneuvered
the system of mentoring associated with Plato and the Dorians to encode male same-sex love
(1996: 64). This link between Hellenism and homoeroticism appears in the works of Oscar
Wilde, whose Dorian Gray is thought to have been named after Mullers homoerotic Dorians
and Pater, who employs the myth of Apollo and Hyacinth in his homoerotic story of Apollo
in Picardy (ibid.).
Indeed, the book was read by many as a historiographic piece and provoked a number of reactions, even giving rise to semi-historiographic publications in Greece that sought to rehabilitate the dented image of the Left that de Bernires had sketched. See e.g. Sakkatos 2002 and
Eleftheratos 2002, who sarcastically printed his name as Lefty Freeman in the English version
of his book.
While I have been able to verify that de Vecchi indeed reported that the British had established
a base at Milos (Knox 1982:139), as presented in CCM, I have not been able to find any information on any submarines being attacked by the British at Zante or Corfu specifically. In CCM,
Mussolini challenges de Vecchis report as unreliable (1994: 16). Given the importance given
to the historical element in the translation, I assume that this was either verified by the translator
or editor or that it was performed on the basis of verisimilitude, as part of the Italian plan Case
G involved landing at Corfu and advancing through Epirus, therefore Northern Greece (see
Schreiber et. al. 1995: 420).
References
Primary References
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CCM 1995 | de Bernires, Louis. 1995. Captain Corellis Mandolin (tr. Maria Angelidou). Athens:
Psichogios.
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Baker, Mona. 2006. Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London and New York: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 1986. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (tr. Richard Nice). Oxon: Routledge.
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Charlston, David. 2012. Hegels Phenomenology in Translation: A Comparative Analysis of Translatorial Hexis. PhD Thesis. CTIS, University of Manchester.
Close, David. 2004. The Road to Reconciliation? The Greek Civil War and the Politics of Memory
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Cox, Marian. 2003. Captain Corellis Mandolin, Louis De Bernires, AS/A-Level Student Text
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Davvetas, Nikos. 2002. . , . , . [Facets of the Civil War in the Poetry of G. Pavlopoulos, M. Anagnostakis, T. Sinopoulos] in Nea Estia 1743: 436443.
Eleftheratos, Lefteris. 1999. [Cephalonia Has Fallen
Victim of Slander] in Ta Nea (13 January 1999): 35.
. 2002. [The Captains Tuneless Mandolin]. Athens: Tekmirion.
Elias, Norbert. 1996. The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gazi, Efi. 2002. [Postmodernism Says] in To Vima (22 December
2002).
Instances: Field Habitus, Capital and Illusio in The Translator 11(2): 147166.
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Laura Schultz) in MonTi 2: 119129.
Hanna, Sameh F. 2005. Hamlet Lives Happily Ever After in Arabic: The Genesis of the Field of
Drama Translation in Egypt in The Translator 11(2): 167192.
. 2006. Toward a Sociology of Drama Translation: A Bourdieusian Perspective on Translations
of Shakespeares Great Tragedies in Egypt. PhD Thesis. CTIS, University of Manchester.
Inghilleri, Moira. 2003. Habitus, field and discourse. Interpreting as a socially situated activity in
Target 15(2): 243268.
Jenkins, Richard. 2002. Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge.
Kalyvas, Stathis. 2003a. M T [With the Nationalists Hauteur] in To
Vima (9 February 2003): 3738.
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2003): 11.
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Knox, Macgregor. 1982. Mussolini Unleashed, 1939-1941: Politics and Strategies in Fascist Italys
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Lahire, Bernard. 2003. From the habitus to an individual heritage of dispositions: Towards a sociology at the level of the individual in Poetics 31(56): 329355.
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Meylaerts, Reine. 2010. Habitus and Self-image of Non-professional Literary Translators in Minority Cultures in Translation and Interpreting Studies 5(1): 119.
Paivanas, Dimitris. 2005. Cold Wars after 1989: The Reception of Thanasis Valtinos Orthokosta.
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Psichogios Publishing. 1999. [On Captain Corellis

Mandolin] in Ta Nea (28 January 1999): 26.
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Sakkatos, Vaggelis. 1996. ,
[Captain Corellis Mandolin, the Truth and the Authors Consciousness]
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Interpreters in the Making: Habitus as a Conceptual

Enhancement of Boundary Theory?
Nadja Grbi (University of Graz)
The aim of research on boundary work is to understand the role of symbolic resources in generating
feelings of similarity and difference, of group membership and of exclusion. The central questions
pertain to how symbolic boundaries are constructed, protected, or transformed in the process of attaining a certain goal. I introduced the concept to Translation Studies in order to describe and
analyse the construction of the professional sphere of sign language interpreters in Austria. My underlying assumption is that sign language interpreters used and continue to use strategies pertaining
to boundary work in the process of constructing their professional field. The goal of my project is
to identify the strategies which are used to set, maintain or shift the boundaries surrounding a profession over the course of time as well as to identify the types of boundaries that are used to create
feelings of order and stability. Whilst the strength of the concept of boundary work lies in its emphasis on processes of social change and the generative role of interaction, it nonetheless leaves
the question of underlying forces and enduring dispositions unaddressed. My theoretical question
within the scope of this paper is therefore whether the concept of habitus might be able to fill this
gap, to which end I will focus on the first ten years of the process of constructing a profession, before the foundation of the interpreters association.
Keywords: boundary work, habitus, sign language interpreting, profession
1. Introduction
The translating and interpreting professions have attracted the interest of translation and interpreting scholars and teachers for decades, although the focus of
the prevailing approaches has by no means been directed to the translational
subject or agent per se. For a long time, translation was considered primarily
in terms of relationships between texts, just as interpreting was viewed in terms
of cognitive processes, especially in the realm of simultaneous interpreting,
leaving aside the embeddedness of each and every translational action in historical, cultural, social, and situational contexts. These epistemological objectives contributed significantly to the construction of the ideal translator or
interpreter, not least insofar as translation and interpreting education has always
striven to contribute to a comprehensive definition of expectations and professional norms. Issues of standards and quality have been particularly predominant in relation to interpreting studies. In a critical essay, Wadensj (2011: 19)
94
Nadja Grbi
points out that this kind of research pursues the utopian and fallacious objective
of finding and ultimately controlling all factors that determine effective and accurate practice, with an aim to generating instrumental knowledge that would
be used particularly for interpreter training.
There is another group of publications pertaining especially to the field of
community and sign language (SL) interpreting which played a vital part in
contributing to the construction and perception of translational professions as
ideal coherent entities. Aiming at a functional development of the non-, semior pre-professional practice of interpreting and the improvement of the professional status of interpreters, they could be seen to be situated at the interface
between research and social practice. With a practice-oriented and needs-based
conception of professionalisation in mind that aims consistently towards the
establishment of a deliberate and intended target state, these publications frequently strove to define essential traits of real professions through discourse
about the development and application of professionalisation models. Although
the goals of such work were indubitably noble, the underlying idea of progress
in fact obscured a clear view of the complexity of the object.
In both approaches, translational professions have been attributed with necessary and sufficient features, indicating that professional identity is a homogeneous and coherent entity. Likewise, they convey the impression that the
statements that are made refer to a reality, which exists independently of individual or social perception rather than to an observation or interpretation of reality, which would allow for multiple versions. In this way, reality is ascribed
with an ideal form, according to which it can be described completely, consistently, comprehensively, and coherently (Spinosa & Dreyfus 1996: 738). Considering that such discourses are descriptive as well as prescriptive, the
profession becomes a discernible and comprehensible opportunity and at the
same time an obligation. The focus on the professionalism of the occupation
thus subsequently leads to the creation of stable distinctions between professionalism and non-professionalism and automatically obstructs the capacity to
recognize other social worlds or multiple, dynamic, fluid identities (cf. SusamSarajeva & Prez-Gonzlez 2012 on non-professional translation and interpreting).
As a result of the basic intention to increase quality and efficiency regardless
of educational background or other efforts towards professionalisation, there
has been less interest in studying underlying social and societal conditions, or
issues of control pertaining to work and knowledge, inter- and intra-professional
relations, historical references or competition and contest. In the past decade, a
predominant focus on the agent as a constructed and constructing subject, the
application of theoretical and methodological frameworks from sociology and
especially recent research on the translators and interpreters (professional)
Interpreters in the Making
95
habitus, have all contributed to a significant change in the general approach to

the research subject, identifying translators professional trajectories and social
positions as crucial to both the process and products of translation activity (Inghilleri 2009: 282; cf. Wolf 2007). As far as the idea of translatorial habitus is
concerned, there has been a great deal of productive discourse between scholars,
some of whom are also present in this volume, who have analysed a range of
empirical examples of how the concept can be applied at various levels, all the
way down to specific investigations into the habitus of individual translators
and the position they occupy in social space.
The theoretical concept of habitus has been described as a pattern of perception, appreciation and action, and as an embodied system of durable dispositions which are acquired through primary socialisation and life conditions and
which are continually being shaped, restructured and negotiated. Within translation and interpreting studies the concept has been discussed and refined, drawing attention to intercultural, dynamic, multi faceted, mutable and temporal
aspects, i.e. a plurality of habitus, such as: the very diverse social trajectories
of literary translators (Gouanvic 2005); role confusion and ambiguities of interpreters in zones of uncertainty (Inghilleri 2005, 2006); the translator as
professional as well as individual intercultural agent, considering that many of
them occupy different positions in various fields (Meylaerts 2008, 2010); or
strategies of top literary translators in constructing an anti-professionalising
ethos (Sela-Sheffy 2008, 2010). These and other studies demonstrate impressively that there is no such thing as a single translatorial habitus (for a comprehensive discussion on the concept of habitus in translation studies see
Vorderobermeier 2013).
In my research on the construction and development of the profession of
SL interpreters in Austria, I adopted the concepts of boundaries and boundary
work from the sociology of science and the sociology of professions and tried
applying them to translation studies. In this article, I will discuss a part of my
overall project, focussing on the first instances of encounter and exchange between Austrian SL interpreters at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the
1990s. I will first present an overview of my research questions and offer a brief
glimpse into my research topic along with its theoretical basis, specifically
boundary theory and boundary work. These concepts proved to be particularly
useful for analysing and comprehending the construction of this social aggregate, although I soon came to realize that they nonetheless leave some questions
unanswered. In the second part of my paper I will therefore discuss whether an
integration of Bourdieus concept of habitus could perhaps fill the gap left by
boundary theory, particularly in reference to an investigation into the initial
phase of the process of constructing a profession, which is a situation marked
by difference and uncertainty. Finally, I will bring forward some questions con-
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Nadja Grbi
cerning the use of habitus for the subsequent phase of the process, which has
been characterized by increasing consolidation and similarity and the search
for a common agenda.1
2. The Project: Research Questions

Having assumed responsibility for the development of an academic curriculum
for SL interpreters in Austria, I have been following the development of the SL
interpreting profession for more than two decades. A range of observations, discussions and conversations with individual interpreters, the entire group or various different constellations of smaller groups gave rise to the following
questions, which marked the beginning of my project:
1. How did this social aggregate come into being?
2. What were the pertinent social processes?
3. Who were the agents involved and how did they socialise in this new social
world?
4. What strategies and techniques did they employ to foster or hinder these
processes?
5. How did the meaning of these processes develop or change in the course of
twenty years?
My thinking in the context of this project is informed by visual imagery, which
I consider to be a particularly fitting heuristic tool. I therefore conceptualize
the construction of the social world of SL interpreters in Austria much as a cartographer might approach the drawing of a map, surrounding a given territory
with a mental fence, indicating that the space contains inhabitants who are generalized in some respect. As my questions indicate, I pay particular attention to
social change, i.e. the dynamic processes which underpin the techniques and
strategies that a group adopts in the course of its constituent members attempts
to become a profession.
3. A Short Historical Account: Sign Language Interpreting in Austria

SL interpreters in Austria constitute a particularly interesting research topic for
a number of different reasons. Until the mid-1990s, most interpreting was performed by native interpreters (Harris 2010). Recently, Harris (ibid.) reserved
the term natural translators for very young bilingual people who have had no
formal training or guidance in translation or interpreting and thus perform trans-
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lation tasks intuitively and spontaneously. The term native translator, as borrowed from Toury (1995), refers to older untrained bilingual people who have
been exposed to instances of translating or interpreting and thus do not act intuitively. Whilst in the first case the specialized predisposition for translating
or interpreting is in the foreground, in the latter, the focus is on the respective
socialisation processes that shape the translators/interpreters behaviour and
social practice. For a long time, Austrian SL interpreters were the sons and
daughters, social workers, teachers or educators of the deaf and were typically
connected to the deaf by strong emotional bonds. They had undergone no training, had no defined professional profile and, working mostly in isolation on an
individual basis, were yet to develop any kind of group identity. Owing to this
fundamental lack of interaction and exchange, they also had highly divergent
views on what interpreting is and indeed on who they were when seen in a
broader context.
The process of growing together and coming to constitute a group started
with a few informal meetings in 1989, which led, following the introduction of
a one-year further training course at university level, to the foundation of the
Interpreters Association about ten years later. Today there are two full-time
training programmes and the association has developed a more or less compulsory certification system.
Although the SL interpreters social world is very well organized and regimented, the small group of 90 certified interpreters is nonetheless fairly heterogeneous, consisting as it does of: interpreters who were among the first
practitioners to gather together as a group, as well as novices who have just entered into professional life; interpreters who began interpreting for their deaf
parents as children (so called CODAs children of deaf adults) and people who
learnt sign language as adults; interpreters who have had no interpreter training
at all, interpreters who have completed short part-time training courses or attended individual workshops, and interpreters who studied SL interpreting at
tertiary level; and finally, people who work as full-time interpreters and others
who pursue it as a sideline. Apart from those who are organized within the association, there are also interpreters who have resigned from the association or
who have been excluded for one reason or another. One explanation for this
overriding heterogeneity is traceable to the very beginnings of the professional
construction process, which is the focus of this article. Before proceeding to an
evaluation of my data, I will introduce my theoretical basis, boundary theory
and the concept of boundary work, which proved to be particularly valuable
analytical tools with which to approach questions pertaining to how people construct feelings of us and them.
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4. Boundary Theory and the Concept of Boundary Work

Professions have traditionally been regarded as a clearly bounded natural analytical unit emerging from functional specialization (Lamont & Molnr 2002:
178). The main focus of interest was always on structure and closure, as the
world was seen to consist of discrete insular entities (Zerubavel 1995: 1095).
Andrew Abbott (1988) was one of the first scholars in the sociology of professions who shifted the analytical focus from structure to work practices. In contrast to the closure model, he described professions as historically constructed
open ecological systems, where professions exist in interdependence (Lamont
& Molnr 2002: 178). For Abbott (1988), the history of a profession was best
understood through the study of its competition with other professions for jurisdictional control over tasks, knowledge, esteem, authority and power. He
used the boundary metaphor to describe cartographic contests, where antagonistic parties fill spaces that were initially empty with selected characteristics,
creating a cultural map to advance their own interests.
The concept of boundaries was initially introduced as a conceptual tool by
Thomas F. Gieryn in 1983 in his studies of the symbolic boundaries of science.
Proceeding from the assumption that we divide our world into contingent cultural spaces (Gieryn 1999: 10), in the process of which we highlight contrasts,
set up mental fences, put some objects at the core, banish others to the margins,
and construct walls to keep others out, he analysed various processes of drawing
rhetorical boundaries between science and non-science. For him, symbolic
boundaries play a critical role in the construction of identities. Whereas Abbott
has been criticized for being too essentialist and structuralist in favouring something like actual objective practices to representations of such practices,
Gieryn places greater emphasis on how interpretations contribute to the construction of actual practices, i.e. on the representation of difference and the symbolic nature of boundaries (ibid.: 16).
In empirical research across a wide range of fields and topics, much attention has been paid to the properties of boundaries. They are socially constructed,
complex entities (Heracleous 2004: 95) and therefore ambiguous; they are negotiated (ibid.: 96) and sometimes disputed, they change through history, they
are contextually variable and internally inconsistent (Gieryn 1983: 792); and
they have a strong relational quality, as they both connect and divide people
(Lamont 2001: 171). The interest and analytical focus is not, however, concerned with boundaries themselves, but rather with the processes that lead to
the construction of symbolic boundaries. This is what is referred to as boundary
work. Boundary work is strategic practical action (Gieryn 1999: 23) pertaining to techniques and strategies that agents or groups employ to construct distinctions between themselves and others. The primary concern of research on
99
boundary work is to develop a deeper understanding of the role of symbolic resources and actions in generating feelings of similarity and difference, of group
membership and of exclusion. Here, attention is focussed on the dynamics of
boundaries: how they are constructed, imposed, protected, bridged, undermined
and transformed in order to attain a certain goal, such as the acquisition of a
certain status (for a comprehensive discussion of research on boundary work
across a wide range of disciplines cf. Lamont & Molnr 2002: 168; Pachucki
et al. 2007: 331).
With regard to the study of professions, research has been conducted to address issues such as boundary work between professionals and amateurs, between adjacent professions, between professionals and clients, or between paid
and voluntary work within the same occupational segment. Intra-professional
boundaries have also been of interest, insofar as no accumulation of agents can
ever be regarded as entirely homogeneous.
5. From Boundaries to Habitus and Field

I proceeded from the assumption that SL interpreters in Austria used and continue to use strategies and techniques pertaining to boundary work in the
process of constructing and representing their professional world. Within the
scope of my project I have reconstructed the setting of boundaries between different groups of agents, e.g. between SL interpreters and other professions, between SL interpreters and other translational professions, but also between
different categories of SL interpreters. I have traced boundary work processes
throughout the whole twenty-year period, from the first encounters between
SL interpreters to the present day, although these have changed significantly
in meaning and form over the course of time. I also differentiate between various kinds of boundaries, whereby most are symbolic. Sometimes we can
nonetheless identify boundaries that are almost physical, such as the rules and
regulations governing the admission criteria for becoming a member of the
Austrian Association of Sign Language Interpreters. These boundaries are tangible, quite solid, and regularly subject to resistance and criticism because, especially in the first few years, they were such that very few people actually
managed to fulfil them in order to join the club. Most boundaries, however,
are either blurred or not visible at all. Rather, they are cultural, socio-economic
and moral. The construction of cultural boundaries is based on differences in
primary socialisation experiences, education, taste and behaviour. In constructing socio-economic boundaries, agents draw on criteria such as salary, differentiating e.g. between employment and freelance work, whereas moral
boundaries are based on evaluative criteria concerning character, including
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qualities such as honesty, personal integrity, work ethics, loyalty to the profession, etc.
The concept of boundary work was particular useful to my project as I was
able to gain deeper insight into the social world of SL interpreters which, as
mentioned above, is characterized by heterogeneity and rapid social change.
Whilst the strength of the concept of boundary work lies in its emphasis on
processes of social change and the creative potential of groups and agents,
which is to say on dynamics, fluidity, anti-determinism, and the generative
role of interaction, it nonetheless fails to address the question of underlying
forces and enduring dispositions. My theoretical question within the scope of
this article is, therefore, whether the concept of habitus (and field) might be
able to fill this gap.
To this end I intend to focus on one particular aspect of my research project,
namely the first encounters between SL interpreters, which took place at the
end of the 1980s between a disparate handful of people who were acting as interpreters for the deaf on an occasional basis in various different regions. As
indicated above, the people who started to meet one another in order to exchange their experiences on an informal basis came from various social fields
such as education, social work, or religion. Most of them were social workers,
employed by associations for the deaf or governmental institutions such as social welfare offices, and bilingual children of deaf parents, so called CODAs
(see above), who had been acting as natural and native interpreters from early
childhood; others were teachers at schools for the deaf, and sometimes, pastoral
carers or religious education teachers also appeared on the metaphorical map.
This first phase of the construction process is characterized by an overriding
sense of uncertainty and difference. All of the agents involved in the first meetings were people-in-environments and people-with-a-history, meeting one another under new circumstances, without a clear agenda, in a new space that was
yet to be edged and filled in. The main motivation behind their encounter was
to break out of the predominating isolation and the common denominator was
quite simply working with the deaf. The following short quotations from an
invitation letter to a meeting in January 1990 provide an accurate impression
of the general feeling of vagueness and uncertainty on the one hand and curiosity along with a first notion of shared feelings on the other:
Without knowing it, we probably all shared the desire to find out what was happening
in other parts of the country. []
Who should take part [in the meetings]? All those working full-time with the deaf.
(Letter D.H. to T.D. and I.H., 12 January 1990; my translation)
Using the concept of boundary work we can quite easily, at first glance, reconstruct the development of the group emerging from these very first actions,
101
focussing on the ever-growing feeling and actual evolution of shared perspectives. An historical approach is also necessary, though, in order to be able to
characterize the various actors involved and to attain as complete a picture as
possible of the growing map, and to understand the multifarious and often inconsistent discourses and activities that took place during these first encounters.
We must also take into account the neighbourhoods surrounding the emerging
social world of SL interpreters, as boundary work processes are bi-directional,
affecting and being affected by both internal and external factors.
We could, of course, use boundary theory to analyse the feelings of difference between the agents in the new evolving space. We could conceptualize
distinct professional groups, such as social workers or teachers of the deaf or
SL interpreters, as individual social worlds and their agents as being members
of two different social worlds, a scaling concept introduced by Anselm Strauss
pertaining to the meaning-making amongst groups of actors committed to a
certain activity (Clarke & Star 2007: 113). The most conclusive argument in
favour of such differentiations is quite simply the fact that every individual has
simultaneous cultural memberships in various social worlds, such as a hospital,
a football club, a political party, or a choir. With this in mind we could focus
on the role of boundaries, for instance between the social worlds of social workers and SL interpreters (or better still, the representation of a SL interpreter at
a given time), and the ways in which they convey difference and disparity,
whilst taking into account that members of both groups acted as interpreters
dwelling simultaneously in different social worlds. This would not, however,
work as easily with reference to CODAs, who do not necessarily form a social
group, except perhaps as members of a Deaf club.2
Considering the pronounced diversity of the SL interpreters biographical
backgrounds, it might be tempting to assume that the agents entering the evolving space each represent different forms of (primary and/or specific) habitus,
and that they bring various prerequisites from their respective fields into the
new space. Hence different expectations and different practices meet and might
also conflict. Thus, the question arises of what role these assumed forms of
habitus play, and how the presence of incorporated history informs the new social aggregate in the making. Although the scope of this article does not allow
me to discuss these questions in depth, I can provide examples from my data
which corroborate the assumption that there would be an encounter between
multiple forms of habitus, which seem to cause initial feelings of internal differences. Let us take as examples the two most prominent groups that were represented in the first encounters between SL interpreters: social workers and
CODAs. The secondary or specific habitus of social workers could tentatively
be described as follows: They represent a professional group and have been
through formal academic training in the course of which they have assimilated,
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incorporating a set of social dispositions, skills and ways of acting. One of their
key tasks is to establish positive relationships to their clients, supporting the
deaf from the outside, as they perceive a clear, natural boundary between
themselves and the deaf. They nonetheless aim to achieve a deeper understanding of the complexity of deaf culture, as reflected, for example, in a willingness
to learning sign language well enough to be able to communicate effectively
and trustworthily in intimate settings.
CODAs, on the other hand, are raised within the deaf community. They do
not perceive a boundary between themselves and the deaf, as deafness is part
of their minds and bodies; as children, their primary habitus was mapped onto
them through both their immediate and extended families, whereby the latter
in this case refers to the Deaf club, which tends to play a prominent role in the
lives of deaf people. Here, then, the boundary between hearing and deaf is
blurred or perhaps even non-existent. Thus CODAs support the deaf from
within and perceive themselves as legitimate representatives of the deaf in the
hearing world. Their use of sign language also differs significantly from that
of social workers who acquired the language later in life: CODAs use of sign
language is authentic, native, deaf.
We can thus assume that in their first encounters as part-time-interpreters
or sideline-interpreters or also-interpreters or casual interpreters both
groups brought their respective forms of habitus into the evolving common
space. The following quotations, the first from a CODA/interpreter, the second
from a social worker/interpreter demonstrate the divergent patterns of perception and appreciation between the two groups:
Yes, I think that we were a group within the group. We knew each other. Of course, I
did not know the others. [..I] did have the feeling that they do not know the deaf the
way I know the deaf. They are social workers who think they know everything. (Interview I.K. 2009; my translation)
Yes, we saw that these were two different things [social work and interpreting] that
was completely clear. But we did both of them. We were forced to. Of course, we had
an idea that one day there will be a divide. Definitely. [..A]nd thats why I think there
was such an acceptance for the idea that everything will have to be divided one day,
with regard to staff and to training; the idea was there from the beginning, of course;
but almost more genetic, somehow, (laughing) than real. (Interview D.H. 2008; my
translation)
These excerpts from interviews with two SL interpreters who were each asked
to reconstruct the first years of their work as interpreters as well as their first
encounters with other SL interpreters and the subsequent developments towards
professionalisation cannot, of course, reflect the whole picture but nonetheless
illustrate quite well how fresh the experienced difference still was in the protagonists memories years after the first meeting. The CODA/interpreter places
103
great emphasis on the cultural boundary between herself and the social workers.
She identifies herself quite deliberately as part of a conscious group, implying
that she feels herself to be culturally deaf and thus confident of a better understanding of the world of the deaf. Her statement indicates an enduring and apparently quite stable bundle of dispositions that were probably acquired very
early in the social sphere of the family and the broader deaf community. Furthermore, this pronounced primary habitus seems also to imply primary cultural
and social disparities. The feeling that hearing social workers/interpreters always think that they know better might for example be traced back to the primary phase of socialisation when she and her siblings were exposed to the
attitudes of others towards their deaf parents and their language. The social
worker/interpreter, on the other hand, demonstrates a more emotionally detached position, his discourse appearing to be more professional in that he
points to two different occupations and thereby perhaps even over-emphasizes
the obvious feelings of difference at the beginning of his statement. He goes
on, however, to concede a lack of clarity and confidence about what the differences between those two occupations actually were, describing them as more
genetic than real, and how to tackle these differences.
6. From Habitus and Field to Boundaries

As mentioned above, SL interpreters from different fields started to meet on a
more or less regular basis to discuss their problems and exchange experiences.
For this purpose, they decided quite soon to found a society, which they called
Workgroup of Social Workers and Interpreters for the Deaf3 in its early stages.
This is when endeavours towards consolidation and similarity and the search
for and negotiation of a common agenda started to become an issue, which led
to the foundation of an interpreters association some ten years later.
In the first phases of the construction process the crucial questions are: Do
discrepancies and irritations arise between incorporated forms of habitus and
the new conditions? How do the individual agents react, and can we trace shifts
in their patterns of perception, thinking and acting? What resources do the
agents tap into when the old frameworks no longer suffice? Do the old forms
of habitus fade in significance and become brittle? Might we perhaps see the
start of a process of metamorphosis or transformation of habitus? Finally, can
we speak about a new collective habitus in the making? Or do the various habitus which have moved into the new space, or elements of these habitus, in fact
remain stable and survive while others change more easily?
As I understand the concept of habitus, transformations of habitus are not
commonplace, as habitus is characterized by persistence, as a system of durable
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dispositions, which constitute long-lasting ways of perceiving, being and doing

(Krais & Gebauer 2002). On the other hand, Bourdieu conceded in his later work
that habitus is not a fate, not a destiny (Bourdieu 2005: 45). It can be changed
by history, new social experiences and education, by actions oriented by consciousness, as dispositions are long-lasting: they tend to perpetuate, to reproduce themselves, but they are not eternal (ibid.). As Hillier and Rooksby (2005:
13) put it, the question of whether habitus is essentially static or dynamic has
been one of the most persistent debates in academic literature. In the realm of
translation and interpreting studies, the concept of habitus has similarly undergone several re-interpretations and modifications stressing its dynamism and potential in relation to studying instances of discontinuity, ambiguity and plurality,
whereby particular attention is paid to biographical and structural variations and
ruptures in (work)life trajectories. Although much empirical research in recent
years has focussed on diverse translational occupations and their multi faceted
habitus, we have yet to explore individual and collective processes of group formation and identification from their very beginnings. The question of how such
a social aggregate comes into being and how socialisation processes in a new
social world nourish the acquisition and/or transformation of a specific habitus,
which in turn is also a product of a previous state, has not yet been addressed in
our field. In this respect, then, the construction of the social world of sign language interpreters in Austria can be seen to be a promising research topic.
As I am still working on my project, I have not yet arrived at any definite
or conclusive answers to the questions above but going through interviews and
some of the early documents, I found I had to shift my analytical focus back to
the framework of boundaries and boundary work when directing my attention
to these first years of the process. In restructuring a new social world in the
making through the lens of boundary work techniques and strategies of the
agents involved, we are able to trace the resources the protagonists mobilize
when starting to construct the desired social world they envision for themselves4 or as Andreas Schodterer (1991: 94), a SL interpreter, concluded at the
end of a report on the first workshop for SL interpreters that took place at the
University of Graz: so for everyone it was the beginning of a process of becoming aware of the question: what is SL interpreting? (my translation).
At this point, we cannot yet talk about a specific habitus of SL interpreters.
Instead, we can reconstruct this new social world in the making using boundary
work whilst at the same time paying attention to the processes of transformation
and persistence of diverse forms of habitus encountering one another in the new
space. The quotation above clearly indicates that the generation of shared perspectives serves to encourage the formation of a basis for collective action,
whilst individual and collective identities are constructed through participation
and commitment. In the course of these encounters and developments, the
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agents are in an ongoing process of constructing ideologies pertaining to how

to perform their work and gain professional legitimation. As representatives of
their respective social worlds, they meet other agents and groups from and in
diverse social fields, where they act in a certain way in struggles for power, authority and legitimacy, where issues are debated, negotiated or fought out, all
of which constantly influence not only the way in which the space is filled but
also the shaping of both external and internal boundaries (cf. Clarke 2006). At
this point of the research process we can identify a few significant turning points
spread across the twenty year period: the first encounter of a handful of casual
interpreters; the foundation of a workgroup including social workers and interpreters; the first contact with the university resulting in a further training course
for the group; and the foundation of the interpreters association in 1998. Although the agents start to search for similarity and consolidation, we must take
into account that such processes are neither linear nor free of tension. Boundaries are set not only between different professions such as interpreting and social work or between professional and non- or semi-professional interpreters;
boundaries are also internally inconsistent. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis
has to include players and stakeholders, followers as well as renegades and
heretics.
The data revealed that during the first phases of the construction process of
the new social world, the influences of the primary and secondary habitus which
the agents bring into the new space seem to be of major importance. It is particularly interesting to note that quite a few of the agents still remain rooted in
their initial field: CODAs remain CODAs although they might struggle with
discrepant responsibilities over the years; and many social workers or teachers
for the deaf still have two occupations and try to make the best of their different
tasks. In a protocol from a workshop on interpreting in educational settings in
2001, a SL interpreter noted:
At the beginning, the participants [] summarized the roles of their own patchwork
identity that we are confronted with every day in our working lives. It is important to
us to be aware of the roles we play in order to have a deeper understanding of the reasons behind peoples reactions to the various challenges of interpreting work. Knowing
about [the complexity] helps us to be more professional. (N.N. 2001; my translation)
We ought to keep in mind that professionalisation is not monolithic, not something that is established once and for all. From the foundation of the interpreters
association in 1998 to the present day, internal and external forces have continuously influenced the ongoing construction processes of the developing social
world. The extent to which such factors might contribute to the shaping of an
individual and collective interpreters habitus can only be speculated upon. Although there are no explicit hypotheses in the pertinent literature,5 we can cer-
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tainly assume that the concepts of boundary work and habitus complement each
other to a certain extent. In the light of the processes described above, it seems
clear that agents belonging to and working towards the establishment of an
emerging social world are motivated by a common desire for consolidation. In
an effort to overcome differences in individual habitus, the setting of solid
boundaries makes it is easier for such a heterogeneous group of agents to find
similarities. As soon as these similarities are shared and a specific habitus pertaining to the new group starts to develop, boundaries can be changed; they can
shift or become less rigid and more permeable.
7. Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was to present an ongoing project on the construction
of the social world of SL interpreters in Austria, focussing on the first encounters at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s and the subsequent
foundation of a workgroup which, in the long term, led to the foundation of the
interpreters association in 1998. In the course of my project, the analytical
framework of boundary work proved to be particularly useful when investigating ongoing differentiation processes between professionals and non-professionals and between different professional groups. The concept nonetheless
reveals certain deficiencies when focussing on questions pertaining to continuity, stability and enduring dispositions. My theoretical question within the scope
of this article was therefore whether the concept of habitus might be able to fill
the gap that boundary work leaves. The interim findings suggest that the concept
of habitus might indeed be a valuable analytical approach to help explain the
very first phase of the process of construction of a profession, such as when
part-time interpreters from different social fields, e.g. CODAs and social workers, meet and bring their respective forms of habitus into the new, evolving
common space, which is characterized by difference and uncertainty. Over the
course of the following years, the construction process is animated by movements towards consolidation, similarity and the search for a common agenda,
although it is by no means simply functionalist, clearly defined or tension-free.
In this phase, the first inhabitants of the new social world start to contribute to
various degrees to the consolidation process, which may lead to the formation
or change of habitus over a long period of time. It is not entirely surprising that
the analytical concepts of boundary work and habitus complement each other
so well, as they are both inspired by distinctions between social groupings or
social fields. Whilst boundary work envisages distinctions as they are constructed and perceived by the agents themselves at a certain moment in time
and therefore underlines social change, the salient feature of habitus as a con-
107
cept lies in its historical perspective and its emphasis on enduring dispositions
in a complex world of social fields. Both concepts, albeit from different angles,
can help to enable and advance the understanding of group formation processes
in relation to translation and interpreting professions and are particularly useful
in an exploration of the social world of SL interpreters, whose relatively short
history as a group gives us an exciting opportunity to document and analyse an
entire process from its very beginnings.
Notes
1 I am grateful to Rakefet Sela-Sheffy for her very thought-provoking and valuable response to
my paper when I presented it at the international research symposium Remapping habitus in
translation studies in Graz in April 2012.
2 Deaf clubs are quintessential meeting places for deaf people and their families, often situated
in a clubhouse and usually with a large hall for lectures and entertainment, a kitchen and a bar
as well as side rooms for administration purposes or other activities. Today, Deaf clubs seem
to be less important to the younger generation (cf. Padden and Humphries 2005: 7879).
3 Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Sozialarbeiter und Dolmetscher fr Gehrlose.
4 Rakefet Sela-Sheffy in her response at the symposium Remapping habitus in translation studies, Graz, April 2012.
5 Michle Lamont, one of the most prominent sociologists associated with theoretical as well as
empirical research on boundaries, was a student of Bourdieus. In this respect, it could be argued that the framework of boundary work that Lamont represents in fact grew out of Bourdieus work, although, as she herself points out in an article on Bourdieu, it quickly gained
autonomy (Lamont 2012: 234).
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Spinosa, Charles and Hubert Dreyfus. 1996. Two Kinds of Antiessentialism and their Consequences in Critical Inquiry 22(4): 735763.
Susam-Sarajeva, ebnem and Luis Prez-Gonzlez (eds). 2012. Non-Professionals Translating and
Interpreting. Participatory and Engaged Perspectives. Manchester: St. Jerome. Special Issue
of The Translator 18(2).
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (Benjamins Translation
Library 4). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Vorderobermeier, Gisella. 2013. Translatorische Praktiken aus soziologischer Sicht. Kontextabhnigkeit des bersetzerischen Habitus? Opladen, Berlin and Toronto: Budrich.
Wadensj, Cecilia. 2011. Interpreting in Theory and Practice: Reflections about an Alleged Gap
in Alvstad, Cecilia, Adelina Hild and Elisabet Tiselius (eds) Methods and Strategies of
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Process Research: Integrative Approaches in Translation Studies (Benjamins Translation

Library 94). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 1321.
Wolf, Michaela. 2007. Introduction: The Emergence of a Sociology of Translation in Wolf,
Michaela and Alexandra Fukari (eds) Constructing a Sociology of Translation (Benjamins
Translation Library 74). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 136.
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The Interface between Bourdieus Habitus and Latours

Agency: The Work Trajectories of Two Finnish Translators
Kristiina Abdallah (University of Vaasa)
This paper revisits data gathered from longitudinal interviews with eight Finnish translators conducted between 2005 and 2011 for the purposes of my PhD thesis. Here I explore a new perspective,
as I analyse the roles and work trajectories of two of the eight translators by relying on Bourdieus
concept of habitus and Latours notion of agency. Specifically, this analysis discusses the explanatory power of Bourdieus habitus by comparing it with Latours notion of agency put forth in his
actor-network theory. Although I focus here only on two of the translators, I will touch upon the
habitus and agency of the other six translators as well. The purpose of this is to complement the
data limited in scope, by providing additional perspectives in the use of these two concepts while
discussing translators work trajectories. It must be pointed out that I restrict my analysis to using
habitus and agency solely as analytic tools; a wider application of Bourdieus and Latours theoretical frameworks is beyond the scope of this particular endeavour. The questions I pose are the
following: What do the concepts of habitus and agency tell us about the roles and work trajectories
of the translators in question? Does the concept of habitus bring added value to the analysis and, if
so, what kind of value?
Keywords: actor-network theory, agency, habitus, hysteresis, translators work trajectories
1. Introduction
In this paper I explore a new perspective on data that I compiled between 2005
and 2011 while conducting longitudinal interviews with eight Finnish translators (Abdallah 2012). The new angle presented here is an analysis of the roles
and work trajectories of two of the eight translators. The aim is to discuss the
explanatory power of Bourdieus concept of habitus by comparing it with Latours notion of agency put forth in his actor-network theory. It must be noted
here that I restrict the analysis to using the concepts of habitus and agency as
analytic tools only; a wider application of Bourdieus and Latours extensive
theoretical frameworks, such as fields and actor-networks, is beyond the scope
of this article (for a combination of these two frameworks in Translation Studies, refer to Buzelin 2005, Kung 2009, Hekkanen 2009 and Bogic 2009).
Whereas Bourdieus framework generally requires the scholar to start with the
analysis of the field in this case non-literary translation, also referred to as
business translation and its relation to the field of power, and to map out the
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Kristiina Abdallah
objective structure between the positions occupied by the agents or institutions

(Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 104105) before attempting to analyse the habitus
of the agents (see Hekkanen 2009: 56), Latours framework is more flexible.
While neither of the two theoretical frameworks starts from universal, a priori
laws per se, Latours framework stresses more clearly the need to start the
analysis from irreducible, incommensurable, unconnected localities by first
attempting to identify the actors (Latour 1996: 370, Hekkanen 2009: 9). In Latours framework, structure and power emerge from the action and the relations
of the various actors in the network (Law 1992, Abdallah 2012: 2425). For
that reason, the central task of the researcher in the Latourian framework is to
find out how power is generated (Law 1992: 2, Abdallah 2011: 176, Hekkanen
2009: 9). In this connection it is useful to note that although both Bourdieu and
Latour are prominent scholars and their works are extensively applied and referred to in various fields, both have also received heavy criticism. Whereas
Bourdieus sociology has been occasionally accused of determinism and reductionism (see, for instance, Alexander 1995: 137, 140, 153), Latours framework
has received criticism for its incoherence (Bloor 1999: passim) and Machiavellism (Amsterdamska 1990).
Since the context that the agency or habitus occurs in affects agency, and
vice versa (Kinnunen & Koskinen 2010: 7), agency and habitus must be observed within that particular context or structure, be it field or network (see, for
instance, Bourdieu 1993, King 2000: 425, Kinnunen & Koskinen 2010: 7).
Bourdieu himself has reminded us that to think in terms of a field is to think
relationally (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 96; emphasis mine). Moreover, [i]n
analytic terms a field may be defined as a network or a configuration of objective relation[s] between positions (ibid.: 97). An actor-network, on the other
hand, is the act that is under observation, connected with its influencing factors
and elements (Abdallah 2011: 175). Within the Latourian framework, then, first
the researcher must identify the action that he/she wishes to investigate, based
on which the network with its actors and their relations and interaction slowly
emerges to the observer.
The underlying context or structure used in this paper is that of a production
network,1 the most prevailing economic configuration of today and, consequently, both the agency and habitus of the two Finnish non-literary translators
are discussed within this same structure. A production network has been defined
as consisting of inter-firm relationships that bind a group of firms of different
sizes, ranging from multinational companies to micro-entrepreneurs (the owners
of small businesses), into a larger economic unit (Sturgeon 2001: 2, Henderson
et al. 2002: 44546, Abdallah & Koskinen 2007: 674, Folaron & Buzelin 2007).
Since the 1990s, such networks have emerged in all areas of economic activity
in the wake of globalization, free trade and neoliberalism,2 thereby shaping the
The Interface between Bourdieus Habitus and Latours Agency
113
emergent, dominant operations model, and the same development has been observed in the translation industry. However, a difference must be made between
production networks and actor-networks. Whereas production networks are factual networks and their topology can be traced, actor-networks are non-tangible
associations of actors, human and non-human, that can never be captured by
the notions of levels, layers, territories, spheres, categories, structure, systems
(Latour 1996: 3; see also Latour 1999: 15 and Folaron & Buzelin 2007). Consequently, it is the task of the researcher to trace the actors connected to the action that he/she wishes to study. Still, in spite of the aforesaid, it is of course
possible to trace actor-networks inside production networks (see Abdallah 2011
for such an account).
By giving voice in this paper to two of the eight translators, I attempt to extract from their interviews issues pertaining to their professional habitus (see
Meylaerts 2010: 2) and their agency in the production networks that they have
been part of. The eight interviewees, including the two translators that I focus
on in this paper, were selected using a purposeful sampling method that would
yield information-rich cases that could be studied in depth (see Patton 1990:
169186). The idea was to include translators who occupy different positions
in production networks and who are at different stages of their careers. In the
current contribution, my aim is to examine whether there are differences in
these translators habitus and agency and to discover what happens to their habitus and agency during the course of the interview process.
It must be mentioned here that at the beginning of the longitudinal interview process, all the eight interviewees worked as translators: four of the translators (4/8) held an in-house job at a translation company;3 one was a freelancer
(1/8); and three were subcontractors or micro-entrepreneurs (3/8), i.e. they
were the owners of their own one-person company. Interestingly, at the end of
the interview process in 2011, none of the translators held an in-house position
in a translation company (0/8). Instead, the industries that the eight interviewees worked in covered a wider range of industries than at the outset: only
three interviewees still worked in the translation and localisation industry
(3/8), as micro-entrepreneurs to be more precise, two worked in the education
industry (2/8), one in the software industry (1/8), one in the documentation industry (1/8), and one in the communications industry (1/8). A list of the work
trajectories of all the eight translators, including issues of habitus and agency,
is provided at the end of the paper for the readers perusal. Although I focus
here on two of the translators, I will make brief reference to the habitus and
agency of the other six translators as well. This is done to complement the otherwise small data used in this paper and to provide additional perspective on
the discussion of habitus and agency in the context of translators work trajectories.
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Kristiina Abdallah
The findings of the present article regarding the professional habitus and
agency of the translators show, first, that structure, or the organizing principles
of the context of work in question, and agency are co-dependent. The structure
of the non-literary translation field, in this case the production network the interviewee is part of, shapes agency either by supporting or constraining it. For
its part, agency maintains structure (Bourdieu quoted in Wacquant 1989: 44,
Colley et al. 2003: 56, Buzelin 2007: 165, Kinnunen & Koskinen 2010: 78)
or, as in the case of these two translators, transgresses structure (see Abdallah
2010: 1828 for a discussion on how the eight Finnish translators perceive their
agency in production networks). Second, Latours concept of agency is useful
as it reminds us that the translating agent does not simply consist of the translator (see Buzelin 2005) and that there are powerful non-human and other
human actors that affect the agency of the translator and that might remain invisible without this theoretical framework. Third, the habitus of the two interviewees is clearly evolving and is not submissive. Fourth, for the researcher
to discover such change in contemporary translators professional habitus, longitudinal interviews are valuable. Finally, unlike Latours concept, the concept
of habitus allows the researcher to incorporate personal dispositions and psychological dimensions, including emotions in their study (Colley et al. 2003:
5, Colley 2006: 2526; see also Reay 2000, Pym 2011: 8283, McDonough &
Polzer 2012: 362).4
2. Theoretical Concepts Used

Although Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno Latour both influential but controversial
French academics represent different schools of thought and have even been
considered academic adversaries (Buzelin 2005: 193194), their ideas converge
more than they diverge. Hlne Buzelin (2005) has convincingly argued that
actor-network theory provides a complementary approach to Bourdieus framework and that together these two theories help make Translation Studies more
agent-aware. According to Buzelin, Bourdieu and Latour concur on these five
points: 1) scientific (arte)facts have been collectively constructed by multiple
mediators, 2) these mediators compete with each other, 3) networks, struggles
and strategies explain agents or actors behaviour, 4) the role of objects cannot
be ignored, and 5) ethnographic methods are useful (ibid.: 199200).
Where, then, do these two academics differ? While Bourdieu believes in
the existence of objective determinants, in the presence of institutions that at
least delimit if not regulate actors practices and their room for manoeuvre
(Buzelin 2005: 200), Latour rejects such predictive aspects altogether and focuses, instead, on contingencies and the principle of order out of chaos (ibid.).
115
In other words, the task of the researcher is to follow the actors and/or read inscriptions; by so doing, the black box opens and the network slowly reveals itself to the observer.
2.1. Habitus
To get a grasp of the complex concept of habitus, we could simplify a bit and
say that it is the mental structure through which people perceive, understand,
appreciate, and evaluate the world (Bourdieu 1984: 466484, Ritzer 2003).
Habitus carries within it the active presence of the whole past (Bourdieu
1990: 56), while it is also the real logic of action (ibid.: 57). However, in his
much quoted article Thinking with Bourdieu Against Bourdieu: A Practical
Critique of the Habitus, Anthony King (2000) has pointed out that habitus is
indeed a difficult concept to comprehend, not least because Bourdieu himself
has defined it in such complicated and controversial ways in his many publications. Elsewhere, Bourdieu defines habitus as
the system of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to
presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. (Bourdieu 1990: 53)
A habitus is not axiomatic but rather it is a complex concoction of ones past

and present. It does not only include the professional habitus but stands for the
entire socialized individual (Meylaerts 2010: 2.) The dispositions of habitus
represent informal and practical, rather than discursive and conscious forms of
knowledge (Bourdieu 1984, Swartz 2002: 63S). As ones professional habitus
is generally acquired as the result of a person occupying a certain position in a
given field, it follows that people occupying different positions and different
roles also have different habitus (Ritzer 2003). This point comes out in the current analysis; when the translators changed positions and roles, their habitus
also changed. In fact only two of the eight translators (2/8) in the data, namely
Jussi (male) and Lea (female), show steady, professional, translatorial habitus.
Their habitus remained more or less the same throughout the interviews, having
adapted to the requirements of the production networks they were working in.
Whereas in Translation Studies Simeoni (1998: 16) has emphasized the
structured nature of habitus, that is, the fact that the dispositions and habits of
individuals build into practices and perceptions, and, with time, tend to become
second nature, other scholars have recently taken a different view on the concept. Michaela Wolf (2007: 22, 2010) relying on the work of Lahire (2004),
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy (2005: 4) and Reine Meylaerts (2010: 2) have emphasized
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Kristiina Abdallah
the knowledge-creating, structuring and manipulative side of habitus and the

fact that the habitus of individuals develops based on their life experiences and
work trajectories in given fields (see also McDonough & Polzer 2012: 362).
My small empirical data seems to confirm these latter observations regarding
the structuring nature of habitus. In fact, the habitus of six of the translators
(6/8) is subject to changes during the course of the interview process. A further
interesting finding is that negative, work-related experiences might, with time,
prove to be a blessing in disguise in that they force the individual to reflect
upon their expectations regarding work and to scrutinize how well or poorly
their job position fulfills these expectations. Such reflexive attitude might break
habitual thought patterns (see Bourdieu, Chamboredon & Passeron 1991 and
Swartz 2002: 63S), acting as an impulse to change positions and, consequently,
positively affect ones habitus and work satisfaction in general. It must be noted,
however, that a change in habitus is very personal and may take considerably
more time for some, while others may act faster.
Whereas Simeoni (1998) has argued that, throughout history, the habitus of
translators has been marginal and submissive, Erich Prun has discussed translators habitus by classifying the concept into that of the priest, the prince and
the pariah. According to Prun, the habitus of the translator-priest originated in
ancient Mesopotamia and, today, this habitus might be found among translators
and interpreters working for international organizations such as the European
Union and the United Nations (Prun 2007: 4849). The habitus of the prince,
on the other hand, hails from Ancient Egypt where multilingual aristocratic
princes did not translate or interpret themselves but were the overseers of interpreters (ibid.: 44). But who might these princes be, in our day and time
project managers in translation and documentation companies or, perhaps, owners of their own enterprises (not including one-person businesses) in the translation and documentation industry? The habitus of the pariah, then, is that of
the quintessential servant (Simeoni 1998: 12). Prun points out that to the
pariah the customer is the king and the author their master (Prun 2007:
49). Prun does not show much compassion for the invisible translator-servant
who works for ever lower fees and who is, at the same time, the victim and
the originator of the price-cutting spiral (ibid.: 49). Prun concludes by emphasizing that pariahs are a threat to their own existence and the reputation of
all translators (ibid.: 49).
2.2. Latourian Agency
What distinguishes the concept of agency in actor-network theory from the traditional usage in sociology and political science a subjects capacity to carry
out actions is the fact that the Latourian concept endows agency not only to
117
human but also to non-human actors (Latour 2005: 10). The principle of generalized symmetry, or equal agency, has been described by Latour like this:
Truth and falsehood. Large and small. Agency and structure. Human and non-human.
Before and after. Knowledge and power. Context and content. [] [A]ll of these divides have been rubbished in work undertaken in the name of actor-network theory.
(Latour 1999: 3)
In other words, this theoretical framework rejects all kinds of dualisms, insisting
that agency is relational, and that it is performed in interaction in networks of
heterogeneous associations between various actors. Hence Latour has even
called his approach the sociology of associations (Latour 2005: 9).
The methodological benefit of actor-network theory for my research has
been the fact that it, firstly, reveals the actors and, secondly, allows for the simultaneous examination of human and non-human elements of different granularity as actors within a specific production network. These elements include,
but are not limited to, 1) social, political and economic elements, such as neoliberalism, free trade, globalization, competition legislation and translation policies of companies, 2) inscriptions, such as contracts and copyright law, 3)
technology, and 4) actors disparate definitions of quality and ethics, skills,
frames of reference and knowledge (see Figure 1 in Abdallah 2011: 179). As
actor-network theory focuses on the analysis of processes, its main aim is to
account for the hybrid character of the products that are being collectively produced (Callon 1986, Buzelin 2005: 196, Kung 2009: 126). Moreover, as agency
can be performed at a distance, actor-network theory emphasizes the importance
of inscriptions that an actor is capable of circulating into the network. Such inscriptions are power-inducing actors: they act on behalf of the actor who releases them into the network, thereby strengthening that particular actors
agency (Latour 1987, Callon 1987, Law 1992: 2) and, vice versa, such inscriptions may well delimit another actors agency.
3. Karis and Maijas Work Trajectories

In what follows, I shall first discuss the work trajectories of two of the eight
Finnish translators, namely Kari (male, MA in Translation Studies) and Maija
(female, MA in Translation Studies) from 2005 to 2011. Then I will sketch their
habitus, and also discuss some of those human and non-human actors that affected their agency during the course of the interview process. As I am not at
liberty to disclose the interviewees demographic particulars (excluding gender
and education), I have to restrict the discussion to their professional habitus
(see, for instance, Simeoni 1998, Sela-Sheffy 2005, Inghilleri 2005)5 and to
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Kristiina Abdallah
what they themselves have said and felt safe to reveal in the interviews. My
main ethical concern here is to safeguard the interviewees anonymity, and, consequently, I have not disclosed, for instance, their real names, work places, social class or family backgrounds (see Abdallah 2012: 19). The need to secure
the anonymity of the interviewees becomes evident when we consider that Finland is a small country of 5.3 million people and there are less than 1900 members in the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters.
During the course of the interview process, both Kari and Maija have migrated from being translators in the translation industry to being technical communicators: at the time of the second interview, Maija worked in the
documentation industry and Kari in the software industry (see Risku 2004 for
a discussion of the migration of six translators to technical communicators).
Moreover, Maijas and Karis work trajectories have progressed further: at the
end of the interview process in 2011, Maija worked as a manager in the documentation industry and Kari had become a manager in the software industry.
Kari and Maija are the only two interviewees in the data who have worked
solely in in-house positions during the entire interview process. This, in itself,
is quite exceptional at a time in Finland when translators entering the field are
often required by translation companies to act as micro-entrepreneurs. Due to
the spread of production networks as the most prevalent economic structure in
Finland, the outsourcing trend has escalated to such an extent that there have
been cases of compulsory, unwilling self-employment, also in the translation
industry. It is noteworthy that although in the translation industry production
networks have become the most common production mode (Abdallah & Koskinen 2007), the trend does not seem to be as widespread in the related documentation industry.
Whereas Maija had a relatively long career lasting several years as an inhouse translator in a translation company, Kari only worked for less than a year
in such a company. Neither one of them had, not even at the time of the first interview, a subservient translatorial habitus as described by Simeoni above. Quite
the contrary in fact. Yet, they encountered problems related to work. Albert O.
Hirschman (1970) has pointed out that individuals can react to the perceived
problems in their work by using different coping strategies.6 Basically, the
choice can be described as one between voice, and exit, although Farrell
and Rusbult (1992: 202), among others, have later developed this typology to
also include neglect. In short, according to Hirschman, either the employees
(or clients, for that matter) leave the company (exit) or they express their dissatisfaction directly (voice), or there could be a mixture of both. Moreover, either option can be postponed because of loyalty (Hirschman 1970; see also
Abdallah & Koskinen 2007: 683684, Abdallah 2010: 30, 32, 37). As the employer-employee relations are far from symmetrical, it is not difficult to argue
119
that the strategy of exit and especially that of voice are signs of empowered
employees. One of the two translators discussed used the voice strategy and
both of them relied on the exit strategy, as explained in more detail below.
Kari left his in-house translation company position rather quickly for a better
paid job in the software industry. The impetus for his exit was the fact that he
was not satisfied with the low salary in the translation company and that the
small raise offered did not, in his opinion, correspond to his level of education.
In other words, Karis decision to leave the job in the translation company was
based on a practical decision and the fact that his expectations regarding the
salary were higher than what he was offered as a translator. Hence, he applied
for another job in another industry, seized the opportunity and moved on. The
following is a short extract of his first interview in 2005 when he had just exited
the translation industry.
Work there [in the translation company] was okay and I liked it, but the salary was
poor
If the salary had been better, who knows, I might still be working there In this new
company, there are five people in my team. I am the only technical writer, the others
are engineers and, oh, one has commercial education And the salary, I am now getting 900 euros more [than I did in the translation company]. (Kari, 1st interview.)
Maija, on the other hand, first exercised voice, but when things got difficult
with the owner of the translation company, she too exercised the exit strategy.
Her exit was stressful there were strong emotions at play and the conflict at
the workplace finally required the assistance of a union lawyer. The situation
was solved to Maijas benefit, however, for, although she lost her job, she was
entitled to a severence pay from the translation company. After that incident, it
did not take Maija more than a few months to find a better paying job; this time
in the documentation industry as a technical writer. We can argue that Maijas
exit was in actual fact detrimental to the translation company, for, according to
Hirschman, those who care most for the product and who would be the most
active and reliable agents of voice and change are likely to exit first if the situation in the workplace deteriorates (ibid.: 47).
Karis and Maijas professional habitus was not submissive but bold, they
did not play it safe but took their chances (see Swartz 2002: 63S). The same
bold habitus was visible in their later interviews as well. Moreover, their actions
seem to have paid off, as their work trajectories have been upward-bound: they
have both proceeded from translator to technical writer to manager. Moreover,
as can be seen in the table at the end of the article, their job satisfaction levels
have also increased. Yet their careers cannot be described as having been
smooth sailing, for they have both changed companies since they left the translation industry. We could, perhaps, claim, in Prunian terms, that Karis and
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Kristiina Abdallah
Maijas habitus has developed from priest to prince. Besides, in Karis case this
change in habitus has been remarkably fast.
But what does Latours agency offer to the analysis regarding Karis and
Maijas work trajectories? To start with, it forces us to identify the actors, both
human and non-human, that acted for and against these interviewees ability to
act in the production networks that they were part of during the interview
process. Whereas I speak about actors for and against the interviewees by relying on Latours framework, Helle V. Dam and Karen Korning Zethsen (2010)
apply Greimas semiotic actantial model and talk about helpers and opponents
in more or less the same manner. In other words, these two analysis frameworks,
Greimas and Latours, focus on generalized symmetry as they grant agency
also to non-humans. In Karis case, low salary in the translation company was
a strong actor against him staying in his position, although he otherwise enjoyed
his work. Karis education and degree, on the other hand, acted for him when
he changed jobs.
In Maijas case, a conflict of interests as well as the fact that she and the
translation company owner had disparate understanding of quality and ethics7
became actors that finally forced her to exit and leave her permanent position
as a translator. By expressing voice, Maija protested against the deteriorating
quality and the management of the company. Consequently, that voice together
with the manager and the management practices acted against her, as did her
own inability to adjust to the work processes required of the translators in her
workplace. Bourdieu has discussed such disparity between habitus and field by
introducing the concept of hysteresis of habitus (Bourdieu 1984: 142144,
Bourdieu 2004: 111, Swartz 2002: 64S65S). According to Bourdieu, habitus
does not automatically adjust to the changes in the field in question but, instead,
there might be a rupture between habitus and field. As a result of such mismatch, the habitus of an individual becomes dysfunctional, and attempts to remedy the situation will lead the individual to further disappointment and failure.
(Bourdieu 2000: 161162, McDonough & Polzer 2012: 362.)
In Maijas case, hysteresis of habitus occurred because she tried to defend
her traditional vision of being a good translator against the neoliberal, commercial logic of production networks that the management of her company had
adopted (see also McDonough & Polzer 2012). The following is an extract of
Maijas first interview which took place shortly after her exit from the translation industry. In it we can see how she describes her growing distress and frustration with the working conditions because there is a conflict between her
professional habitus and what is expected of her at her workplace.
We had to translate as fast as we could, no questions, no answers. It would have been
best just to translate, not to ask any questions. Quality it was not worth striving for.
121
The only thing was that the client was happy I would have wanted to do my work
well and thoroughly, but it never seemed possible. There was this basic conflict between
quality and speed. And little by little other things started to vex me, like, for instance,
that there was this steady flow of newcomers. And they were paid always less and less
money. (Maija, 1st interview; emphasis mine)
Moreover, in Maijas case, a powerful economic and political actor globalization ended her successful job in the first documentation company where
she worked after having left the translation industry. The company underwent
personnel negotiations, and, as a result, several people in the workplace were
laid off, Maija among them. After that experience, Maija got herself a new job
in another documentation company, this time as a manager.
4. Work Trajectories of the Other Six Interviewees in the Data

Next, I shall briefly discuss the work trajectories of six of the translators in my
data by relying on the concepts of habitus and agency. However, I want to emphasize that this discussion is only preliminary and therefore no wide-ranging
conclusions should be made based on it. Instead, more research is clearly
needed regarding the work trajectories of contemporary non-literary translators.
As mentioned earlier, only two of the interviewees, Lea (female) and Jussi
(male) showed steady professional, translatorial habitus throughout the interview process. Consequently, they saw no need to change industries. Lea held
an in-house translator job in a translation company for over ten years, and only
at the time of her last interview in 2011, she had become a micro-entrepreneur
translator. Jussi, on the other hand, remained a micro-entrepreneur translator
throughout the entire interview process, although he also exited and entered
several different production networks. Although both Lea and Jussi were aware
of the problems in the translation industry, such as translators low status and
low salaries and fees, there were, nevertheless, strong actors that worked for
them in the production networks that they were part of. In Leas case these actors included her contract of employment, regular work and working hours,
regular salary, and her strong know-how and senior position. In Jussis case,
actors for him included the ability to do work in ones own line of business, independent working hours, and the fact that the work corresponded to his education and that he truly liked his job. As Jussi put it, the work suited his
particular life situation very well.
Mattis (male) work trajectory stretched from an in-house translator in a translation company to an in-house technical writer in a documentation company to
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Kristiina Abdallah
a translator and technical writer in a co-operative. His professional habitus was

flexible from the start; I did not discover any clear translatorial habitus, demonstrating features of translators altruistic alterity (Pym 2001: 134) as posited
on translators by their deontological ethics. This might be due to Mattis early
exit from the translation industry; after all, he only worked as a translator for
less than six months. The most important actor that acted against Matti working
as a translator was the fact that the translators job description was too narrow
for his liking and therefore he preferred the work of a technical writer. As in
Maijas case above, globalization and personnel negotiations were strong actors
against Matti in his new job and they ended his otherwise successful career in
the documentation company. During his last interview in 2011, Matti mentioned
the following as actors for him in his work in the co-operative: meaningful,
versatile work, his strong know-how, ability to regulate ones working hours,
and democratic work community. According to Matti, actors against him were
these: there was no regular contract nor regular salary and that is why he was
forced to advertise for his services and search for clients.
Miias (female) work trajectory has proceeded from a micro-entrepreneur translator to an in-house administrative assistant in education. During her first interview Miias professional habitus was timid and clearly that of a pariah. Actors
that acted for her at the time were these: ability to gain work experience and to
make some money in her own line of business while studying. On the other
hand, actors against her included these: low fees, low status, lack of contract,
and her poor entrepreneurial skills. Moreover, Miia suffered from work-related
exploitation that was due to her attempt to defend her right to do her work well
and to act as a good translator should, instead of accepting the dominated position offered to her in the production network she was part of (see Abdallah
2010: 3334, 3839). In other words, just like Maija above, Miia also experienced hysteresis of habitus. Instead of exiting the workplace, Miia tried to cope
with the mismatch of habitus and field by putting extra effort into her work,
which only lead her deeper into failure (see also McDonough & Polzer 2012).
At the time of Miias second interview in 2008, when she had graduated
and changed industries, she demonstrated remarkable professional growth.
There was no sign of the earlier timid, altruistic and humble habitus; instead,
she had grown from a pariah to an empowered actor. Due to hysteresis of habitus that she had experienced earlier, as unpleasant as that had been, Miia had
gained self-knowledge and she had a sense of direction regarding her professional life:
Being an entrepreneur is not everyones cup of tea. I think I have come to realize that,
as a person, I am not made for that kind of lonely entrepreneurial work. But yes, it is
true that initially I have drifted away from translating due to this experience of mine.
123
I am still quite suspicious [sighs] that someone is trying to take me for a ride. In
fact this [suspicious attitude] has shifted to other work-related things as well: my sense
of justice is nowadays heightened. I immediately react at any sign of injustice. (Miia,
3rd interview)
Kaijas (female) work trajectory has proceeded from a freelance translator to

an in-house teacher in the education industry or, in Prunian terms, she has proceeded from a pariah to a priest. Kaija had a typical, altruistic translatorial habitus at the time of her first interview, but through the years her professional
habitus became stronger through reflexivity.
If we look at Kaijas work as a freelance translator through the Latourian
lens, we can see that the actors that acted for her were these: she liked her work
as a translator, there was a regular flow of work, fees were regular, she knew
her work well and was good at it. But at the time of her second and third interviews,8 I could see that the actors that acted against her were becoming stronger.
Kaija complained more about low and lowering (!) fees, she talked about workrelated stress because of rush work, and more alarmingly, she felt that she no
longer was part of the process (of translating): she felt like a loose part. Moreover, as Kaija saw no possibilities at the time to express voice (except indirectly
by talking to me), or to exit the production network she was part of, she was
trying to cope with the mismatch between her habitus and the requirements of
the field by resorting to two coping strategies. First, at the time of the second
interview, she was trying to bite the bullet, by accepting the inevitable. Consequently, she put extra effort into her work (see also McDonough & Polzer
2012: 368 for a similar account among female public service workers), no matter how difficult the situation was. Later on, during her third interview, Kaija
had learned to rationalise what to her seemed like unethical behaviour. Her
hysteresis of habitus had been, at least temporarily, resolved when she had accepted the inevitable by learning to succumb to half-hearted ways of working
(see Abdallah 2010: 3437):
I have been in this field for such a long time; it isnt that bad after all. Things go back
to normal again But it does affect your motivation, and your strategies become halfhearted I still work there. It does get you though, when you experience a situation
where you feel so powerless My character is such that I would like to do my work
well and, for instance, revise my work But now you just duck out from certain
things: why should I check this and that, they dont pay me for it If the company
doesnt care, why should I? I dont have a bad conscience about this anymore; this
feels like a logical thing to do. (Kaija, 3rd interview)
However, such coping strategies as mentioned here are only temporary solutions
in dealing with hysteresis of habitus. At the time of her last interview in 2011,
124
Kristiina Abdallah
Kaija too had exited the translation industry and was then working as a teacher.
Actors that acted for her in her new work were these: contract of employment,
regular salary as well as regular working hours. The only actor she could find
acting against her in the new job was the fact that she did actually prefer translating to teaching.
What is highly interesting in this rather small data is the fact that three of
the interviewees (3/8), namely Maija, Miia and Kaija all females experienced hysteresis of habitus during the course of the interview process. Each
one of them relied on different coping strategies while enduring hysteresis, until
they all finally decided to exit the translation industry.
Rea was the only translator in the interview data that had an empowered, professional habitus from the start. She had entered the translation industry before
production networks became the most prominent mode of production and, for
that reason, she had acquired a steady clientele that mostly consisted of direct
clients (see endnote 1). Every time that we met she stressed the fact that she
was satisfied with her work. Nevertheless, at the same time she was highly critical of the goings-on in the translation industry in general, referring to the fact
that even her work had become harder because of the structural changes in the
industry. Actors that acted for her as a micro-entrepreneur were the following:
she had regular, mostly direct clients, she had a good income and she was good
at her work. Moreover, she had excellent entrepreneurial, marketing and networking skills. Yet, actors against her staying in the position of a micro-entrepreneur translator included these: low respect for translators expertise,
translators low status, and the constant pressure to lower ones fees. At the time
of our last meeting in 2011, Rea too had exited the translation industry and was
working as a manager in the communications industry. Actors for her in the
new job were the following: contract of employment, regular salary, other benefits, regular working hours and the ability to develop professionally. In
Prunian terms, Rea had become a prince.
5. Concluding Remarks
This analysis of two of the eight Finnish translators, complemented by a brief
discussion on the rest of the six translators in the data, has attempted to illustrate
how Bourdieus concept of habitus and Latours concept of agency, including
human and non-human actors, can be used complementarily to examine translators work trajectories. The findings show that structure and agency are indeed
co-dependent and that agency, in both Latourian and Bourdieusian sense, is not
static but a relational, fluid and constantly evolving series of acts (Kinnunen
125
& Koskinen 2010: 7). Structure shapes agency either by supporting or constraining it and agency, on the other hand, maintains structure (ibid.) or transgresses it. We discovered that the habitus of the two interviewees Karis and
Maijas was clearly evolving and not submissive at all. Such a finding can,
however, only be obtained by relying on interviews that have long enough a
time frame. Methodologically speaking, when we study the work trajectories
of contemporary translators, it is, I believe, quite useful for the researcher to
combine these two concepts. While Latours concept of agency reminded us
that there are powerful human and non-human actors that act for and against
the individuals, the concept of habitus, complemented by Hirschmans ideas of
exit and voice, helped us find out how Kari and Maija and the rest of the six
translators solved problems of dissatisfaction in their work. Furthermore, we
discovered that although there were similarities in the habitus of some of the
translators, each one of them had, nevertheless, their own unique work trajectory.
We also discovered how individuals, including the other six translators in
the data, exit networks and enter new ones and how they make distinctions between different positions and roles. In this context, Bourdieus so far little examined concept of hysteresis of habitus proved valuable for two reasons. Firstly,
it showed how a mismatch between ones habitus and the field one works in
can provide an impetus to exit ones workplace or even to migrate from one industry to another. Consequently, we also discovered how such change affects
ones habitus. Secondly, the concept of hysteresis allows the scholar to better
incorporate discussions of change and the effects of negative, emotionally unpleasant work-related experiences on habitus into ones research undertaking.
Finally, and most importantly, we discovered that the concept of habitus can
indeed bring added value to the analyses of agency and the interviewees work
trajectories, the reason being that habitus, unlike the concept of Latours agency,
allows the researcher to incorporate the interviewees personal dispositions, including emotions, in their study (Colley et al. 2003: 5, Colley 2006: 2526,
McDonough & Polzer 2012: 362; see also Reay 2000). As sociologist Jack Barbalet (1996) has pointed out, the ability to incorporate emotions in the analysis
of agency is essential, because agency is never a generic, given capacity but always emotionally generated. In other words, Barbalets ideas validate the argument presented in this article that Bourdieus concepts of habitus and
hysteresis of habitus are indeed essential tools in analysing issues connected to
the structuring nature of agency.
126
Kristiina Abdallah
Notes
1 The traditional model which emphasizes translator expertise (see Holz-Mnttri 1984, Reiss
& Vermeer 1986) has largely been replaced in Finland by a new structure in the translation
market that takes the form of a network. The new structure no longer allows the translator and
the client to be in direct contact with each other. Instead, the translation company has become
a powerful economic intermediary, thereby drastically changing the dynamics of the translation
field. With network-based production, the translators position and role as the expert of translating has diminished, while translation companies have firmly established themselves as the
compulsory passage point between translators and their clients (Abdallah & Koskinen 2007:
674677).
2 Interestingly, in his later years Bourdieu was an avid opponent of neoliberalism, seeing it as a
program whose aim is to destroy collective structures so that nothing would obstruct the way
towards pure market logic and the absolute power of multinational companies. He feistily criticized the free trade faith of all those who blindly serve the needs of the capitalists in their quest
for the maximization of individual profit (Bourdieu 1998).
3 At the time of the first interview session, two of the translators, namely Kari and Maija, had
just exited the translation industry. Nevertheless, they are included in the data, as they both
have an MA in Translation Studies and, more importantly, they have worked as professional
translators.
4 In my dissertation Translators Agency in Production Networks. Reflections on Agency, Quality
and Ethics (Abdallah 2012), I relied on three major theoretical frameworks, namely general
network theory, actor-network theory, and agency theory. Since none of these theories allows
the researcher to incorporate emotions in their study, other frameworks (Sennett 2006 and Barbalet 1996) had to be relied on in order to include the interviewees emotional musings, including professional ethical dilemmas, in the research.
5 Meylaerts (2010: 1) draws our attention to the fact that Translation Studies scholars have generally examined translators through their professional habitus only, without incorporating their
social or generalized habitus into the equation. In such cases the socialized individual is only
partially discussed. This is true of course, but we should bear in mind that, particularly in the
case of contemporary translators as in this research, ethical issues might prevent such thorough
examination of habitus.
6 Pertti Alasuutari (2004: 131134) discusses coping strategies and points out that not only do
people need to make sense of the position they occupy in their work but they also need to
create such an attitude toward their work so that they can tolerate the given conditions, retain
their self-respect, and find their role somehow meaningful.
7 Whereas the translation company owner understood quality to mean fast delivery, Maija understood quality to mean goodness of the product. Moreover, Maijas deontological ethics required her to act in the best interests of the user, whereas the translation company owner wanted
to please the client who paid for the work.
8 Whereas the other seven informants were interviewed three times, Kaija was interviewed four
times.
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Appendix: Habitus and Actors for and against the Eight Translators
Name
(sex)
Position and actors

for and against
1st interview
Position and actors

for and against
2nd interview
Position and actors

for and against
3rd interview
Habitus
Kari
(male)
In-house translator in a
translation company
Satisfied with the work
Agency: actors for:
contract, strong knowledge base, work community, work
corresponds to education
Agency: actors
against: salary, narrow
job description
In-house technical
writer in a software
company
Highly satisfied with the
work
Agency: actors for:
contract, salary, strong
knowledge base, work
community, other benefits
Agency: actors
against: not known
In-house manager in a
software company
work
Agency: actors for:
contract, salary, ability
to develop ones already
strong knowledge base,
work community, other
benefits, high status
Agency: actors
against: none
Fast changes in professional habitus

No clear translatorial
habitus discovered
Early exit from the
translation industry
Trajectory: Highly
evolving and upwardbound, from translator
to priest to prince
Jussi
(male)
Micro-entrepreneur
translator
Agency: actors for:
ability to do work in
ones own line of business, work corresponds
to education,
independent working
hours
Agency: actors
against: low fees, low
quality source texts
Micro-entrepreneur
translator
Satisfied with the work,
not satisfied with the goings-on in the industry
Agency: actors for:
work corresponds to
education, independent
working hours
Agency: actors
status
Micro-entrepreneur
translator
Agency: actors for:
work corresponds to
education, independent
working hours, likes the
work
Agency: actors
status
Steady professional,
translatorial habitus that
matches life situation
and expectations
Good entrepreneurial
skills
Trajectory: entry to and
exit from several production networks
Miia
(female)
Micro-entrepreneur
translator
Not satisfied with the
work
Agency: actors for:
ability to gain work experience and make
some money while
studying
Agency: actors
status, no contract,
work-related exploitation (too much work for
low monetary compensation), no entrepreneurial skills
Micro-entrepreneur
translator
work
Agency: actors for:
ability to gain work experience and make
some money while
studying, strong knowledge base, different assignments and
somewhat higher fees
than before
Agency: actors
against: low status, low
fees, low respect for
translators, no contract,
no benefits, no entrepreneurial skills
In-house administrative
personnel in education
Satisfied, although work
does not correspond to
education
Agency: actors for:
contract, regular working hours, regular
salary, other benefits
Agency: actors
against: work does not
correspond to education
Professional habitus:
timid translatorial habitus
Trajectory: Growth
from a pariah to an empowered actor through
reflexivity. Negative experiences in the translation industry
Hysteresis of habitus
(emotions highly visible): exit from the translation industry
131
Name
(sex)
Position and actors

for and against
1st interview
Position and actors

for and against
2nd interview
Position and actors

for and against
3rd interview
Habitus
Maija
(female)
translation company
work
Agency: actors for:
contract, regular work
and working hours,
strong knowledge base
Agency: actors
against: narrow job description, work requirements vs. education,
poorly developed work
processes in the company, low status, no respect for translators
expertise
In-house technical
writer in a documentation company
work
Agency: actors for:
contract, empowered
work community, mature
work processes, ability
to develop ones knowledge base, regular work
and working hours,
salary, benefits
Agency: actors
against: globalization,
personnel negotiations:
end of employment contract
In-house manager in a
documentation company
work
Agency: actors for:
contract, empowered
work community, strong
knowledge base, mature work processes,
regular work and working hours, salary, benefits, high status
Agency: actors
against: none
Strong translatorial
habitus at the beginning
Hysteresis of habitus:
ethical stress (emotions
highly visible)
Changes and development in professional
habitus: voice
Exit from the translation
industry
Trajectory: Highly
evolving and upwardbound, from translator
to priest
to prince
Lea
(female)
translation company
Generally satisfied with
the work but finds quality conflicts disturbing
Agency: actors for:
and working hours, regular salary, strong
knowledge base
Agency: actors
against: low salary, low
status
translation company
the work but finds quality conflicts disturbing
Agency: actors for:
and working hours,
regular salary, strong
knowledge base, work
community
Agency: actors
against: low salary, low
status
Micro-entrepreneur
translator
work nor the goings-on
in the translation industry
Quality conflicts persist
Agency: actors for: independent work
Agency: actors
against: not known
Steady professional,
somewhat rigid translatorial habitus
Habitus has adapted
rather well to the requirements of the translation industry
Trajectory: From inhouse translator in a
translation company to
an independent microentrepreneur
Kaija
(female)
Freelance translator
the work but finds
quality conflicts disturbing
Agency: actors for:
regular work flow, regular fees, strong knowledge base, likes the
work
Agency: actors
status, rush work
Freelance translator (2nd

and 3rd interview!)
Likes the work, but finds
quality conflicts highly
disturbing, not satisfied
with the goings-on in
the translation industry
Agency: actors for:
regular work flow, regular fees, strong knowledge base, likes the
work
Agency: actors
against: low and lowering fees, low status,
rush work, not part of
the process
In-house teacher in education (4th interview)

Not very satisfied with
the work, but pay too
low in the translation industry
Agency: actors for:
contract, regular salary
and working hours, benefits
Agency: actors
against: prefers translating to teaching
Change from a typical,

altruistic translatorial
habitus through reflexivity to an empowered
actor
Hysteresis of habitus:
Neglect
industry
Trajectory: From translator to priest
Continued on page 132
132
Kristiina Abdallah
Name
(sex)
Position and actors

for and against
1st interview
Position and actors

for and against
2nd interview
Position and actors

for and against
3rd interview
Habitus
Rea
(female)
Micro-entrepreneur
translator
Agency: actors for:
regular clients, mostly
direct!, good income
level, strong knowledge
base, good entrepreneurial, networking and
marketing skills
Agency: actors
respect for translators
expertise
Micro-entrepreneur
translator
Agency: actors for:
regular clients, mostly
direct!, relatively good
income level, strong
knowledge base, good
entrepreneurial, networking and marketing
skills
Agency: actors
respect for translators
expertise
In-house manager in
communications
Satisfied that left the
Agency: actors for:
contract, regular salary,
benefits, regular working hours, strong knowledge base, ability to
develop ones skills
Agency: actors
against: not satisfied
with the work
Empowered professional, translatorial

habitus from the beginning
Good entrepreneurial
skills acquired through
experience
industry
Trajectory: From a
micro-entrepreneur
translator to a manager
in communications industry
Matti
(male)
translation company
but prefers technical
writing because it allows
more creativity
Agency: actors for:
contract, ability to develop ones skills, work
community, salary
Agency: actors
against: narrow job description
In-house technical
writer in a documentation company
Agency: actors for:
contract, meaningful
work, work community,
salary, benefits
Agency: actors
against: globalization,
personnel negotiations:
end of employment contract
Translator and technical

writer in a co-op
Agency: actors for:
meaningful, versatile
work, strong knowledge
base, ability to regulate
ones working hours,
democratic work community
Agency: actors
against: no regular
contract, no regular
salary, must search for
clients and advertise
Flexible professional
habitus from the start
No clear translatorial
habitus discovered
Early exit from the
Re-entry as a co-owner
in a co-operative
Trajectory: From inhouse translator in a
translation company to
in-house technical writer
to translator and technical writer in a co-op
PART III: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEORY AND EMPIRICAL

STUDIES METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS
Oral History as a Research Method to Study

Interpreters Habitus
Torikai Kumiko1 (Rikkyo University, Tokyo)
This paper will illustrate how the method of oral history, based on life-story interviews, can be employed to inquire into translational habitus. It will argue that oral testimony, as an alternative form
of looking at history, is a valid method in the study of habitus, because life-story interviews allow
us to approach the issue of agency and subjectivity in interpreting, by enabling us to explore the
habitus of interpreters from within through their own narratives. The paper will first examine the
link between the concept of habitus and (auto)biographical data elicited from life-story interviews,
review some of the methodological issues, and finally attempt to seek the potential of oral history
as a method to identify the interpreting habitus. The methodological question of oral history will
be discussed in terms of its validity, reliability and representativeness. For instance, some cast doubt
on the truthfulness and correctness of narratives as evidence, and others maintain that oral history
lacks consistency, a prerequisite for reliability. In addition, there are technical problems pertinent
to oral data, such as interviewing techniques, transcribing processes, and the final analysis and interpreting of the data. Despite some possibly inherent weaknesses of the method, however, using
oral data of life stories can be an effective tool in delving into habitus, a set of dispositions, attitudes,
values, habits and skills. Since habitus is the product of individual history as well as the whole collective history of family and class, interpreters own voices should offer us a rich source for understanding their habitus.
Keywords: habitus, oral history, life-story interviews, validity, reliability, representativeness
1. Introduction
For the past decade or so, research in translation and interpreting began to consider the field increasingly as social practice (Simeoni 1998, 2007; Wolf 2007),
shifting its attention from linguistic analyses of processes and products more
toward the study of interpreting and translation as social activities, viewing
translators and interpreters not simply as neutral and invisible agents but as active participants in communicative events (Angelelli 2004; Baker 2001; Inghilleri 2005a, 2005b; Mason 2001; Torikai 2007, 2009; Venuti 1995; Wadensj
1998, 2001). Particularly in dialogue interpreting, it has been revealed that the
interpreter plays an integral part in a pas de trois (Wadensj 1998) interaction
between the speaker and the listener. As such, in order to fully understand what
is happening in an interpreted communicative event, it is deemed necessary to
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Torikai Kumiko
study not only the interlocutors but the interpreter, and for this purpose it is
vital that the interpreters habitus should be investigated.
Jean-Marc Gouanvic states that [t]ranslation as a practice has little to do
with conforming to norms, noting that norms do not explain the more or less
subjective and random choices made by translators (2005: 157158). Gouanvic
is referring to translators in the literary field, but his statement is easily applied
to interpreters in various settings, perhaps even more so, since interpreters
engage in here and now communicative events, and their use of words and
expressions in the target language is basically left to their free choices on the
spot, rather than the result of their conscious and deliberate strategies. They
may or may not be aware of interpreting norms, but fundamentally, whether to
follow the original text faithfully or not is at their discretion. As Gouanvic
rightly observed, this has more to do with an effect of the translators (and interpreters) specific habitus.
Pierre Bourdieus habitus is a complex notion. It is acquired initially by a
child in the home as a result of the conscious and unconscious practices of
her/his family (Bourdieu 1992: 134). This comprises the primary habitus.
Subsequently this is transformed into a secondary habitus and further derived
habitus forms beginning with the childs passage through different social institutions, principally through schooling. This developed habitus contains within
it the characteristics of early socialization in the home and family which persist
as the basis of all subsequent experiences (1992: 134). In other words, habitus
is the result of an individuals family, class, status, education, ideology and is
also derived from a common historically produced set of dispositions of a particular social or ethnic group.
It ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism
in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action, tend to guarantee the correctness of practices and their constancy over time, more reliably than all formal rules
and explicit norms. (Bourdieu, 1990: 54)
To put it more simply, it is almost like a large bag that people carry inside themselves, containing a set of dispositions, attitudes, values, habits and skills, and
which is activated selectively by the situation (Kelly 2009). Everyone carries
this bag without being aware of it, and different elements in the bag are activated in different fields. While habitus and field are mobilised in interactions,
they are also generated by them (Kelly 1999). Thus, habitus helps and affects
us in forming a practical sense of the field mastery of skills, routines, aptitudes
and assumptions which allow an individual make choices in the encounter with
new environments or fields. As in sports, mastery of the rules gives a feel for
the game, enabling us to improvise in response to different circumstances of
the moment. It would be helpful for us, then, to tap into this ever-present yet
Oral History as a Research Method to Study Interpreters Habitus
137
out-of-awareness habitus to see what is involved in the practice of translation

and interpreting to understand the profession more deeply.
And for this purpose, collecting biographical material of interpreters can be
an effective tool. It helps us to search for the habitus embodied history, internalized as a second nature (Bourdieu 1990: 56) and history turned into nature (Bourdieu 1977: 78). Among the various methods to be employed to
gather data, such as survey, ethnography or fieldwork, as well as a variety of
interviews (structured, semi-structured, expert, focused, in-depth, etc.), I argue
that oral history, in the form of life-story interviews, can be a valid method for
the purpose of looking into the interpreters habitus. Daniel Simeoni, for one,
points out that [m]odern sociographies of single translators professional trajectories are sorely lacking, suggesting that the present void could be filled
out by means of simple interviews, since [b]iographical research is a legitimate area of social science whose findings can also be solicited (1998: 31).
Granted that habitus is usually out of individual awareness, working at the level
of instincts and feelings, internalizing the rules of the game, the interviews may
not present explicit explanations. Yet, with careful analysis of the narratives,
we might obtain some understanding of the interpreters habitus, in particular
primary habitus.
In this paper, I will discuss first what oral history is, followed by a discussion
on methodological issues pertaining to life-story interviews, and will then conclude by reviewing the relevance of oral history to translational/interpreting
habitus.
2. Oral History as a Method

Oral history is a history about people. It is a method of research, based on oral
evidence by recording the speech of people who have something to say (Abrams
2010: 1), thus allowing us to hear their voices which otherwise remain unheard,
left outside the history. And memory is the core of oral history, from which
meaning can be extracted and preserved (Richie 2003: 19). Oral historians, as
qualitative researchers, are involved in describing and explaining someones
recollection a memory of the self (Janesick 2010: 67).
The term oral history is generally used to describe what is sometimes called
life history or life story among others. Japanese sociologist Sakurai Atsushi
distinguishes life history and life story, explaining that while the former is
based on traditional empirical approach, the latter is constructivism-oriented
with more recognition of the interviewers presence, constructing and re-constructing three kinds of life, life as lived, life as experienced, and life
as told (2002: 743).
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Torikai Kumiko
In this paper, the umbrella term oral history is used consistently to describe
the methodology, along with the terms life stories, oral testimony, oral evidence
and narratives to discuss oral data.
The relevance of oral history to the study of habitus of interpreters lies in
the fact that it enables us to approach the issue of agency and subjectivity
(James 2000: 124), and it transforms the objects of study into subjects, constructing a history which is not just rich, more vivid, and heart-rending, but
truer (Thompson 2000: 117). It is particularly effective in the study of interpreters habitus, since oral history allows interpreters, usually considered transparent and anonymous, to emerge from the invisible presence to fuller
existence.
Oral history uses the life experience of people of all kinds as raw material,
providing a source quite similar in character to published autobiography, but
much wider in scope and possibly deeper. It is a technique that could be used
in any branch of the discipline (Evans 1975: 24), and it is feasible to choose
whom to interview and what to talk about, resulting in a more realistic reconstruction of the past (Thompson 2000: 56). Oral history is valuable in comprehending the uniqueness of individual, cultural, and value orientations
(Martin 1995: 28).
British historian Paul Thompson categorizes oral history methods as follows:
1) single life-story narrative, interviewing one informant with a rich memory,
2) a collection of stories, to be used in constructing a broader historical interpretation, by grouping them around common themes,
3) narrative analysis, where the focus is on the interview itself as an oral text
with its themes, repetitions, and its silences,
4) reconstructive cross-analysis, in which the oral evidence is treated to construct an argument about patterns of behaviour or events in the past.
(Thompson 2000: 269271)
All four approaches can be employed in the study of interpreters habitus. An
interpreter as an individual informant should be well equipped with a rich array
of memory of their life, thus offering us some clues into his/her habitus. It may
be possible to portray the habitus of the interpreting community as a whole by
collecting interviews conducted with a group of interpreters.
With all its effectiveness in offering deep insight into an individual life,
however, oral history is not immune from criticisms about its vulnerability as
a scientific research method. While oral testimony is the best single source
available, [r]eservations still abound about its validity and reliability []
(Schrager 1998: 294). In the following section, some methodological issues of
oral history will be discussed.
139
3. Methodological Issues
The evidence in oral history is collected through interviews, eliciting life stories
in the form of narratives. When it comes to the relationship between history
and personal narrative such as (auto)biography, this in itself is complex and potentially problematic, because it involves a narrative jointly produced by the
interviewer and the interviewed, hence the outcome is inevitably structured by
cultural and social conventions on both sides.
Putting this inherent concern aside, there remain several basic issues to be
discussed in relation with methodology: truthfulness, representativeness, validity and reliability.
3.1. Truthfulness
There is a fundamental question that has been posed on life-story research: is
the story true? Narrators might choose what they want to say, hold back what
they do not want to say [], say only what they happen to recall at the moment,
in short [] engage in both deliberate and unwilling deception (Blumer 1979:
xxxiv). How can you tell whether a story is trustworthy?
Or, suppose you are faced with different narratives on a single event or incident, the question arises as to how we can evaluate and tell which one of the
narratives is correct. One possible answer to this very basic question is that it
may not in the end matter which one of the different narratives is right, since
each account is narrated from a different perspective, a point of view. In seeking
what is social in oral history, Samuel Schrager defines a point of view as the
complicated relationship between the narrator and the events described (1998:
285) and explains that this involves not only the narrators own position with
respect to what happened, but also the stance she or he takes towards other participants in the events, noting that even in autobiographical oral history, when
someone talks about the past, people incorporate the experiences of a multitude
of others along with their own.
Concerning the truthfulness of personal narratives, the Personal Narratives
Group claims that the stories told give us the truths of individual experiences
rather than the Truth [sic] of the scientific ideal (1989: 261, in Riessman
1993: 22). They tell us not just what happened but what people thought happened and how they have internalized and interpreted what happened (Grele
1991: 24).
In the study of habitus, we can safely say that the truthfulness issue does
not really matter, since obviously what we are looking for is the inner workings
of peoples dispositions, not the objective facts.
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3.2. Representativeness
One of the most common attacks on life-history research is that it fails to provide representative cases. It is easily criticized for extracting stories that are interesting but atypical. Many oral historians view this kind of criticism as
completely misunderstanding the nature of oral history research where insights and understandings are the goals, not the facts. Oral history is an art of
the individual (Portelli 1997: 59), and the primary goal of oral history is to listen to those who had not been heard. It is natural, then, that oral history does
not seek the average, but rather perceives the exceptional and the unique to be
more representative (Portelli 1997: 58; italics in the original). Indeed in oral
history, one creative storyteller, brilliant verbal artist, is as rich a source of
knowledge as any set of statistics (ibid.).
For the same reason explained above in terms of the truthfulness issue, the
problem concerning representativeness is clearly irrelevant to the study of habitus. In trying to identify what habitus is, we do not look for the average but the
individual.
3.3. Validity and Reliability
Reliability and validity are two major evaluative standards that are ordinarily
considered prerequisites in any qualitative research. Reliability is primarily concerned with technique and consistency to ensure that if the study were conducted by someone else, similar findings would be obtained. Validity is chiefly
concerned with whether the technique is actually studying what it is supposed
to study. Admittedly, in life-story research, it is almost impossible to ensure reliability. The same interviewer cannot repeat the same interview, and different
interviewers may obtain different stories from the same interviewee. There is
no way to examine the consistency of similar findings. Particularly, when you
realize that the most important element of life stories lies in the more or less
free-flowing talk, which would only happen then and there, it is a futile attempt
to aim for the kind of standardization achieved by quantitative research methods. If you try to standardize the interviews in a similar manner as questionnaires, you will run the risk of damaging the validity of the research. The oral
history does not seek scientific standardization. Nevertheless, without such standardization and cross-checking, attacks become very easy to make.
One possible solution is to take the view that the problem should be tackled
from a different perspective, that validity should come first, rather than reliability. If the subjective story is what the researcher is looking for, the life-story
approach becomes a highly valid method. As long as the data is based on oral
narratives, we have to face the fact that it is a form of communication between
141
the researcher and the narrator, and as such, it only occurs at a particular moment in time, here and now, defying objective standardization.
Having said that, there still remain possible sources of bias that inhibit the
life-story document from being valid. In social science research, three domains
of bias are traditionally recognized: those arising from the subject being interviewed, from the researcher, and from the subject-researcher interaction (Plummer 2001).
In the first domain, the subject may lie, cheat, present a false front or try
to impress the interviewer (ibid.: 155). In particular, there is a possibility that
s/he might try to create a consistent and coherent story for the interviewers
benefit (ibid.).
The second domain is concerned with the interviewer, who may hold prejudices and assumptions in structuring the questions, possibly bringing biases
arising from his or her age, class, gender and general background (Plummer
2001: 156). There is also the risk involved in the ability, knowledge and experience of the researcher in interpreting the oral data.
The final domain is where bias may have some interplay in the very interactional encounter itself. The context surrounding the interaction is likely to influence the interview, such as the relationship between the interviewer and the
interviewee, or the setting which may be too formal to encourage friendly talk
or too informal to obtain an adequate response. All the interactional strategies
discussed by Ervin Goffman (e.g. 1959, 1967, 1981) may well come into play
in both the interviewer and the interviewee co-constructing an interview.
Of course, it is not realistic to assume that we can get rid of all these biases.
The truth of the matter is, we will never be able to neutralize the context. What
we can do instead is to be conscious of these sources of bias, and describe them
in the research, acknowledging the constraints that may affect the interview.
This is especially true in translation and interpreting research, where it is quite
likely that the researcher herself is involved in the profession, conducting interviews not as an outsider, but as an insider. It would perhaps be inevitable for
the interviewer in interpreting studies to assume the Friendship Role (Plummer 2001: 209) talking and asking questions as a friend rather than an interviewer. This may not be entirely a negative element, since in biographical
research, intensive involvement with the subject is a must. The interpreter/researcher interviewing fellow interpreters might present difficulties in terms of
objectivity, but the researcher immersed in the interpreters world would be
able to provide an in-depth description from the inside.
One final issue worth mentioning is verification cross-checking with documentary sources in order to set the oral evidence in a wider context and to
check for internal consistency (Abrams 2010: 5). Unfortunately, in the study
of interpreters, sometimes it is not feasible to find documents to verify the oral
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data. A solution lies in considering the purpose of the research. Unlike historical
study aiming at collecting information about the past, where all kinds of objective materials need to be gathered for corroboration, the objective of life-story
interviews, particularly in the study of interpreters habitus, is to find insights
into the inner workings of an individual interpreter vis--vis the interpreting
field, embedded in a culture and a society, implicit and hidden. This would
mean that we are more concerned with the linguistic constructs that interpreters
make about their lives at a given point in time, because they can throw light on
issues of ideology, values and worldviews.
3.4. Transcribing and Writing
Although the narrative is certainly an indispensable component of oral history,
equally important are description, explanation, and reflection (Yow 2005:
15), which can be reworded as transcribing, interpreting, analysing, and the
whole process of writing.
A seemingly mechanical task of transcribing the recorded data involves interpretation and editing on the part of the researcher, who is embedded in her/his
own cultural and social context. In this respect, writing is a social act, as well
as an individual act, shaping the knowledge gained from narratives. You could
say that transcribing and writing life stories not only captures reality but in a
way helps to construct it.
It is not realistic to envisage the transcribed documents to remain uncontaminated. The subject/participant and the researcher both bring their own sets
of assumptions in the interview as in any kind of communication or interaction
involving interpretation.
The best a researcher can do is to recognize that life-story interviews entail
interpretive approach. We may be obliged to face the reality of the risk of misinterpretation in transcribing and analysing the oral text, but interpretation is
co-constructed by the researcher and the participant, just as interpretation is a
way of life in interpreting between the interlocutors and the interpreter. Researchers engaged in oral history should take pride in respecting subjectivity
in order to reach new understanding of someones lived experience (Janesick
2010: 10).
4. Oral History in Search of Interpreters Habitus

As has been discussed above, in spite of its inherent vulnerability as a research
method, oral history has its own strength, when the purpose of a particular research project is to explore something as dynamic and complex as habitus.
143
In the interviews I conducted with five pioneer simultaneous interpreters

in post-WWII Japan, the protocol employed was semi-structured, with interview guidelines prepared beforehand, which was necessary to enable comparison across different cases. At the same time, however, the questions asked
were open-ended, allowing flexibility and sufficient time so that detailed and
in-depth stories were obtained. Each interview was an interaction between
the interviewer (interpreter turned researcher) and the interviewed the interviewer interacted with elder interpreters, trying to elicit his/her voice to speak
about their life, their experiences, their thoughts about their practice. Sometimes
they talked about a particular past event and other times about their childhood
memory. There were important stories, and there were seemingly irrelevant
comments. Yet, when I read the transcribed interviews, what seemed irrelevant
at the time of the interview often gave me some important clues to their habitus.
An example of the strength of life-story interviews in terms of primary habitus is the case of Muramatsu Masumi. In talking about his childhood, he mentioned a fight with a neighbourhood bully in which he overwhelmed the boy
with words. It must have been an enlightening experience for the little boy who
lived in a society which values silence over speech, as is shown in a proverb,
Silence is golden, speech is silver. When the interview transcript was
analysed, I realized that this anecdote had a strong influence on forming his
lasting faith in the power of speech. The incident happened before Muramatsu
entered elementary school and he explained, Thats when I realized what
counts is verbal strength, and not physical strength (Torikai 2009: 5152). It
became part of his habitus, and remained a guiding principle for Muramatsu in
his long career as an interpreter.
The life-story interview also allowed me to find a unique transition of habitus in Kunihiro Masao, who was dubbed the god of simultaneous interpreting
in Japan because of his exceptional talent in interpreting. However, his narratives showed interpreting did not fully satisfy his inner self, and in analysing
the interview transcripts for clues, I found one keyword, which appeared repeatedly in the interview peace. In the interview, Kunihiro recounted his
bitter experience of World War II as a teenager, with tears in his eyes air raids
killing a dear friend and destroying his house. It was obvious this shaped his
habitus, leading him to be strongly anti-war and an advocate of Japans Peace
Constitution.2 He became an interpreter by chance, but after a dozen years of
working as a conference and diplomatic interpreter, he became more and more
inclined to get away from interpreting, and when he did accept interpreting assignments, he only interpreted for someone with the same political ideology as
his own. Eventually, he started to interpret for pacifist politician Miki Takeo
and was appointed his foreign policy advisor when Miki became foreign min-
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Torikai Kumiko
ister. By the time Miki became prime minister, Kunihiros identity was clearly
that of an aide and advisor to Japans prime minister. This was exemplified in
his account of interpreting for Miki at a press conference in 1975 in Washington,
D.C. With prior permission from the prime minister, Kunihiro intentionally discarded his faithful interpreter role, and created a clever joke for Miki so that
the new prime minister could be evaluated highly in the U.S. as a statesman
who understands humour. Kunihiro admitted in the interview that this was not
by any means legitimate, adding, I am not an interpreter. I did all of that for
Prime Minister Miki (Torikai 2009: 143). Evidently, his priority was not his
role as an interpreter, but as an aide to the prime minister, working for the best
interests of Miki. His narratives testify that at this stage, Kunihiro explicitly
abandoned his interpreter self. Later, Kunihiro became a socialist senator in
Japans Diet, moving from interpreting field to politics. Would it be possible to
assume that Kunihiro acquired a new habitus? Or, could it be his habitus that
led him to a new field?
Silence or ambiguous answers in an interview also give us suggestions about
the persons inner feelings. What someone did not say could be as significant
as what s/he actually said, because the narrator might involuntarily hold back
what they do not want to say. As a case in point, in conducting life-story interviews of Japanese interpreters, it never occurred to me, as the interviewer, to
ask them about the International Military Tribunal of the Far East3 held in Tokyo
right after World War II, simply because they were not on the list of court interpreters at the Tribunal. And nobody volunteered to talk about it. We discussed
their lives before the war, during the war, and after the war, yet never about the
Tokyo Tribunal.
It was only after I finished all the work of transcribing that I was made aware
that I should have asked them about the Tokyo Tribunal, because two of the
five interpreters I interviewed were in a likely position to be asked to do the interpreting work at the trial. Historical records show they didnt participate, but
were they asked to do it? If so, why did they turn down the offer? Unfortunately,
by then, the two elderly interpreters were critically ill and were not able to answer further questions. Kunihiro, who was a teenager at the time of the Tribunal,
expressed his feelings and said, Who would want to serve as an interpreter at
a trial to judge leaders of your own country. Even if I had been old enough to
work then, I would never have accepted such assignments (Torikai 2009: 36
37). We have no way of knowing whether the elderly interpreters simply forgot
to mention the Tribunal at the time of the interview, or felt relieved inwardly
not to be asked an uncomfortable question. In retrospect, even if I had asked
the question, they might have evaded the question, or remained silent. Yet,
avoidance of a certain topic or silence can be a crucial key to understanding
their feelings, values, attitudes their habitus. We need to consider the voices
145
heard and the voices not heard (Clandinin & Connelly 2000: 147) in search of
interpreters trajectory and their habitus.
5. Conclusion
Identifying the relationship between habitus and practice is a daunting task, especially because interpreting practice is fundamentally evanescent, and there
is no way of cross-checking the narratives of the interpreters. Likewise, it is
not an easy task to locate a miraculous encounter (Bourdieu 1990: 66) between habitus and the interpreting field, to seek how interpreters acquire a feel
for the game (ibid.), how it is generated by and adapted to the demands of the
field.
Nevertheless, research efforts in trying to identify interpreters habitus are
undoubtedly helpful in understanding interpreters and their practices. And by
triangulation, we can effectively corroborate life stories such as obtaining authentic interpreting data, cross-checking with what was written by interpreters
themselves or comparing the narratives with other survey or interview results.
If, as is often the case, what the interpreters say and do contradict each other, it
would give us an opportunity to look deeper into the relationship between their
norms and performances, their habitus and interpreting practices.
I believe that life-story data in the form of oral narratives can serve as a
starting point to explore who interpreters are, how their professional norms are
formulated and what kind of decisions they make in their interpreting practices.
In other words, it has an undeniable potential to be a viable option for inquiring
into interpreting habitus.
Notes
1 In this paper, all Japanese names, including the authors, are presented in the Japanese manner
family name first, followed by given name.
2 Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution states as follows: Aspiring sincerely to an international
peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign
right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In
order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as
other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be
recognized. The stipulation that Japan denounces war except in self-defense has become controversial, and conservative politicians have been demanding to amend the Constitution, which
they deem was pushed upon Japan by the U.S.
3 Japanese war criminals were tried by the Allied countries in 1946.
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Torikai Kumiko
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The (Re-)Construction of Habitus: A Survey-Based

Account of Literary Translators Trajectories Put into
Methodological Perspective
This contribution addresses the methodological question of how to construct and analyse an extensive survey so as to allow for a reconstruction of literary translators habitus. It is based on a middle-scale survey amongst literary translators who translate from a range of languages into German
and are (primarily) based in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. The questionnaire touched upon all
areas deemed central to the respondents social trajectories, which are understood in this context
as the social construction of (the reputation or personality of) a literary translator, thus ultimately
aiming at a characterisation of the participants translatorial habitus. The question of how to construct a translation-sociological questionnaire in such a way that it allows for conclusions concerning the habitus of literary translators is central to this contribution, along with a consideration of
which aspects within Bourdieus thought might be especially conducive to give interpretive structure to comprehensive masses of survey data. It is argued that we find an answer in some less
frequently discussed theoretical undercurrents within Bourdieus uvre, namely his differential
anthropology of symbolic forms and the concomitant temporal dimension with its central concepts
of project and protension reaching back to a phenomenological tradition. An outline is given of
possible methodological steps which might follow from such a theoretical orientation.
Keywords: Bourdieus differential anthropology of symbolic forms, temporal dimension, literary
translators social and professional trajectories, surveys in translation studies
1. Introduction
This contribution aims at establishing how a close relationship between theory
and empirical studies can be maintained in the process of reconstructing literary
translators habitus from empirical material collected explicitly for this purpose,
rather than from pre-existing empirical material such as (auto-)biographical
documentation. It draws on a survey conducted in 2009 amongst literary translators who translate from a range of languages into German, which resulted in
more than 200 completed questionnaires.1 On a rather obvious and factual level,
it focused on the professional trajectories and activity profiles of literary translators in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The questionnaire touched upon
all areas deemed central to the respondents social trajectories, which are understood in this context as the social construction of (a reputation or personality
150
of) a literary translator. Thus they included such elements as educational background (academic and otherwise), the conditions surrounding the translators
work, i.e. the various fields of activity and the concentration of these plural professional activities and daily work rhythms, the radius and range of activities
and contacts entertained by the respondents within the literary field and the acquisition of symbolic capital (prizes, grants and participation in translators residencies). Last but not least the survey addressed the degree of the respondents
job satisfaction and sense of well-being and the extent to which they experience
the fact of being translators as a matter of course and how they might aim at instigating professional changes. The underlying and deeper reaching concern,
however, was the participants translatorial habitus.
The reconstruction of the habitus which this contribution intends to demonstrate is based on two main assumptions. One is a background assumption and
one is of a derivative nature. The first concerns the dual conceptual status of
the habitus as pertaining either to individuals or to collectives and the latter addresses the most relevant aspects of habitus that must be taken into consideration in order to achieve this application of the concept. Here, Bourdieus
differential anthropology of symbolic forms comes into play, as its emphasis
on the temporal dimension, revolving around the key terms project and protension, allows us to structure and shift larger amounts of biographical data into
a coherent perspective.
In order to arrive at conclusions concerning the translatorial habitus with
regard to a large group of literary translators, two methodological steps are proposed: First, temporal phases relevant to the development of a specific habitus
are ascertained from the literary translators statements. Secondly, and more
importantly, a tentative categorization with respect to the making of the translator is applied, according to the aforementioned subjective experiences of
time.
2. Point of Departure and (Background) Assumptions

With regard to the first background assumption, namely the dual conceptual
status of the habitus as pertaining either to individuals or to collectives, the initial position in which we find ourselves as scholars trying to use Bourdieus
concept of habitus outside its discipline(s) of origin can be described as follows:
Both in Bourdieus writings (with, perhaps, the notable exception of his book
on Heidegger)2 and in their reception in the realms of sociology, the emphasis
has tended to be on the collective aspect. This is basically true for all subsequent
waves of reception, leading, amongst other responses, to a long-standing critique of Bourdieu in precisely this regard, as pertinently expressed by Bernard
The (Re-)Construction of Habitus
151
Lahire in his attempt to lay the foundations for a sociology on the level of the
individual (Lahire 2003). Contrary to this understanding of habitus, translation
studies scholars tend to treat the habitus primarily as a concept applicable to
individuals, at least when attempting to reconstruct it empirically (cf. Gouanvic
1999 and 2007) and when actually making direct recourse to Bourdieus concept, a stance which was severely criticised by Tyulenev (2010: 165166, 2012:
228229). This also means that we are confronted with certain new methodological necessities in the process of data collection and interpretation as soon
as we start to generalise away from individual cases, i.e. as soon as we want to
account for a whole subgroup of translators such as, in this case, literary translators in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and thus to make sense of the unstable Turmbau Simeoni has been using as a metaphor for the complexity of
social habituses (Simeoni 1998: 21).
The second assumption, which is a logical consequence of the initial situation described earlier, results from the need to determine which are to be considered the most relevant thematic aspects for such a large-scale reconstruction
of the translatorial habitus. There are some aspects such as habitus and language or habitus and aesthetic sense, which are undoubtedly highly relevant
to conceptualising translators habitus irrespective of the scope of a given study.
These have been elaborated by various scholars in very fruitful ways and they
are also part of a more comprehensive empirical study, which forms the background for this contribution (cf. Vorderobermeier 2013). For the purposes of
this article, however, they are less central, insofar as their explanatory power
regarding similarities and differences between individuals within a comprehensive group of translators is limited. I will argue that Bourdieus differential anthropology of symbolic forms provides us with a vantage point which allows
us to unfold intra-group distinctions in a theoretically sound and coherent manner.
This differential anthropology of symbolic forms generally aims at being
able to gauge variety in social practice (see Colliot-Thlne 2005). The temporal
dimension belongs to the core of Bourdieus praxeology, i.e. his theory of
practice as practice in more than one respect. Colliot-Thlne has dealt in a
very profound article with the importance of the German branch of phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger) to Bourdieus uvre (ibid.). The author underlines
an influence not to be underestimated, which crystallises around the complex
notion of time reaching back to phenomenology , which was of lifelong
interest to Bourdieu. Concerning this complexity of time, she arrives at the conclusion that Bourdieu has never stopped working on his book about the experience of the temporal (ibid.: 114; my translation). A passage from Bourdieus
work which is explicitly dedicated to his approach to time and which could be
interpreted more neutrally than Bourdieu seems to suggest further in the article
152
from which the following quotation is taken, reads as follows:

[T]he relationship to the future that might be called a project, and which poses the future as future, that is, as a possible constituted as such, thus as possibly happening or
not, is opposed to the relationship to the future that he [Husserl] calls protension or
pre-perceptive anticipation, a relationship to a future that is not a future, to a future
that is almost present. (Bourdieu 1998: 80)
Thus the temporal dimension is crucial, distinguishing clearly between two different experiences of time or attitudes towards time, namely project, i.e. a more
deliberative stance towards the future, and protension, consisting of a quasianticipation of the future.
In an interview rich in insights, Bourdieu himself referred succinctly to this
connection which figures so prominently within his theory as mon vieux truc
sur la protension-projet (Bourdieu 2004c: 85). As Colliot-Thlne convincingly argues, the immense programme of a differential anthropology of symbolic forms (cf. Bourdieu 2000: 16) that Bourdieu intended to expound upon
became increasingly lost in his later thought development (cf. Colliot-Thlne
2005: 123132). This undertaking would not only have entailed allowing theoretically for diverse times of practice, but would also have necessitated explicitly recognising these times and conducting empirical research into them.
The growing distance to the initial programmatic stance came about as a result
of and in favour of the aim to juxtapose the scientific relation to time with the
relation to time characteristic of practice itself. That is to say, the distance
emerged in the course of the critique of the scholastic view which is so central
to Bourdieus thought (cf. ibid.: 131).
For this contribution, these explanations of the temporal dimension imply
a recognition of the fact that in order to account for translatorial practices and
their preconditions, one might have to include both project and protension. The
reading of a feel for the game in the sense of a capacity for practical anticipation of the upcoming future contained in the presence (Bourdieu 1990a: 66)
strongly emphasises the ontological complicity (cf. Bourdieu 1990b) of habitus and field. The word-play Bourdieu entertains here (referring to Claudel)
with respect to the connatre, which brings itself to bear as a natre avec
(ibid.: 67), underlines this even further. The second experience of time can thus
also be interpreted as indicative of the degree to which the illusio of a field is
shared in a seemingly unproblematic way.
Taken together, these temporal aspects can be used to characterise the different ways in which translators themselves experience the lifelong process of
the making of a literary translator. The myriad steps leading to the social construction of a literary translators personality (according to the respondents recollections) can be related to one another in a meaningful way, differentiating
153
between whether these steps are experienced more in terms of project or in

terms of protension.
A further aspect in which the perception or characterisation of time manifests itself and which is of particular interest in an account of literary translators
trajectories is the question of the hysteresis of the translatorial habitus. This effect of hysteresis is most effectively applied in Bourdieus writings on the situation in Algeria during the war of independence, i.e. in the context of the
violent clash of existing structures with patterns of life and modes of production
forced upon the colonised population in all brutality (cf. Bourdieu 2000b). It is
also present in later writings where, especially with regard to the interrelated
character of habitus and field, he postulates: Habitus is not necessarily adapted
to its situation nor necessarily coherent. It has degrees of integration which
correspond in particular to degrees of crystallization of the status occupied
(Bourdieu 2000: 160). Although a whole array of possibilities of the coming
into being of destabilized habitus, torn by contradiction and internal division,
generating suffering (ibid.) is conceivable, at least a certain fundamental tendency towards inertia is characteristic of the habitus (cf. ibid.). In the context
of this paper, the question would therefore be how stable and lasting the prime
orientation or main focus of the literary translators participating in the survey
reveals itself to be.
3. An Exemplification of the Temporal Dimension in Literary

Translators Trajectories
I will now proceed to elaborate the two methodological steps mentioned earlier.
Let me sketch the first methodological step, which consists of identifying phases
relevant to the development of a specific habitus and its ensuing results.
To do this, it is important to recall Bourdieus understanding of primary and
specific habitus, whereby the primary habitus, which is acquired in the family
environment, can be at varying distances to the specific habitus. This must not,
however, necessarily present an obstacle in the process of entering a given field,
for:
In reality, what the new entrant must bring into the game is not the habitus that is tacitly
or explicitly demanded there, but a habitus that is practically compatible, or sufficiently
close, and above all malleable and capable of being converted into the required habitus,
in short, congruent and docile, amenable to restructuring. (Bourdieu 2000a: 100)
The enumeration in the following passage conveys how cumbersome this restructuring process can be in some if not in the majority of cases:
154
It is only through a whole series of imperceptible transactions, half-conscious compromises and psychological operations (projection, identification, transference,
sublimation, etc.), socially encouraged, supported, channelled and even organized, that
these dispositions are little by little transformed into specific dispositions, after all the
infinitesimal adjustments needed in order either to rise to the challenge or to back
down, which accompany the infinitesimal or abrupt redirections of a social trajectory.
(Ibid.: 165)
The psychological orientation in the passage above is continued in Bourdieus

postulation of a by no means static interrelation between actors and field, which
is evident in yet another respect: For the actors, the field opens up specific possibilities to express and satisfy their drives and their desires, in some cases their
neurosis (ibid.), whilst the fields themselves can also make use of such individual animation or drivenness by personal wishes or desires and can channel
these ambitions in ways specific to the field (cf. ibid.). In this sense Bourdieu
also talks of a slow process of co-option and initiation which is equivalent to a
second birth (Bourdieu 1990a: 68) and which is capable of reacting to the most
subtle, minimal hints in the person willing to enter the field as to their aptness
to do so (cf. Bourdieu 2000: 100). Therefore, we also find here the fuzzy logic
of practical sense, which is inherent to habitus as a concept (Wacquant 1992)
and in which the unique achievement of the notion of habitus consists. We
find formulations in Bourdieus works that almost seem to point to an identification of illusio and specific habitus. Such is the case when, in the Pascalian
Meditations, we are told about the specific habitus, which is demanded of the
new entrants as a condition of entry (Bourdieu 2000: 99), that it is
nothing other than a specific mode of thought (an eidos), the principle of a specific
construction of reality, grounded in a pre-reflexive belief in the undisputed value of the
instruments of construction and the objects thus constructed (an ethos). (Ibid.: 99100)
It is worth noting that the choice of words in the notion of primary habitus
should not lead to the assumption that there are necessarily existing relations
of strict temporal priority or posteriority. It is thoroughly conceivable that a
temporal overlap might exist or occur between primary and specific habitus, in
that the transformation into a specific habitus might reach back to earliest childhood and even to a time before the person in question was born. This is notably
the case with regard to the aspirations of parents or of an entire dynasty, e.g.
of artists, scholars etc. (cf. ibid.: 165).
3.1. Discerning Phases Relevant to the Making of a Literary Translator
Whilst at first sight in-depth interviews may seem to be a more conducive
method to gain a glimpse at these transactions, compromises and operations,3
155
we can indeed also conceive of questions that allow us to come close to them
within the more restrictive framework of a questionnaire. This requires a particular level of focus, whilst at the same time leaving the questions open enough
to encompass experiences of a more evanescent nature too. For this reason, the
translators were asked whether they could recall a moment when translation as
an activity sui generis first became evident to them, and if so when this was
and whether it was connected with a specific situation or with particular persons
or a particular individual (cf. Vorderobermeier 2013: 268275). This question
aimed at elucidating whether becoming aware of a logic, or in Bourdieus
terms illusio, applicable to literary translation was a steady and continuous
process or whether it was brought about by a particularly memorable encounter
or experience. In other words: Were the literary translators really born into the
game? How conscious or unconscious was their entry into the field?
While about one quarter of all respondents either left the question unanswered or explicitly denied remembering such a key experience, approximately
three quarters gave more or less detailed insights into the when, where and
how of their key experiences. Whereas for about 14% of the respondents (or
29 persons) this experience coincides more or less with their entrance into the
field or their first steps therein, for a quite comprehensive subgroup of the literary translators in question, i.e. more than one third of them (or 77 persons),
a considerable time elapsed between this initial experience and the point in time
when they actually began to translate (on a regular basis). One in five of those
questioned (i.e. 43 persons) noted that they were already working as (literary)
translators when their key experience happened. Further differentiations show:
For one person in twenty (i.e. 11 of 211 respondents) this experience already
took place during their time at school or in their youth. For about 15 % (32 people) it happened during their university studies (and for four persons during
their PhD-thesis or their work in a tertiary academic context). Approximately
one in twenty respondents (9 persons) points to a time when they were involved
in another professional field. Almost one third identify a point in time or time
span coinciding with their activities as a translator. There is also a far from negligible group (about 16% of all respondents or 33 persons) who indicate that
these experiences were quasi extra-temporal and not bound to any certain context. Taken together with other questions, this provides us with a big picture of
how far back in their biographies a considerable proportion of all literary translators in Austria, Germany and Switzerland reach when trying to recall their
first encounters with translation as an activity with a logic of its own. This seems
to be a particularly useful precondition for arriving at conclusions concerning
the habitus of those questioned.
When invited to concretise the kind of experience they had, the survey
yielded a remarkably high percentage of translators whose experiences were
156
not connected to specific contacts but to the work of specific authors, i.e. with
texts themselves (or with translations qua genre). The second most comprehensive group consists of those who can trace their experiences back to certain
courses during their university studies. For a similar number of respondents the
emphasis was on their experience of their own capabilities as translators, possibly combined with a corresponding affirmation from other persons, i.e. first
or subsequent steps into or within the field, such as the first translation published, being awarded a prize or taking on an especially demanding translation
assignment. Several persons remember visits to translators workshops (most
notably in Straelen) or starting freelance-work, with all its consequences, as
being particularly incisive. For a few persons, central moments included personal involvement in specific discussion contexts or their realisation of the importance of issues brought up by the professional associations. Surprisingly,
only very few literary translators recall historically conditioned circumstances
from their private lives as decisive moments in the context of their professional
self-awareness. Here, again, the overall picture that we obtain of literary translators in the three German-speaking countries is of central interest in an attempt
to reconstruct their habitus.
3.2. Discerning Stances Towards Time Stories of Project and Protension
This brings us to the second methodological step: To remain within the realms
of Bourdieus diction, what is of interest here is the question of how the habitus
brings itself to bear in its most paradoxical property, namely to be the unchosen principle of all choices (Bourdieu 1990a: 61). Bourdieu cautions that
it is never possible, in any case, to determine who, the agent or the institution,
really chose (Bourdieu 2000: 165).
One of the questions in the survey was aimed directly at this tension between
choosing and being chosen and particularly at the temporal dimension pertaining to the social practice of literary translators (cf. Vorderobermeier 2013:
257262). The question was How did you choose to become a professional
literary translator in the first place? Only about one in twenty of the respondents would strongly agree to careful deliberation as (one of) their
answer(s) and a further approximately 15 % would tend to agree. The contrary
is the case with the career as a literary translator being a long-standing wish.
This is very true for more than one in five of the respondents and also true,
albeit to a lesser degree, for about 17 %. Almost 40 % of the respondents identify themselves fully with the statement that one thing led to another on their
way to becoming literary translators and one fifth does so to a lesser extent.
One third of the respondents would full-heartedly agree to the description that
their becoming a literary translator was a consequential development and a fur-
157
ther 25 % tend to agree to this description. That their career choice was not
least the result of or made possible by personal contacts also corresponds with
the estimation of a considerable proportion of the respondents. Almost one third
of them very strongly consider this to have been a contributing factor and another 23 % subscribe to this version with slightly less conviction. The answer
indicating that there would have been no other alternative was clearly declined
by the vast majority of respondents.
When we try to recognise patterns in these answers it can be shown that
when they are grouped together according to co-occurrence, two tendencies
emerge; one signalling a feeling of subjective coherency on the part of the respondents with regard to their individual professional trajectories and one that
I have labelled contingent impulses, stressing the potential role and influential
impact of coincidences. This latter category comprises the statement one thing
led to another as well as the reference to personal contacts as influential factors
with regard to career development, and at the same time it rather precludes
careful deliberation in most cases. The first tendency accords with the statement that the activity as literary translator has been a long-standing wish and
also includes the classification of the individual professional trajectory and career choice as consequential development. When we interpret these tendencies in terms of project and protension, we come to the conclusion that both
of them seem to be expressions of different aspects of protension. Seen from
this perspective, it becomes apparent that whilst the trajectories of a majority
of literary translators can be characterised by an attitude towards the future (or
their individual future as translators) in the process of becoming literary translators, which closely resembles Bourdieus protension, the project perspective
is by no means insignificant either, insofar as it allows us to attenuate and
analyse literary translators statements and individual experiences and to recognise the complexity of different layers of motivation in their social trajectories
(cf. for a very similar approach, albeit based on comprehensive interview data,
Sela-Sheffy 2010).
3.3. Yet Another (Third) Aspect of the Temporal Dimension Literary
Translators Habitus and the Hysteresis-Effect
Of course, these are but two of many aspects of the temporal dimension in connection with the development and analysis of literary translators trajectories
and their habitus. They clearly have to be complemented and enriched by findings related to other aspects. On the one hand, further aspects which need to be
integrated in order to obtain a fuller picture are of a rather particular nature,
such as the spread and duration of language acquisition processes across the
diverse trajectories or the concentration of various professional activities
158
(beyond the realms of translation) from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives. On the other hand there are more general aspects such as the stability
as opposed to the variability of attitudes towards ones own profession or even
more generally the degree to which the hysteresis-effect makes itself felt in the
professional biographies under scrutiny. The latter aspects will be dwelled on
here a little more comprehensively.
An important and by no means predictable result of the empirical survey
with regard to the temporal dimension is that, regardless of the plurality of dispositions found amongst the participants (see above) in a number of aspects
which are highly relevant to their translatorial practice, the respondents nonetheless have one thing in common: Most of them demonstrate a high level of stability with regard to more factual levels and even more so with regard to
individual attitudes and personal feelings.4
These correspondences and the stability of the responses on a factual level
are particularly visible with regard to the specific focus points of activity, which
are divided into financial, time-related and conceptual ones, and which for a
considerable proportion of the participants have remained stable over the course
of the years,5 especially with regard to the conceptual aspect (i.e. concerning
the activity or area of activity with which the person in question identifies most
and whence she derives her professional self-esteem, etc.) with no shifts whatsoever for 65.9 % of all respondents. It is equally valid in relation to other points
such as who takes the initiative for translation projects, where once established
patterns have prevailed in a stable manner for significantly more than half of
the participants (69.2 %), or in relation to the amount of literary and non-literary
translation work within the overall work load, where 75.4 % of the respondents
answered in the same way, indicating that the ratio remained the same over the
course of time.
The stability of answers relating to the more individual level of attitudes and
personal feelings can also be seen in relation to the conceptual focus point mentioned above, which is to say in the translators attitudes towards the activity of
translating itself, for example in relation to changes (or the absence thereof) in
the respondents degree of job satisfaction, sense of well-being and the extent
to which they experience the fact of being translators as a matter of course, along
with the question of how they might aim at instigating professional changes.
Here, about 52.1 % of the respondents experience their own activity as translators as absolutely matter of fact (as opposed to 19.9 % who only feel so most of
the time, 10 % who not always experience their activity in this way and 13.8 %
saying that they could have ended up doing something else). 63 % of the participants responded to the question of their satisfaction regarding their current
professional situation with the same answer, indicating that they were content,
albeit with some reservations. Another 18.5 % are very content, 12.3 % rather
159
content and a relatively small group of 4.3 % is completely unhappy. Diminished

satisfaction with the own translatorial activity or a more or less marked level of
discontent in this regard does not, however, automatically lead to a concrete
need for change(s). Only scarcely one third of all respondents (25.6 %) aims at
such changes, while this is not the case for 70.6 % of the participants.
The stability of dispositions (hysteresis), but also the persistence of conditions which lie beyond the personalities of the translators (and in part also beyond their reach), seems to be considerable. The recognition of a plurality of
dispositions therefore also implies questioning which resources are mobilised
in order to uphold the possibility of sharing the illusio of the literary field. On
the other hand, given the high stability of a couple of dispositions quite central
to the practice of translation, it seems all the more interesting to pose the question of which circumstances must in fact prevail or come into force so that the
illusio is suspended or entirely abandoned. Possible reasons for leaving the literary field, i.e. for a rupture in the belief that the game is worth the stakes
brought into it by a given individual, are seldom taken into consideration to a
sufficient extent, which is not altogether unexpected considering that the people
to whom this pertains tend to slip out of the scope of such surveys.6
4. By Way of Conclusion
What difference does Bourdieus differential anthropology of symbolic forms
make to the sociology of translation? Arguably it provides us with a theoretically grounded analytical framework which allows us to accommodate a wide
range of data that might otherwise prove difficult to collate, connect and
analyse, and as such is indispensable to broadening the scope of empirical work
with the habitus concept. This is all the more important when dealing with the
habitus as a generative principle for such social practices as translation, i.e. social practices whose existence as a field remains a subject of debate (cf. Gouanvic 2007, Wolf 2007). At the same time, it also seems worthwhile to re-consider
an undercurrent in Bourdieus work which emphasises the flexibility inherent
in his theoretical legacy.
Notes
1 For details on research design, statistical procedures applied etc. see Vorderobermeier (2013: 6579).
2 Which, unlike Elias book on Mozart, was not written with an explicit focus on the philosophers habitus.
3 For the interpretation of interviews within this theoretical framework cf. Vorderobermeier 2013,
chapter 4.
160
4 This also testifies against a willingness to succumb to the logic of a project-based polis in
the sense of Boltanski and Chiappello (2005); cf. for such an argumentation Vorderobermeier
2010 (based on a survey study) and Vorderobermeier forthcoming (based on an interview
study).
5 With regard to the financial focus point 45 % of the participants did not experience any shift
between their translatorial activity and possible other professional or other work-related activities. For the time-related focus point this percentage is slightly lower and lies at 39.7 %.
6 A certain approximation to questions like these is expounded in an article by Meylaerts (2008),
in which the author illustrates how such a decision against continuing a translatorial career can
be motivated, based on the juxtaposition of two renowned literary translators in inter-war-Belgium and taking her lead from the theories of Lahire.
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Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. 1999. Sociologie de la traduction. La science-fiction amricaine dans lespace culturel franais des annes 1950. Arras: Artois Presses Universit.
. 2007a. Pratique sociale de la traduction. Le roman raliste amricain dans le champ littraire
franais (19201960). Arras: Artois Presses Universit.
. 2007b Objectivation, rflexivit et traduction: Pour une re-lecture bourdieusienne de la traduction in Wolf, Michaela and Alexandra Fukari (eds) Constructing a Sociology of translation
(Benjamins Translation Library 74). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 7992.
Meylaerts, Reine. 2008.Translators and (Their) Norms: Towards a Sociological Construction of
the Individual in Pym, Anthony, Miriam Shlesinger and Daniel Simeoni (eds) Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies. Investigations in homage to Gideon Toury (Benjamins Translation Library 75). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 91102.
Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet. 2010. Stars or Professionals: The Imagined Vocation and Exclusive
Knowledge of Translators in Israel in Diaz Fouces, Oscar and Esther Monz (eds) MonTI
2: Applied Sociology in Translation Studies / Sociologia aplicada a la traducci. Alicante:
Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante. 131152.
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Tyulenev, Sergey. 2010. Translation in Intersystemic Interaction: A Case Study of Eighteenth-Century Russia in TTR 23(1): 165189.
. 2012. Translation and the Westernization of Eighteenth-Century Russia (TransD. Arbeiten
zur Theorie und Praxis des bersetzens und Dolmetschens 47). Berlin: Franck & Timme.
Vorderobermeier, Gisella. 2010. Von der erleuchteten zur projektbasierten Polis? TranslatorInnen
im neuen Kapitalismus in Grbi, Nadja, Gernot Hebenstreit, Michaela Wolf and Gisella
M. Vorderobermeier (eds) Translationskultur revisited. Festschrift fr Erich Prun. Unter
Mitarbeit von Beatrice Fischer. Tbingen: Stauffenburg. 296318.
. 2013. Translatorische Praktiken aus soziologischer Sicht. Kontextabhngigkeit des bersetzerischen Habitus? Opladen, Berlin and Toronto: Budrich UniPress.
. forthcoming. Altered in-between-states? Literary translators and their social practice in the
new capitalism in Rogers, Margaret and Vilelmini Sosoni (eds) Translation in an Age of
Austerity. Special Issue of mTm 5.
Wolf, Michaela. 2007. The Location of the Translation Field. Negotiating Borderlines between
Pierre Bourdieu and Homi Bhabha, in Wolf, Michaela and Alexandra Fukari (eds) Constructing a Sociology of Translation (Benjamins Translation Library 74). Amsterdam and
The Influence of the Habitus on Translatorial Style:

Some Methodological Considerations Based on the Case of
Yorgos Himonas Rendering of Hamlet into Greek
Vasso Yannakopoulou (University of Cyprus)
The subject of style in Translation Studies is a comparatively underdeveloped area. Due to the longstanding tendency towards the translators invisibility, most of the interest in the topic has focused
on the style of the source text and the degree in which it is transferred in the target text. Nevertheless,
style in translation inevitably encompasses the translators own style as well, in other words the
choices translators make that are not dictated by the source text or the target language and culture,
but are particular to their own writing. Bourdieu has shown that matters of taste, aesthetic appreciation and production, including linguistic production, can be the result of strong dispositions generated by the habitus. It is the claim of this paper that habitus can constitute the theoretical tool to
account both for the manner in which translators interpret their source texts as readers and the particular choices they make during the actual translation production as writers. Methodologically, a
combination of macrolevel contextual factors that take into consideration the translators whole
life trajectory, with microlevel textual ones will be proposed. Furthermore, it will be claimed that
the existence of patterns of translation choices, as well as cases of deviance from the expected
translation practices constitute strong indicators that these choices are motivated by the translators
habitus, instead of being random or idiosyncratic. The above points will be tested against the case
study of Yorgos Himonas rendering of Shakespeares Hamlet into Greek (1988).
Keywords: habitus, Bourdieu, style, interpretation, choice, macro-micro, patterns, deviance, Shakespeare, Yorgos Himonas
1. Style in Translation
It is a truism that if the same source text (henceforward ST) is given to two
translators, even in the same sociocultural and historical context in which the
same norms apply, they are bound to come up with more or less different target
texts; sometimes strikingly different. If that is the case, it is important to ask
what the factors that shape these differences are and what constitutes each translators distinctive style. As it is, not much work has been done in the direction
of translation stylistics and even less regarding translatorial stylistics.1
But what is style? For the needs of this paper, let it suffice to borrow Verdonks (2002: 5) definition of style as motivated choice and K. Wales definition as the perceived distinctive manner of expression.2
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In the case of translation, style might be seen to include the style of the ST,
the degree in which it is transferred to the target text (henceforward TT), as
well as the style of the TT per se.3 Until very recently, whatever work was done
on style in Translation Studies (henceforward TS) showed a lopsided interest
towards the first two of the above aspects primarily driven by translation quality
assessment or translator training purposes.4 Little has been done in the direction
of studying the style of the TT per se. Baker attributes this partial interest to
the fact that translation has traditionally been viewed as a derivative rather
than creative activity and that therefore a translator cannot have, indeed
should not have, a style of his or her own, the translators task being simply to
reproduce as closely as possible the style of the original (2000: 244; emphasis
in the original).5 However, as she quite correctly says, it is as impossible to
produce a stretch of language in a totally impersonal way as it is to handle an
object without leaving ones fingerprints on it (ibid.).6 Similarly, Hermans uses
the term Translators voice to refer to the second voice that is always present in translated narrative discourse and may be more or less overtly present.
According to him it may remain entirely hidden behind that of the Narrator,
rendering it impossible to detect in the translated text. It is most directly and
forcefully present when it breaks through the surface of the text speaking for
itself, in its own name (Hermans 1996: 27). Although Hermans mainly refers
to cases in which the TT draws attention to itself as being a voice different from
that of the original, e.g. cases of cultural embedding, linguistic self-referentiality, contextual overdetermination, meta-linguistic notes and comments, and the
like, I wish to adopt the term here to refer to other cases in which the translators
narrative discourse breaks through and becomes evident, and particularly
cases in which the translator inserts elements that do not correspond to elements
of the ST and are not imposed by the norms or linguistic constraints of the target
language (henceforward TL), in other words pertain to the translators own style
of writing.
In what follows I will be looking at two facets of translation stylistics,
namely the degree in which translators transfer the stylistic features of their
STs, which is a reflection of their interpretation of the ST as readers, and their
own style in their TTs as writers, which is directly linked with the element of
translation choice.7
2. The Translator as Reader and the Element of Interpretation8

Since the 1970s there has been a growing interest in textual interpretation in
the form of theories such as hermeneutics, the aesthetics of reception, readerresponse criticism, semiotic theories of interpretative cooperation, and decon-
The Influence of the Habitus on Translatorial Style
165
struction.9 According to Eco

the basic assumption underlying each of these theories is that the functioning of a text
can be explained by taking into account not only its generative process but also (or,
for the most radical theories, exclusively) the role performed by the addressee and the
way in which the text foresees and directs this kind of interpretive cooperation. (Eco
1990: 45)
In his attempt to oppose the distinction imposed by the literary institution between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its customer,
between its author and its reader (Barthes 1974: 4), Barthes proclaimed the
death of the Author.10 He saw this as a necessary motion for the beginning of
writing, which was his way of describing the shift of textual interpretation
from the author to the reader. He believed the distinction between reader and
author to be but a historic one and wished to reclaim the text for the sake of the
interpretive freedom of the reader. That is why he favoured what he called
writerly texts, which were those texts that were characterized by a plurality
of significations, as opposed to readerly ones which were univocal, such as
classic literature (1974: 45). Discussing the question of conflicting interpretations between the author and the reader, Eco says that
by giving life to a form, the artist makes it accessible to an infinite number of possible
interpretations possible because the work lives only in the interpretations that are
given of it, and infinite not only because of the characteristic fecundity of the form
itself, but because this fecundity will inevitably be confronted with an infinity of interpreting personalities, each with its own way of seeing, thinking, and being. (Eco
1989: 165)
Similarly, according to Verdonk, the meaning of a text is not intrinsic to it, but
[is] always negotiable (2002: 70).
At this point, two questions arise: firstly, whether the text can be interpreted
in infinite ways, and secondly, whether interpretation is merely idiosyncratic
or, if not, what affects it. Concerning the first question, I agree with Eco, who,
in his book The Limits of Interpretation, claims that the interpreted text imposes some constraints upon its interpreters (1990: 6). He argues that the notion of unlimited semiosis does not lead to the conclusion that interpretation
has no criteria and tends to take a more moderate standpoint on the matter
(1990: 4546).
As for the second question, according to Barthes, the interpreting experience
for the scriptor is in the here and now.11 But if, with Parks (2007: 9), the text
is open to a range of possible but not definite or exclusive meanings, how
does a translator interpret his/her ST? How is one meaning rather than another
activated in his/her mind? Can a translator-cum-reader be seen outside his/her
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Vasso Yannakopoulou
socio-historic environment? I believe that textual interpretation cannot be considered merely idiosyncratic, but is influenced by socio-historical factors, including the translators whole life trajectory, which influences the way s/he
interprets his/her cognitive input, as I will attempt to show below.
From a cognitive standpoint, Boase-Beier says that stylistic choices do not
merely represent different ways of saying the same thing but different ways
of saying which reflect different ways of seeing (2006: 112). She disagrees
with Verdonk on the issue of the passivity of the reader and employing the
Reader-Response Theory, views the translator as an active participant in the
reading of the source text (2006: 73).12 She stresses the fact that the translator
infers from the text the intentions of the assumed author, what she describes as
the pretense of translation (2006: 108).13 What the translator actually comes
up with is the translators meaning of the inferred author. As a result,
because of the translators role as active participant in creating a textual reading, different readers will read the same text differently, will engage with its implicatures differently and will produce different translations reflecting aspects of the mind behind
the text. (2006: 114)
Her cognitive approach to the translation of style is interesting in that she encompasses on the one hand the translator-cum-reader, moving from the meaning implied by the text to the meaning inferred from the text by the translator,
and on the other hand the translator-cum-writer (Boase-Beier 2006: 74). This
brings us to the productive part of translation, the actual translation process,
which is where most of the translators choices take place.
3. The Translator as Writer and the Element of Choice

As a producer of a new text the translator is by default a writer. In The Open
Work, Eco describes form as the culmination of a process of figuration and the
beginning of a series of successive interpretations. As the product of a process
of figuration, form is the cessation of the forming process which has reached
its conclusion (Eco 1989: 163). And he goes on to explain that this theory of
interpretation acquires full meaning only if style is defined as a way of forming
(ibid.: 164). Therefore, the form that the translator chooses to activate is a direct
reflection of his/her interpretation of the text and is crystalized in stylistic
choices. Style is not just a different way of saying the same thing, but conveys
meaning that is different according to each reader.
Again two questions are worth asking here. Firstly, is there a creative part
in the translators work? And secondly, if style is directly linked with choice,
the question rises as to the mechanism through which these choices are made.
167
As concerns the creative part of the translators work, Scott (2012) perceives
the translator not as an executant, but [as] a composing performer (ibid.: 46)
who endlessly re-improvises the text (ibid.: 54). He proposes two models of
translation, that of transmission, which serves the purpose of giving access to
the ST to those that dont speak the source language (SL), and that of survival
(in accordance with Benjamins berleben), which is addressed to readers
who are well acquainted with the ST and in which the translator can freely
insert himself/herself into the ongoing progress of the text (ibid.: 100102).
According to him, its task is to make what we might have thought we knew
into something unknown, linguistically disestablished, which must therefore
be re-assimilated, re-acculturated, in some form or other (ibid.: 102). In this
sense, the ST infinitely acquires afterlives as it is relocated in time and space.
In other words, these images belong to the poem as part of its projection of itself into
new futures, and belong to me as a reader whose available image-bank spontaneously
and unavoidably re-inflects, or re-metabolises, the poem, inserting it into new intertexts
and other fields of reference. (Scott 2012: 63)
Scotts approach is in accordance with what Barthes (1977: 161) was claiming
when he saw the original writer as but belonging to the past of the text, the present and future being constantly reshaped.
As concerns the second question, according to Verdonk, choice is the cornerstone to the study of style because it rests on the fundamental assumption
that different choices will produce different styles and thereby different effects
which depend on the reader assuming that these features are a matter of motivated choice on the part of the writer, that they are designed to be noticed
(2002: 6, 9). These claims can, of course, readily be seen to apply to the stylistic
choices of the translator as well. So out of the numerous options they have at
their disposal, how do translators make their translation choices? In my opinion,
the translators whole life trajectory partakes in the shaping of their aesthetic,
linguistic, and evaluative criteria, a position which I will elaborate on below.
In what follows, a short introduction to Bourdieus sociological approach to
taste in Distinction (1984) can be seen to offer itself for application in matters
of translational style. Habitus will be proposed as a theoretical concept to address both the manner in which translators interpret their STs and make their
personal stylistic choices in their TTs.
4. Bourdieu, Habitus, and the Sociology of Taste

In Distinction, Bourdieu presents an in-depth study of the social factors that influence taste and of how aesthetic sense functions as a sense of distinction. It
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goes without saying that Bourdieu viewed taste as a social construct. Thus, taste
is influenced by ones class, education, and whole life trajectory, which makes
it a complex and multifaceted notion. Bourdieu defines the habitus as follows:
[T]he habitus is both the generative principle of objectively classifiable judgements and
the system of classification (principium divisionis) of these practices. It is in the relationship between the two capacities which define the habitus, the capacity to produce
classifiable practices and works, and the capacity to differentiate and appreciate these
practices and products (taste), that the represented social world, i.e., the space of lifestyles, is constituted. The habitus is not only a structuring structure, which organizes
practices and the perception of practices, but also a structured structure: the principle of
division into logical classes which organizes the perception of the social world is itself
the product of internalization of the division into social classes. (Bourdieu 1984: 170)
In what is of interest to us here, habitus constitutes a theoretical tool with which

to address both the manner in which translators as agents perceive and appropriate reality while interpreting their STs, and how they generate classifiable
practices as they write their TTs in the form of their translation choices.
More concretely, in what concerns the translators interpretation of their
STs one can discern two aspects. On the one hand, translators as agents perceive
reality differently in accordance with their habitus. Thus, translators-cum-readers interpret their STs differently having a different understanding of the implicatures in them through the mediation of their habitus. Bourdieu has shown that
even in the case of common words, different classes either give them different
meanings, or give to apparently neutral words the same meaning but attribute
opposite values to the things named (1984: 194). Language is not an ethical
organon common to all classes, but is both common to the different classes
and capable of receiving different, even opposite, meanings in the particular,
and sometimes antagonistic, uses that are made of it (ibid.). On the other hand,
habitus is directly linked with the translators aesthetic appreciation of their ST,
which Bourdieu has also shown to be socially conditioned. The reading of a
work of art, what Leech and Short (1984: 49) call stylistic competence, is not
the same for all recipients:
A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded. The conscious or unconscious implementation of explicit or implicit schemes of perception and appreciation which constitutes
pictorial or musical culture is the hidden condition for recognizing the styles characteristic
of a period, a school or an author, and, more generally, for the familiarity with the internal
logic of works that aesthetic enjoyment presupposes. (Bourdieu 1984: 2)
And he goes on to say that the beholder of a work of art

cannot move from the primary stratum of the meaning we can grasp on the basis of our
ordinary experience to the stratum of secondary meanings, i.e. the level of the mean-
169
ing of what is signified, unless he possesses the concepts which go beyond the sensible
properties and which identify the specifically stylistic properties of the work. (Ibid.: 3)
He cautions us that [t]he encounter with a work of art is not love at first sight
as is generally presupposed, but implies the implementation of a cognitive
acquirement, a cultural code (ibid.).
This cultural code is directly linked with the translators cultural capital
built through long years of acquaintance with and internalization of that code.
The translators stylistic competence cannot be seen as limited to their professional formation, but is also the result of their whole life trajectory. This is
true because the translators habitus does not solely consist of their professional
habitus through the internalization of their training and the positions they have
taken in their field(s) of activity,14 but also of their personal habitus, which is
shaped through their whole life trajectory, their class background, their education, their ideological positioning, and their cultural capital. I fully agree with
Meylaerts when she says that a socialized individual cannot be reduced to a
profession and that translators are always more than mere translators (ibid.:
94).15 Especially when dealing with the work of individual translators rather
than schools or genres, it is of utmost importance to consider the translators
whole life trajectory if one is to seek causation behind particular translation
choices.
On the level of translation production, i.e. the actual writing process, habitus, being a disposition to act in a certain manner, also offers itself as a descriptive tool as it can be directly linked with translatorial choice. Bourdieu has
shown habitus to be the motivation behind aesthetic choices:
[] the different inherited asset structures, together with social trajectory, command
the habitus and the systematic choices it produces in all areas of practice, of which the
choices commonly regarded as aesthetic are one dimension []. (Bourdieu 1984: 260)
The translators habitus, which is a structuring structure, urges them to make

particular translation choices rather than others, including stylistic ones, as if
these were the only natural course of action. Bourdieu describes this as an illusion of spontaneous generation which this cultivated disposition tends to produce by presenting itself in the guise of an innate disposition (Bourdieu 1984:
99). Speaking of the influence of the habitus on taste, he says that:
De gustibus non est disputandum [] because each taste feels itself to be natural
and so it almost is, being a habitus which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural
and therefore vicious. (Bourdieu 1984: 56)
The translators habitus influences their stylistic choices on the level of production. The translators stylistic competence, by which they are able to dis-
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Vasso Yannakopoulou
cern various stylistic features of the ST, also serves them in the reproduction of
these features in the TT or the production of their own stylistic features in it.
The greater the translators cultural and educational capital, the greater their acquaintance with and ability to discern even the subtlest stylistic features in order
to reproduce them in the TT. The translators lexical armoury and their mastering of tropes, their abiding by or transgression of linguistic rules, their use of
register, their acquaintance with translation strategies may all be seen as part
of their stylistic competence. According to Bourdieu:
Linguistic ease may be manifested either in the tours de force of going beyond what
is required by strictly grammatical or pragmatic rules, making optional liaisons, for
example, or using rare words and tropes in place of common words and phrases, or in
the freedom from demands of language or situation that is asserted in the liberties taken
by those who are known to know better. (Bourdieu 1984: 255)
Of course, habitus does not function in a deterministic unidirectional manner,

but is always open to a field of possibles which are more or less strong in
each individual according to their class position (Bourdieu 1984: 110).16 Bourdieu explains that the aesthetic sense functions as a sense of distinction. [I]t
unites and separates. [] [I]t distinguishes [and] [] classifies (1984: 56).
Style is a manner through which the translator is placed within the social space.
Tastes, says Bourdieu, are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other
tastes (1984: 56). In other words, translators may be seen as belonging to one
school rather than another and their personal style may be approached through
their rejection of other alternatives.
All in all, the translators habitus is involved in the whole translation process,
from the interpretation of the ST to the writing of the TT, from the choice of
author and ST, the reading and aesthetic appreciation of the ST, to the translation
choices made on the microlevel while actually producing the TT.
5. On Methodology
The fact that a single term, habitus, can address both the reception and the production of texts renders it a useful descriptive tool for TS. But could we use
habitus as a tool to account for the motivation behind translatorial decisions?
How can we methodologically address the issue of translatorial style? Many
translation scholars have acknowledged that contextual factors influence the
translators choices without actually using the term habitus. Translation Studies
is by nature interdisciplinary, therefore, instead of re-inventing the wheel and
coming up with yet another term, I propose to borrow the already well-established notion of habitus. What is actually needed is not another term, but a way
171
of understanding the very complex factors that influence the translator as an

agent during the process of translation.
The methodology proposed is the macro-micro approach, in other words a
combination of macrolevel contextual research, along with microlevel stylistic
study.17 Both levels are indispensable if we are to reach any sound conclusions
as to the motivation behind translatorial choices. Contrasting with the strictly
text-based approach of New Criticism,18 which denied any interpretation outside
the text itself on the one hand, and the contextual approach of the culturalist
paradigm which tended to disregard the text at large, I believe both are indispensable. Wolf quite convincingly warns of the danger of a sociology of translation existing without translation (2007: 27) and she reminds us that [i]n fact
Bourdieu himself stressed the necessity of combining these two levels, a
methodological move which enables a comprehensive explanation of the functional logics in the field.19
More concretely, the researcher is to look into the translators life trajectories20 and then study their TTs under that light. Evidence to reconstruct the translators trajectories might include anything from the historical backdrop within
which they worked, their family and class background, their position in their
field(s) of activity, any schools of thought or ideology they were influenced by,
their original work and style in the case they were writers themselves. To these
we should add any declarations by the translators themselves in introductions,
footnotes, articles, original works, although the latter should be dealt with tentatively,21 because, as the habitus functions on an unconscious level, it is not
uncommon for translators to claim one thing and do quite the contrary, or follow
a translation strategy for reasons other than what they themselves believe they
have.
Very often, precisely due to the long-standing tendency towards the translators invisibility, it is difficult to obtain information on the translators life trajectories unless they are known for other things, such as being writers or
politicians. This makes the gathering of data extremely difficult, if not impossible. Nevertheless, the study of the TT itself against the backdrop of other contextual data can also give us valuable information. The work of Caroline
Spurgeon (1935), who attempted to reconstruct aspects of Shakespeares life
and thought through the study of his use of imagery in his plays, is exemplary
in this respect.
The contextual study then is to be triangulated with the study of the TT
itself. Such a study can lead to surprises, as the findings from the microlevel
study of a TT may be quite contrary to what one might expect by limiting ones
research to contextual factors. But stylistic choices may include an impressive
array of elements ranging from the choice of original writer and ST in the
cases that the choice was the translators and they werent commissioned to do
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Vasso Yannakopoulou
the translation to the overall translation strategy, the use of paratextual features, such as the use of prefaces, footnotes or endnotes, down to microlevel
lexical and morphosyntactical choices. So, how are researchers to decide which
of the innumerable aspects of the text are stylistically significant and worth
studying? The answer, I propose, lies in the notions of patterns and deviance
which foreground translation choices, in other words make them more salient,
thus indicating that they are motivated and designed to be noticed, as Verdonk suggests (2002: 6, 9).
Recurrent translation behavioural patterns22 are strong indicators that a phenomenon is not random or idiosyncratic, but is a conscious (or unconscious)
choice resulting from the habitus. Theoretically, this can be explained by Bourdieus claim that
systematicity is found in the opus operatum because it is in the modus operandi. []
It is found [] in all practices in which agents manifest their distinction, [] because
it is in the synthetic unity of the habitus, the unifying, generative principle of all practices. (Bourdieu 1984: 173)
In other words, we can see systematicity in the translators practice because

there is systematicity in the organizing principle, which is none other than their
habitus. Thus, by studying their systematic practices, in other words patterns,
we might glimpse at their habitus in action. Patterns can include anything from
the choice of STs to microlevel morphosyntactic choices.
Another strong indicator of the work of the habitus is deviance23 from the
expected practice, as well as from the style of the ST, because this again is a
strong indicator of motivated stylistic choices.24 Deviance is proposed in the
framework of the study of translation style and refers to difference from either
the style of the ST or the norms of the target culture (TC) for the particular text
type.25 Unlike patterns, deviance can include one-off instances that may be of
stylistic interest.
The above approach is not without risk of subjectivity as it is always a matter of the research questions set, which is true for any scientific method,
though. Verdonks (2002: 74, 78) concern that there is always the danger of
the researchers subjectivity biasing the outcome of the research is not unfounded.26 That having been said, the search for patterns and deviance can
help weed out the most salient stylistic features, and the macro-micro method
proposed is bound to offer sounder conclusions than either of its components
in isolation can do.
In what follows, I will attempt to test the validity of the proposed methodology against the case of Yorgos Himonas rendering of Hamlet into Greek
(1980).
173
6. Yorgos Himonas Rendering of Hamlet (1988): A Case Study

Yorgos Himonas (19382000) was active both as a writer and a psychiatrist.
Although he was of petite bourgeois origin, it seems that his habitus was decisively shaped by his studies in France and the French literary, aesthetic, philosophical, as well as socio-political developments that took place in the 1970s,
when he was a student there. The fact that Himonas had been studying in
France until the eve of the May 1968 uprising should by no means be overlooked. The ideological debates and the literary trends that were in vogue in
Paris and which had deep reverberations shaking the whole value system of
Europe at the time had a definite and profound influence on the formation of
his habitus. The writings of theoreticians such as Derrida and Blanchot seem
to have had a deep influence on his own views. He was also deeply affected
by the work of Lacan, whose lectures he attended as a psychiatry student at the
university.
These influences profoundly affected both Himonas own writing and his
translation practice. His professional translations appeared rather late in life.
His translation theory was also indelibly formulated under the influence of New
Criticism views concerning the self-determinacy of the text and its independence from the writer and Barthian views on the death of the Author as well
as the postmodernist reappropriation of tradition and free use of intertextual
borrowing. In the following extract, Himonas claims show a clear influence
by the poststructuralist idea of the death of the Author:
The artist does not exist outside his writing. His work develops to the detriment of the
self; the writer never existed; instead of him there are his writings. [] Whatever happens must happen while the text lasts. All must have finished when the text finishes.
(Himonas 1995: 71, 5758; here and hereafter: my translation)
The above theories decisively influenced his translation strategy. In his speech
at the Goulandris-Horn Foundation on February 6, 1992, entitled The faithful
translation and the incredulous translator, Himonas explains his translation
theory more clearly than anywhere else (1995: 14151). To an accusation
against him that he distances himself from the foreign text and appropriates
the original text, urged by his [...] need to somewhat expand his own personal
language, he pleads guilty, and goes on to defend himself differentiating between what he calls appropriation, which he considers to be immoral, and
what he describes as expansion (ibid.: 142), introducing parameters of interpretation. Influenced by the postmodern reappropriation of tradition, he perceives the text as a palimpsest and describes his translation strategy as an
excavation aimed at liberating its true meaning:
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Vasso Yannakopoulou
[...] the ethics imposed by the translational excavation which attempts to impose the
liberation of the hidden living functions that are keeping the body of tragedy alive.
Definitely not by changing its form. But helping it as much and in any way he can to
breathe better. This is the fidelity I am talking about, its spaciousness. (Himonas 1995:
147)
The premise behind this liberal approach to his ST stems from his understanding
of every text as self-sufficient and open to interpretation. This is a creative approach that is very close to what Scott proposes as the survival model.
Himonas chose to render five tragedies altogether, all of which were among
the most prominent canonical texts that have shaped the formation of Western
drama as such, namely Shakespeares Hamlet (1988) and Macbeth (1994),
Sophocles Electra (1984), and Euripides Bacchae (1985) and Medea (1989).
His choice of STs was driven by his postmodern interest to return to tradition
in a new manner. Furthermore, Himonas appropriation of Shakespeares classic
texts can be seen in the light of Bourdieus (1984: 282) reference to owners of
works of art. The appropriation of a classic text seen in a new manner gives the
beholder the status of aficionado. The owners unique personality can come
through by means of his unique mode of appropriation of the classic ST. Liking the same things differently can be a strategy to achieve symbolic power.
Therefore, Himonas distinguished himself by opposition to Shakespeare (see
Bourdieu 1984: 52).
Form was, of course, of utmost importance in his venture.27 What he aimed
at was rendering the text in a language that would differ from the norm for
tragedy up to then. Instead of aiming at fidelity on the surface level and formal
equivalence, he took liberties to destabilize the text in an attempt to excavate
what he perceived as the true meaning underneath. He considered Shakespeares
Elizabethan style to be outdated and pompous and too elaborate for modern audiences, so he attempted to transfer the unadorned bare essence of what he
thought was the true core of the play by employing a very pithy, succinct, laconic style.28 Unsurprisingly, this was the very style he used in his own original
writing. In fact, his translations are stylistically much closer to his own writing
than to Shakespeares Elizabethan style. Extracts 13 (Table 1) are randomly
picked out of the overall pattern of succinct rendering throughout his TT.
In extract 1, he eliminates the metaphor and, in extract 2, the whole image
of the spirit walking at a specific time. In extract 3, apart from a deviance in
style, there is an important deviance in the propositional meaning in his TT as
well. This extract is the Queens retort when Claudius informs her that Polonius
is about to reveal to them the cause of Hamlets distress. Whereas in the ST,
Gertrude attributes his distress to his fathers death and [their] oer-hasty marriage, in Himonas rendering [death and marriage], the distress is caused
not by the particular death and marriage, but by the abstract concepts of death
175
and marriage, thus becoming much more existential. His interpretation of the
play is obviously affected by his habitus at this point.
Table 1
No
Shakespeare (Arden)
Himonas
Backtranslation
(1.4.1) Ham: The air

bites shrewdly, it is
very cold.
I am cold
(1.4.56) Hor: It then

draws near the season |
Wherein the spirit held
his wont to walk.
Then | it is time.
(2.2.5667) Queen: I
doubt it is no other but
the main, | His fathers
death and our oer-hasty
marriage.
I am afraid we know it,

too | Deathand
marriage
Apart from the succinct style, Himonas employs his own deviant spelling, punctuation, and syntax. He also introduces stage directions that affect the interpretation of the tragedy, as well as other elements in the TT that are absent in the
ST and reflect his own ideological positionings. All these are instances in which,
according to Hermans, the translators voice breaks through the surface of the
text, speaking for itself.
Table 2
No
Shakespeare (Arden)
Himonas
Backtranslation
(2.2.431433) Ham: for the play, I remember,

pleased not the million,
twas caviare to the general.

.
.

,
.
That play was not of the

peoples liking.
But I loved it.
Because art is not for
the multitude
Nor is it for the few, it is
always for each person
individually.
176
Vasso Yannakopoulou
In extract 4 (Table 2, p. 175), for example, Himonas introduces his own view
that art is open to personal interpretation and appreciation, which is quite different from Shakespeares view on the matter. Evidently this deviates from his
own overall succinct style, as instead of shortening the text he adds text of his
own in the TT, expanding it to interpret the ST by means of his own ideological positionings.
In the following extract (Table 3), Himonas seems to be influenced by the
historic context and superimposes on Hamlet the disillusionment with Himonas
own generation:
Table 3
No
Shakespeare (Arden)
Himonas
Backtranslation
(3.1.11719) Ham: You

shouldnt have believed
me; for virtue cannot so
inoculate our old stock
but we shall relish of it.
I loved you not.

. |

|

. |

.
|
.

You shouldnt have believed me. | The tree has

withered away and cannot be grafted anymore |
My generation has aged
prematurely. No life |
Can reinvigorate it.
From now on | nothing
shall give us mirth. I
loved you not
Extract 5 is from 3.1, where Hamlet tells Ophelia that she shouldnt have believed him when he said he loved her. Shakespeare uses a horticultural
metaphor, using inoculate in its etymological sense (=graft). According to the
metaphor, a graft of virtue cannot change our original sinful nature to such an
extent that we may not still have the flavour of it (Jenkins 2002: 282). Hence,
the sense is I loved you not, the love I had for you was not love as we are all
sinners. Himonas grasps the opportunity to express his disillusionment with
his generation in accordance with his views on the end of time, as well as his
disappointment with his own lost generation. This must have been readily received as such when spoken on stage at the time, especially after the second
post-Junta period.
Himonas also superimposes his own images and metaphors on Shakespeares text, and in so doing he brings out important shifts to the content of
the tragedy. The two most persistent images that he superimposes on the play
177
are those of death and sexuality. In Hamlet, more than in any other of his works,
Shakespeare ponders death, the afterlife, including the famous soliloquy of (3.1)
(to be or not to be), from the postulates and problematic of the Christian Renaissance man. In Himonas Hamlet, on the other hand, the line between life
and death is very thin, even indiscernible.
Table 4
No
Shakespeare (Arden)
Himonas
Backtranslation
(1.1.4647) Bar: Looks

a not like the King?
Mark it Horatio. | Hor:
Most like.
: . .

: .
Bar: Horatio. Look. The

figure of the King.
Hor: My God. The
King
(1.5.9) Ghost: I am thy

fathers spirit,
I am thy father.
The above extracts (Table 4) are one-off cases of deviance from the ST that are
strong indicators of motivated choices worth studying. In Himonas version,
instead of seeing his fathers ghost, Hamlet actually sees his father. In extract
6, most like [the King], becomes the King in the TT. Even more tellingly,
in extract 7, Himonas ghost says I am thy father, instead of Shakespeares I
am thy fathers spirit. Influenced by Maurice Blanchot, Himonas believed that
the ultimate absolute experience is death. Thus his Hamlet is self-destructive.
He does not ponder death, like his Shakespearean counterpart, but actually longs
for it. Hamlets famous dilemma in his To be or not to be soliloquy (3.1.56
88), in which he verbally flagellates himself on his cowardice, is rendered by
Himonas as To be. To be not. By eliminating the disjunctive conjunction or
of the ST, he deprives the hero of any alternative. As if that were not enough,
he actually adds the line I want to die in Hamlets soliloquy (2.2.544601).
The final lines of the (3.1) soliloquy are also rendered in a sharp, unwavering
style that decisively tilts towards not being. The rhythm is hectic and almost
urges himself, and by extension his reader/spectator, to take his own life, ending
his misery with the following words (my backtranslation):
You are gripped by fearyou stall
And live. And the debacle continues living
from your life. Finish this world
Finish your life. This very minute. Now. With a dagger
178
Vasso Yannakopoulou
Despite the fact that Himonas translation practice of creatively destabilizing

the ST was innovative and lay outside what had been the norm for the translation of drama at the time, his rendering was as remarkably well-received as was
his original writing, both on page and on stage. His Shakespearean translations,
namely Hamlet (1988) and Macbeth (1994), are being staged ever since despite
the fact that there have been later renderings of the plays. The positive reception
of his renderings continued uncontested even after his death. What made his
work in general and his translations in particular so successful was the shift of
the translation norm. Translation practices that would have been unthinkable a
decade before became extremely successful. Himonas avantgarde translation
of Hamlet was instrumental in this shift in the norm.
To sum up, Himonas habitus influenced his choice of text, his interpretation
of Hamlet as a suicidal youth, his translation strategy of excavation, his
(non-)transference of the STs Elizabethan style, as well as the employment of
his own succinct style throughout.
7. Conclusions
In this contribution, the notion of habitus was proposed as a theoretical tool to
account for the internalization of contextual factors by translators and the way
these influence the manner in which they interpret their STs, as well as the way
they make non-compulsory translation choices during the translation process
in their TTs, from the choice of writer and ST, to microlevel stylistic choices.
By studying the microlevel stylistic choices against macrolevel contextual factors within which the translation took place, including the translators life trajectory, one sheds light on the causation behind these choices. Although I looked
into one case, the claims would appear to be of wider validity. The method can
be triangulated with other methodologies coming from other process-based and
primarily cognitive approaches29 and tested against larger corpora. Such approaches give the researcher access to different kinds of information, though
not necessarily to the causation behind it. Finally, I believe that when it comes
to literary translation, a manual microlevel study of the TT is indispensable
as one-off cases are sometimes very revealing and it is up to the researchers
keen eye to pick them out.30 Through the study of instances in the TT of patterns
and deviance from the ST or the norms of the time, one can weed out the stylistic features that are most salient and therefore motivated.
179
Notes
1 In her seminal work Stylistic Approaches to Translation, Boase-Beier presents the state-ofthe-art on the topic.
2 Dictionary of Stylistics. 2001. London: Longman. 371. Quoted in Boase-Beier (2006: 4).
3 For a more detailed taxonomy, see Boase-Beier (2006: 5). Baker distinguishes between the
style of an individual writer or speaker (e.g. the style of James Joyce), linguistic features associated with texts produced by specific groups of language users and in a specific institutional
setting (e.g. the style of newspaper editorials), or stylistic features specific to texts produced
in a particular historical period (e.g. Medieval English, Renaissance French) (2000: 243).
4 See Baker (2000: 242).
5 Hermans attributes this illusion of the translators invisibility to what Brian Harris called the
true interpreters norm or the honest spokespersons norm, which requires that people who
speak on behalf of others [] re-express the original speakers ideas and the manner of expressing them as accurately as possible and without significant omissions, and not mix them
up with their own ideas and expressions (Harris 1990: 118; quoted in Hermans 1996: 23).
6 Baker (2000: 245) uses the term thumb-print to refer to the literary translators style, expressed
in linguistic, as well as non-linguistic features, such as his or her choice of the type of material
to translate, where applicable, and his or her consistent use of specific strategies, including the
use of prefaces or afterwords, footnotes, glossing in the body of the text, etc. Mick Short
(1996: 331) before her used the term fingerprinting to refer to the use of statistical data to
count frequencies of items in order to account for a writers personal style. Baker borrowed
the approach to study the personal style of two literary translators based on data from TEC
(the Translational English Corpus) at the Centre for TS (UMIST) Manchester.
7 For more on choice, see Boase-Beier (2006: 52). For style as motivated choice, see Verdonk
(2002: 5).
8 For more on the translator as reader, see Boase-Beier (2002: 3149).
9 For a historic overview of those theories, see Eco (1990: 4446).
10 [] the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins (Barthes,
The Death of the Author in Barthes 1977: 14243).
11 [T]he modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a
being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate; there
is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now
(The Death of the Author in Barthes 1977: 145).
12 She quotes him from his The Liberation of the Icon: A Brief Survey from Classical Rhetoric
to Cognitive Stylistics in Journal of Literary Studies 15(3/4): 295. Nevertheless, we should
also mention the fact that Verdonk (2002: 68) also stresses the importance of the social reading
and ideological positioning of the reader and its effect on interpretation, through which we become sensitized to the possibility of alternative readings linked to socio-political values.
13 Boase-Beier says that [a] translators work will proceed by pretending s/he knows what the
text (or by extension its author) is saying, just as the recipient of any act of communication
will; that is, the translator will take implications found in the text to be implicatures (or intended
implications). At the same time a stylistically-aware translator will know that s/he has constructed this view of the author and that the author is therefore an inferred author (2006: 113).
14 On the translators professional habitus, see Simeoni (1998), Gouanvic (2002), Inghilleri
(2003), Sela-Sheffy (2005), and Meylaerts (2008).
15 Meylaerts is also right in saying that we need a conceptualization of the human actor as a socialized individual. We need a sociology at the individual level, analyzing social reality in its
individualized, internalized form. On this, also see Lahire (2003).
16 On the dynamic nature of habitus, see Sela-Sheffy (2005: 19), Meylaerts (2008: 94), and
180
Vasso Yannakopoulou
Hekkanen (2009: 89).

17 Speaking of literary criticism and the study of style, Verdonk implies something similar when
he says that the fine-grained analysis of texture cannot of itself reveal these features of the
fictional work. What it can do is to provide supporting evidence for interpretation by indicating
how the macro features that the literary critic is concerned with might be reflected in the micro
features of linguistic texture (2002: 56).
18 New Criticism, structuralist and generative linguistics do text-based literary criticism. On the
other hand, Boase-Beier reminds us that not all linguistic approaches to TS are decontextualized
(2006: 9). Pragmatics for one is concerned with the circumstances under which language is
used, including their historical and sociological aspects (ibid.).
19 Wolf (2007: 17) with reference to Bourdieu (1999: 362)
20 During the translation procedure, the act of translating is incorporated through, and at the
same time influenced by, the translators habitus, which can be identified by reconstructing
the translators social trajectory (Wolf 2007: 19).
21 Boase-Beier also agrees to this (2006: 50).
22 Baker has also stressed the importance of patterns in the study of style (2000: 245, 258) and
Verdonk says that foregrounding can be seen to include a distinct patterning or parallelism in
a texts typography, sounds, word choices, grammar, or sentence structures (2002: 6).
23 Leech and Short have used the term deviance to account for statistical difference between the
normal frequency of a feature, and its frequency in the text or corpus (1984: 48).
24 Verdonk also mentions deviance as stylistically relevant (2002: 6).
25 Baker has rightly cautioned of the need to distinguish stylistic elements which are attributable
only to the translator from those which simply reflect the source authors style, general source
language preferences, or the poetics and preferences of a particular subset of translators?
(2000: 261).
26 Bourdieus self-reflexivity always serves as an excellent approach to address the researchers
subjectivity.
27 The primacy of the mode of representation over the object of representation demands categorically an attention to form (Bourdieu 1984: 3).
28 For an in-depth analysis on the sociological reverberations of stylistic simplicity, see Bourdieu
(1984: 76, 177, and 226227).
29 For cognitive-oriented research to translation and the state-of-the-art in research methods, including think-aloud protocols (TAPs), keyboard logging, screen recording, eye tracking and
physiological measures, see OBrien 2011.
30 The work of Tim Parks on literary style is exemplary in this effect.
References
Primary References
Shakespeare, William. 1988. Hamlet. (tr. Yorgos Himonas). Athens: Kedros.
Shakespeare, William. 2002 [1982]. Hamlet. (ed. Harold Jenkins) (The Arden Edition of the Works
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Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z (tr. Richard Miller). Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell.
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Adamson). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Hekkanen, Raila. 2009. Fields, Networks and Finnish Prose: A Comparison of Bourdieusian Field
Theory and Actor-Network Theory in Translation Sociology in De Crom, Dries (ed.) Selected
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Jenkins, Harold (ed.). 2002 [1982]. William Shakespeare. Hamlet. (The Arden Edition of the Works
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Parks, Tim (2007). A Literary Approach to Translation A Translation Approach to Literature.
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PART IV: POLITICAL AND/OR CRITICAL ASPECTS OF THE HABITUS

CONCEPT IN TRANSLATION STUDIES
Bourdieus Habitus and Deweys Habits: Complementary

Views of the Social?
Moira Inghilleri (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
This chapter revisits Bourdieus concept of habitus in relation to the American pragmatist philosopher John Deweys understanding of the role of habit in making sense of social life. Both had a
keen appreciation of the links between the social, the practical, the contextual and the historical.
However, whereas Dewey viewed the ideal society as one constructed through cooperative public
interaction and the increasingly shared habits of individuals, Bourdieus theory involves a more
systematic and empirically rich critique of power and the basic structures that constitute society,
de-emphasizing discursive acts as a means for restructuring the habitus. Alluding to the influences
of phenomenological and pragmatist philosophy on their respective views, the paper explores important similarities and differences in their understanding of the role of habit and habitus to create,
sustain or challenge social order. Finally, through a case study, it considers the importance of their
distinct perspectives for a more rigorous conceptualization in translation and interpreting studies
of meaning negotiation, especially in the face of opposing communicative objectives and imbalances of political or discursive power.
Keywords: habit, habitus, social structure, public discourse, phenomenology, pragmatism
1. Bourdieus Habitus
Social theory has provided a means within translation and interpreting studies
to examine acts of interpreting and translation as social acts, and not merely
cultural or linguistic ones. The focus on the social nature of interpreting and
translation has shed light on particular institutional contexts and wider social
structures within which these acts occur. It has also contributed to a better understanding of the constraints imposed by social structure on interpreter and
translator agency and the conscious deliberation and strategic choices that translators and interpreters make when confronted with challenges to their individual
and/or professional autonomy. Bourdieus social theory has made a significant
contribution to this endeavor, providing a set of theoretical concepts with which
to analyze the role of translators and interpreters as social and cultural agents
and as active participants in both the production and reproduction of social and
discursive practices (see, for example, the collection of papers in Inghilleri
2005b; see also Simeoni 1998, Heilbron 1999, Sapiro 2003, Sela-Sheffy 2005,
Inghilleri 2005a, Wolf 2007a and 2007b).
186
Moira Inghilleri
In keeping with the theme of the present volume, I revisit Bourdieus concept of habitus in relation to the American pragmatist philosopher John Deweys
understanding of the role of habit in making sense of social life. I have elsewhere engaged a pragmatist approach to examine meaning construction in the
context of interpreted communication (Inghilleri 2012), where the relationships
between interpreters and their interlocutors and the institutional settings in
which these occurred were examined implicitly through a Bourdieusian approach.1 In this paper, I consider the relationship between these two approaches
more explicitly. A number of philosophers have considered the relationship between Bourdieu and Dewey in some detail (see, for example, Gronow 2011,
Colapietro 2004, Shusterman 1999, Aboulafia 1999); a full engagement with
their insights, however, is beyond the scope of this paper.
One of Bourdieus main contributions to the social sciences was his attempt
to overcome the dualisms emanating from the Western philosophical tradition,
between subject and object, rationalism and empiricism, freedom and determinism, which he believed posited a false division between the individual and
the external world. For Bourdieu, it was the intersection of individual biography
(whether of an artist, a scientist, a politician, or a blue collar worker) and history
that was the source of social action, not an active subject confronting society
as if that society were an object constituted externally (Bourdieu 1990a: 190).
The notion of habitus grew out of his attempt to demonstrate how social agents
can be socially and historically determined and yet be acting too how human
behavior can be regulated and shared without being the product of conformity
to codified, recognized rules or other causal mechanisms. As he states (ibid.):
This source [of historical action] resides neither in consciousness nor in things but in
the relation between two states of the social, that is between history objectified in
things, in the form of institutions, and the history incarnated in [human] bodies, in the
form of that system of enduring dispositions that I call habitus. The body is in the
social world but the social world is also in the body.
Bourdieu suggests that it is through the habitus that agents come to be at home
in the world, not consciously, but in a taken-for-granted sense as the world is
embodied in them. The body is accorded a centrality in Bourdieus theory; it
is viewed as the carrier of the classificatory schemes of a culture the practical
taxonomies that are produced by perceiving historical subjects which position
individuals and groups within a particular society.
Central to Bourdieus interest in the classificatory schemes of particular cultures was his interest in how knowledge and power are distributed within and
between individuals and collectivities. These schemes structure the particular
logic of practice that competing groups use to produce and reproduce themselves and their direct access to different forms of social capital. It is within the
Bourdieus Habitus and Deweys Habits: Complementary Views of the Social?
187
contexts of particular fields and through the habitus that social agents establish
and consolidate their positions of power in social space, where all have a stake
in the acquisition of specific forms of capital. Thus, from its inception, the concept of habitus linked the social and historical to the practical and contextual,
and was a crucial element in Bourdieus critique of the structures of power
evidenced in both everyday and institutional discourses and practices.
Against the long-standing critique that habitus provides an over-determined
explanation of social action (see, for example, Jenkins 1992, Alexander 1995),
Bourdieu always stressed its generative capacities, arguing that the habitus,
like every art of inventing, is what makes it possible to produce an infinite
number of practices that are relatively unpredictable even if they are limited
in their diversity (Bourdieu 1990b: 55). He viewed the set of dispositions generated by the habitus as that which enabled individuals and groups of individuals to make an initial response to a social or cultural situation, a response which
was at the same time limited or constrained due to individuals social and biological trajectories.
Revisiting the Habitus
The increasingly mobile, diverse, and globally linked communities of citizens,
temporary residents, cosmopolitans, immigrants and refugees inhabiting national borders, previously comprised of more homogenous populations, has
raised the question of whether Bourdieus concept of habitus is still sociologically relevant, or relevant in the same way. New ideas have been formulated
within sociology, anthropology and philosophy with respect to contemporary
society since the introduction and development of Bourdieus theoretical contribution to these fields that suggest to some the need to reassess the current
value and significance of his work. Since the 1980s, sociological models attempting to characterize late- or post-modernity have focused more on the
fragmented commitments and instrumental loyalties which heterogeneous
groups and individuals increasingly display toward their local communities,
social networks and countries of origin (Lash & Urry 1994, Beck et al. 1994),
in contrast to the distinct and determined i.e. more fixed in space and time
class and cultural identities that informed Bourdieus work. In these theories,
the significance of structure has diminished while the role of individual autonomy has increased and class and cultural identities have become viewed as
less predetermined and more a matter of choice. As Lash and Urry suggest
(1994: 5):
This accelerating individualization process is a process in which agency is set free
from structure, a process in which, further, it is structural change itself in modernization
188
Moira Inghilleri
that so to speak forces agency to take on powers that heretofore lay in the social structures themselves.
Given this view of contemporary society and the shifting relationship between
structure and agency it suggests (a reading that is itself historically situated),
some have argued that modern social conditions require a heightened degree
of reflexivity and adaptability that may predispose individuals towards a more
reflexive contemporary habitus (see, for example, Crossley 2001, Sweetman
2003) more attuned to adaptation in the face of an increasingly diverse number
of rival claims and wider structural demands. There are variations within this
perspective. Paul Sweetman, for example, maintains that this reflexive stance,
while more readily adaptive, nevertheless remains un-reflexively adopted,
hence the durable and largely unconscious character of the habitus as conceived
by Bourdieu is retained (Sweetman 2003: 537). His suggestion that a flexible
or reflexive habitus emerges as a result of fundamental shifts in the social order
and its accompanying fields is in keeping with Bourdieus view of the evolutionary and improvisatory capacity of the habitus-field relationship over time.
From a phenomenological perspective, Nick Crossley argues for a more
trans-historical understanding of the habitus and a greater recognition of individuals generalized capacity for reflexivity rooted in the phenomenological
understanding of habit. Though largely supportive of Bourdieus linking of
habitus to social practice and historical action, Crossley seeks to deepen Bourdieus conception of the habitus by positing a stronger relationship between
habit and the creative praxis of the agent (Crossley 2001: 114). He employs
a phenomenological analysis of habit in his writing to underscore the inherent
ability of social agents to respond creatively and innovatively to their social environment through not against the constraints of habit. With specific reference
to Merleau-Ponty, he suggests (ibid.):
Human behavior is not determined by external factors, he argues, but rather replies
purposively to its environment in accordance with the meaning that environment has
for its agent. This meaning, in turn, is shaped by acquired habits and schemas, but it
would make no sense to suggest that these habits determine action since they are
constitutive of the agent him or herself.
Bourdieu, he suggests, mistakenly views actions that originate from a feel for
the game and those that are a result of conscious calculation as entirely different modes of action. Crossley suggests the alternative view that both prereflective and reflective modes of actions, actions that we think about and those
steered by the feel for the game are equally rooted in habit (ibid.: 117). With
reference to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, he writes (ibid.: 112):
189
There is an emphasis in much of the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty upon the prereflective aspect of habits and agency. They are keen to show how our conscious perceptions are shaped by pre-conscious habits in perceptual activity, for example, and
how our processes of thought presuppose the pre-reflective activity that articulates
them in accordance with the linguistic schema of our social group. Having said this,
both also stress that pre-reflective schema can give rise to reflective and even reflexive
possibilities.
Bourdieu engaged explicitly with phenomenology, particularly the writings of

Husserl and Merleau-Ponty (Bourdieu 2000, Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992, Bourdieu 1990a). Indeed, his anti-dualist understanding of the socialized body and
the ontological complicity that obtains between the individual and the social
world is built in part on their respective phenomenological understanding of
experience (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 20) But he was critical of phenomenological (and related ethno-methodological) approaches for what he felt was
their inadequate sociological analysis of the link between internal and external
structures, between the sense of the game of the player and the actual constellation of the field (ibid.: 22), that is, for failing to fully account for and examine
the social structures and political conditions from which habitual actions
emerge.2 In his view, they neglected to identify the social relations of power
that allow some actions and frameworks to acquire greater legitimacy and
recognition than others. Bourdieu developed the concept of habitus (as opposed
to habit) to explain how individuals are pre-adapted to domination and cultural differentiation through their social and biological trajectories in relation
to existing social order. The notions of pre-reflective practical sense (habitus)
and the underlying, objective configuration of the rules of the game (field)
thus remain inter-related, but differentiated, in his work.
2. Deweys Habit: From Phenomenology to Pragmatism

Like Bourdieu, Dewey had a keen appreciation of the links between the social,
the practical, the contextual and the historical (Shusterman 1999). Both sought
to dismantle the philosophy of consciousness and the philosophy of the subject
and focus instead on what Dewey referred to as specific events in all their diversity and thatness (Dewey 1917/1997: 222) and what Bourdieu called practical sense. A central aim of Bourdieus sociological project was to reveal the
limits of theoretical knowledge and to illustrate through empirical investigation
the gap between the logic of theory and the logic of practice. Driven by a
similar motive, Dewey criticized philosophys pretension to be peculiarly concerned with ultimate reality, or with reality as a complete (i.e., completed
whole), with the real object (ibid.: 221; original italics).
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As he wrote,
When it is acknowledged that under disguise of dealing with ultimate reality philosophy has been occupied with the precious values embedded in social traditions, that it
has sprung from a clash of social ends and from a conflict of inherited institutions with
incompatible contemporary tendencies, it will be seen that the task of future philosophy
is to clarify mens ideas as to the social and moral strifes of their own day. (Dewey
1948: 26)
Bourdieu acknowledged these affinities with Dewey, noting a quite striking

convergence in his and Deweys understanding of habits as socially inculcated,
embodied practical sense (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 122). He nevertheless
identified a nave form of utopianism and moralism in Dewey, with specific
reference to his writings on art and education (ibid.: 84). For example,
Deweys account of museum concepts of art as simply the unhappy product
of social, political and economic forces that isolate art from the popular life
of the community so as to afford arts partakers a particular distinction
(Dewey quoted in Shusterman 1999: 20) does not go far enough for Bourdieu
in revealing the social fact of the dichotomy between high and popular
art. He writes,
Irrespective of what I think of this dichotomy, it exists in reality in the form of hierarchies inscribed in the objectivity of social mechanisms (such as the sanctions of the
academic market) as well as in the subjectivity of schemata of classifications, systems
of preferences, and tastes, which everybody knows (in practice) to be themselves hierarchized. (Bourdieu 1992: 84; original italics)
In contrast to Bourdieu, Dewey understood the social and the political in terms
of a community seeking to continually enlarge its shared interests, and constructed through interaction and cooperative discourse within and between different groups. His politics leaned more toward gradual reform than
revolutionary ideologies (Ostrow 2011: 114). He writes:
Society is of course but the relations of individuals to one another in this form and
that. And all relations are interactions, not fixed molds. The particular interactions that
compose a human society include a give and take of participation, of a sharing that increases, that expands and deepens, the capacity and significance of interacting factors.
[] I often wonder what meaning is given to the term society by those who oppose
it to the intimacies of personal intercourse, such as those of friendship. Presumably
they have in their minds a picture of rigid institutions or some set and external organization. (Dewey 1930/1999: 42)
The emphasis on communal and proximal relationships reflect Deweys own

social and biological trajectory. Born in 1859, he was an eyewitness to the shift
191
toward the urban and industrial taking place during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century. He embraced the ideals of community, inquiry and consensus
to counter what he and others viewed as the increasing alienation in society
caused by rapid modernization within the United States. He looked to science
to serve as both a method and a catalyst for expanding the type of education,
intelligence and imagination he believed necessary to sustain social and political
freedom and to bring about material reform.
For Dewey, habits originated in communal environments and were incorporated, maintained and changed through social and public relations. As he explains:
If an individual were alone in the world, he would form his habits (assuming the impossible, namely, that he would be able to form them) in a moral vacuum. They would
belong to him alone, or to him only in reference to physical forces. Responsibility and
virtue would be his alone. But since habits involve the support of environing conditions, a society or some specific group of fellow-men, is always accessory before and
after the fact. Some activity proceeds from a man; then it sets up reactions to the surroundings. Others approve, disapprove, protest, encourage, share and resist. Even letting a man alone is a definite response. Envy, admiration and imitation are complicities.
Neutrality is non-existent. Conduct is always shared; this is the difference between it
and a physiological process. It is not an ethical ought that conduct should be social.
It is social, whether bad or good. (Dewey 1922/2007:1617)
Bourdieus understanding of the social involved a more systematic and empirically rich critique of power and the basic structures that constitute society. He
de-emphasized discursive acts as a means for restructuring the habitus. He did
not view interactions amongst individuals as capable of influencing action, of
reconstituting the social order; discourse was itself socially constructed: []
authority comes to language from the outside [] Language at most represents
this authority, manifests and symbolises it (Bourdieu 1991: 109). Bourdieu
emphasized how power was often successfully employed discursively without
language users conscious awareness, thus discourse, as one aspect of habitus,
remained inextricably linked to socioeconomic hierarchy and social differentiation.
What do these differences suggest in Dewey and Bourdieus understanding
of the role of habit and habitus to create, sustain or challenge community cohesion and social order? In many ways, the degree of overlap in their understanding of this role is indeed striking. Both understand habitual action as based
in acquired predispositions, bound to an individuals early experiences and thus
constitutive of the self. Both view habitual action as anticipatory and, to some
degree, adaptive, but always vulnerable to conflicting expectations. Both, therefore, understand that a change in environment could lead to a disruption of established habits or habitus. One might conclude that the fundamental difference
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is in relation to the structure and agency dichotomy, with Bourdieu more committed to the determining force of structure in relation to habitus and Dewey
more on the side of the phenomenologists in viewing habit as an innovative
tool for change. But I do not see this as the critical distinction. Bourdieu did
not view habitus as determining ones fate (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 133)
or as necessarily coherent. He recognized that individuals routinely experience
discordance between their prior experiences and a more immediate expectation,
creating uncertainty regarding what their response should be to a social situation; under such circumstances the habitus is, temporarily at least, destabilized.
Though Bourdieu believed that the default response to such situations would
be to attempt to restore social/cognitive/discursive order, to make the strange
once again familiar, he also always claimed that habitus was durable but not
eternal (ibid.). Thus, for both Dewey and Bourdieu, moments of heightened
reflexivity in which the transpositions of ones classificatory frameworks were
summoned to a different context were viewed as a potential step toward the
realignment of prior relationships and the creation of new ones, both of which
can become significant sources for change.
I suggest that the main issue between them is the extent to which they believe in the potential of every day, deliberative communicative interaction to
challenge the classificatory frameworks of socially and culturally situated
agents. As I noted above and elsewhere (Inghilleri 2004: 246, Inghilleri 2007:
205206), Bourdieus treatment of language as essentially an epiphenomenal
reflection of social structures prevents him from granting communicative interaction a significant role in the process of social reproduction or change. His
attention to language, in the sense of differentiated linguistic capital is primarily
associated with the formal features of a language, e.g., phonological, lexical
and stylistic variation, and related questions regarding dialects or varieties.
Bourdieu insists that the efficacy of communicative acts derives not from language but from the institutional conditions of its production and reception:
It is clear that all the efforts to find, in the specifically linguistic logic of different forms
of argumentation, rhetoric and style, the source of their symbolic efficacy are destined
to fail as long as they do not establish the relationship between the properties of discourses, the properties of the person who pronounces them and the properties of the
institution which authorizes him to pronounce them. (Bourdieu 1991: 111)
There is no doubt that Bourdieu is correct to advocate for understanding the

wider sociological context in which discursive practices are situated, and also
in his claim that where an individual or groups language has no prior authorization, their equal participation in the production of new forms of legitimacy
cannot be guaranteed. However, neither the consequences of the social context
nor the potential of a contributory role of rational communicating subjects in
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activating the transformative capacity of the habitus can or should be pre-determined or assumed. To this latter point, I believe that Dewey, and the pragmatist
tradition from which he came, provide useful insight.
Pragmatism, Language and Power
Pragmatists view habits and beliefs about the world as predispositions to modes
of action or responses to a given situation. The justification of ones beliefs is
not given in the form of metaphysical guarantees but through cooperative
human interaction and the active intervention of the environment. The pragmatist William James suggested that different and conflicting forms of inquiry
e.g., common sense, scientific, philosophical provided evidence for the idea
that our beliefs were routes of inquiry and investigation, all equally true, in
the sense that they were instrumentally good for different purposes, mental
modes of adaptation to reality (James 1907/1975: 94), subject to both modification and justification:
True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False
ideas are those that we cannot [] Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made
true by events. Its veracity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation. (James
1907/1975: 114; original italics)
Of particular relevance to the pragmatist tradition is Wittgensteins view of language as a form of life and the idea that words acquire meaning in inter-action
with others, not in isolation or by being paired with experiences or things. In
the process of communicating, individuals begin by assuming a connection between the contents of their own thoughts and those of others, and proceed on
intuitive predictions of meaning based on the current context and previous
habits of linguistic understanding. Prior experiences and expectations influence
our ability to interpret (and sometimes misinterpret) the truth of others sentences or utterances. These schemata of classifications, systems of preferences,
and tastes, as Bourdieu would identify them, are what allow us to anticipate
that individuals will mean (or not) what they express and, on the occasion of a
sentence or utterance, to decide what was meant.
This interplay between knowledge of oneself, knowledge of others and
knowledge of the world, as underscored in the pragmatist approach outlined
above, can serve as a starting point for scrutinizing the relationship between
discourse, power and legitimacy so central to Bourdieus social theory. As this
theory rightly suggests, the communicative act of assimilating, validating, corroborating and verifying, is always a social (and a political) act involving particular communicants in a specific environment. The decision within a particular
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communicative context to explicitly or implicitly reveal the wider purposes of

an interaction, to accommodate or fail to recognize anothers worldview, to attribute rational causality to anothers utterances, or recognize or not someones
human rights will be influenced by prior experiences, institutional demands
and/or political or economic motivations. Ultimately, what makes the truth
of an idea legitimate is not its appeal to rationality detached from social, economic, political, or cultural conditions, but its acceptance by a sufficient number
of relevant others who have the power to determine that the truth claim is reasonable, and the influence to make others believe it too.3
3. A Role for Habit and Habitus in a Justice-Seeking Interpreting

Ethics
Interpreters and translators are particularly aware of the difficulty, and sometimes the impossibility, of making one individuals meaning clear enough to
another in a given context, especially in the face of opposing communicative
objectives and imbalances of social or discursive power. They may be the first
or only person to perceive the relationship between the meaning of and the
meaning beyond a spoken or written text in a particular context. They witness
and can themselves be party to the rejection or acceptance of a meaning
proposed because of a prejudice based in race, gender, religion, ethnicity or
sexual preference. Situations where decisions over meaning extend beyond their
linguistic ability can generate ethical dilemmas for translators and interpreters.
In these instances, they, like other social actors, will be compelled to confront
the boundaries of their understandings, beliefs, prior experiences and, importantly, their own ethical positions.
This was the case in a highly controversial raid by U.S Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) on hundreds of allegedly undocumented workers
at a meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa in May 2008 a point of intersection
between these workers lives and the kind of state structures of particular concern to Bourdieu. The raid came to the attention of the interpreting field due to
an essay written and circulated to the profession by Erik Camayd-Freixas (Camayd-Freixas 2008a), one of the interpreters for the group of criminal defense
attorneys appointed by an Iowa District court. Camayd-Freixas also testified
and submitted a written statement to the Congressional Hearings held in July
2008 as an eyewitness to events that took place over the two-week period of the
legal proceedings. His written statement along with those of representatives of
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU 2008), a representative of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) (Leopold 2008) and a local attorney, Rockne Cole (Cole 2008) among others, catalogued numerous violations
195
of due process with regard to the fast-tracked detention, sentencing and imprisonment of close to 300 of the detained workers, mostly from Guatemala.
I have written about the legal case in more detail and in relation to the legal
field more generally elsewhere (Inghilleri 2012: 5271). The ACLU report described the raid as a preplanned and massive criminal prosecution of immigrant workers for allegedly using false documents to work (ACLU 2008: 2;
original italics), a charge normally treated as a civil offense. Representatives
from the U.S. Attorneys Office and the Department of Homeland Security suggested that the workers could be charged with aggravated identity theft, a
felony crime that carried a mandatory two-year minimum jail sentence if they
did not accept several possible plea deals which appeared to have been agreed
with the District Court judge in advance of the raid and before defense attorneys
had even spoken to the defendants (Preston 2008c). The deal proposed for the
majority of the workers was to plead guilty to a lesser felony charge of knowingly using a false Social Security number or a false employment document
and receive a maximum of five months in jail. All charges would be accompanied with a judicial order of deportation following completion of the sentence.
A decision to plead not guilty would mean that the aggravated identity theft
charge would be applied, a charge that implied a six to eight month wait in jail
for a trial with no possibility of bail because of the deportation order (ACLU
2008: 4). The workers were given seven days to accept the plea agreement;
with only one attorney appointed for every seventeen defendants on average.
The report states (ibid.):
Under the circumstances of Postville, with multiple defendants represented by a single
lawyer, complex immigration issues, and significant language, educational and cultural
barriers, the extreme time limit made adequate legal defense, investigation and counseling almost impossible. Within days, defendants routinely waived all of their rights
including their right to indictment, to court reporters, to review the pre-sentence investigation report, and to appeal their convictions and sentences and pled guilty [].
Despite or because of the numerous contextual factors that significantly reduced

the possibility of an adequate legal defense of the workers, the court-appointed
lawyers advised their clients that pleading guilty to the lesser charge was in
their best interest, although it was recognized, as one of the lawyers is quoted
as saying, that the government used the threat of aggravated identity theft as
a mechanism to pressure people into taking the plea agreements (Popper 2009).
The Postville prosecution is a clear example of the judicial system ceasing to
operate to ensure justice.
Camayd-Freixas played a significant role in bringing many of the questionable practices that occurred during the two-week legal proceedings that resulted
in the workers imprisonment and eventual deportation to public attention. An
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essay he wrote in June 2008 (Camayd-Freixas 2008a), shortly after the proceedings ended, is cited in both the ACLU and AILA reports submitted to the
Congressional Hearings and after sending it to the New York Times, was the
basis for his interview in July 2008 with Julia Preston, the Times national correspondent covering immigration, who wrote a series of articles on the Postville
prosecutions (Preston 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). From his position as a Spanishspeaking interpreter, Camayd-Freixas was able to speak in detail about many
of the workers lack of understanding of the complexities of the legal proceedings, including the plea agreements they were persuaded to sign. According to
Camayd-Freixas, many of the clients were illiterate in Spanish and some had
no idea what a Social Security number was or what purpose it served; in some
cases, their work papers had been filled out for them at the plant. (It was later
alleged (see Peterson 2009: 340) that the supervisor at the plant told employees
to give him $220.00 and a personal photo, for which the employee later received a green card).
The knowledge about the detained workers that Camayd-Freixas acquired
in the course of his and their attorneys interactions with them convinced him
that they could not be guilty of aggravated identity theft or the lesser charge
of knowingly using a false Social Security number for which they had pleaded
guilty. For this reason, he made the decision to expose the injustices by informing one of the judges involved in the case of what he knew about the accused
workers.
In graphic demonstration of the relevance of Bourdieus analysis of the hidden power of structures, in his statements, Camayd-Freixas defended the participation of the court-appointed attorneys and the judges in allowing what
amounted to coerced pleas by suggesting that they, unlike him, were unaware
of the unfolding consequences of their individual actions. He writes:
What was most peculiar about the Postville case is that, on paper, everything seemed
to be following the law, but in actual practice there were shortcomings in due process
at every step of the way. Each shortcoming, taken by itself (which was how the officers
of the court would see it) did not appear so monumental, but put together (as the interpreters saw it), led to the most unjust results. (Camayd-Freixas 2008a: 5)
Camayd-Freixas has always maintained that it was his interpreters perspective

as an impartial and informed layperson that allowed him the unique vantage
point from which to perceive the violation of the workers legal right to due
process and to exercise his civic duty to speak out, as he suggests in the following passage (ibid.: 9):
[T]he interpreter is the only one who gets to see both sides of the coin up close, precisely because he is the only participant who is not a decision maker, and is even pre-
197
cluded, by his oath of impartiality and neutrality, from ever influencing the decisions
of others. That is why judges in particular appreciate the interpreters perspective as
an impartial and informed layperson, for it provides a rare glimpse at how the innards
of the legal system look from the outside. I was no longer sorry to have participated in
my capacity as an interpreter. I realized that I had been privileged to bear witness to
historic events from such a unique vantage point and that because of its uniqueness I
now had a civic duty to make it known.
Here as in other statements (see 2008b) Camayd-Freixas likens his impartiality

to the position of the outsider, the participant observer who, unlike the lawyer,
remains outside the web of interlocution that comprises the legal system. This
seems to me, however, to distort what actually happened in Postville where the
judicial system broke down and, on this occasion, took the lawyers and the
judges with it, willingly or not. Contrary to his statements, his position was especially interesting in not being that of some external, impartial eyewitness to
the whole affair but itself located at a double point of illumination, creating at
once a Bourdieusian internal conflict leading to a re-casting of habitus, and at
the same time an opportunity for engaging in productive public dialogue in
Deweys sense, as evidenced by his interactions with members of the judiciary,
the press and eventually the U.S. Congress.
Though Camayd-Freixas is right to suggest that the presence of interpreters
across the multiple contexts of legal proceedings provides them a distinct vantage point, their duty to remain impartial is normally understood as a duty to
remain silent, even in the face of injustice, as presumed outsiders to the legal
system. For interpreters working within this system, it is considered part of their
role to leave the lawyers and the judges to question the unjust principles, practices or policies of the judicial system. Again, contrary to his statement that the
interpreter is the only participant who is not a decision maker, and is even precluded, by his oath of impartiality and neutrality, from ever influencing the decisions of others, in the Postville case, he was one of the few informed
participants to decide to influence the decisions of others. The only public
record of a lawyers proactive ethical stance in relation to the proceedings is
Rockne Coles decision not to participate (Cole 2008).
In my reading of these events, Camayd-Freixas decision cannot be seen as
an outcome of his professional duty of impartiality, at least not as this is normally understood, nor as a consequence of his position outside the legal system.
Rather, it was his presence as an active and informed participant in the interaction, situated within an institutional process, that compelled him to make the
kind of ethical decision that required the abandonment of his professional neutrality and non-accountability, the disclosure of his partiality toward the less
powerful, and the acceptance of his ethical responsibility to make it clear that
justice has not been served. In both interpreter and translator codes of ethics,
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the duty of impartiality is often represented as ensuring objectivity. Impartiality is believed to work to ensure the possibility of semantic and pragmatic
equivalence between written or spoken texts and the principle of neutrality
requires that interpreters and translators act as disinterested mediators between
speakers and hearers or authors and readers. In reality, however, impartiality,
taken together with neutrality, often works to limit deliberation over the truth
and legitimacy of one persons meaning over anothers in the context of their
occurrence. Camayd-Freixas decision demonstrated the extent to which he felt
personally responsible for the social, ethical and political implications of the
public deliberative event he helped to facilitate in his role as interpreter. But
his sense of responsibility to reveal the truth of the sentences uttered by the
defendants within this deliberative process was not determined by any special
access he had to what they really meant, it was his recognition from an ethical
not a linguistic or a legal standpoint that they had been uttered in a context
where they (the workers and their statements) had been denied justice.
It seems to me that the unique vantage point that Camayd-Freixas attempted
was a dual one: as an active participant in mutual knowledge building, he tried
to ensure that the type of meaningful dialogue envisioned by Dewey occurred,
and as an active observer of the legal deliberations, he did his best to respond to
the kind of hidden power that Bourdieus theoretical work exposes.4 Although
the Postville case ultimately reveals the resistance of the habitus to permanent
challenge in the face of the underlying objective configuration of the field, it also
reveals how in the course of public interaction individuals can experience the
disruption of established habits or, in Deweys sense, a crisis in habitual action
which stimulates creative praxis. Although this may not alter the habitus-field
relationship in a fundamental way, a shift nonetheless occurs, even if it is more
suggestive of gradual reform than revolution in conventional practices.
Notes
1 Inghilleri (2012) critically examines some of the key ideas from structural linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology that have influenced many of the principles guiding interpreting theory and practice. It offers an alternative point of view regarding the relationship
between language, meaning and the social world which draws ideas from a number of different
but related perspectives, with a particular emphasis on relevant work in pragmatist philosophy,
informed, in part, by Richard Rorty and his interpretation of Donald Davidsons work. Within
Translation Studies, to the best of my knowledge, pragmatism has been applied only to the
realm of semiotics through C.S. Peirces semiotic theory (see Gorlee 1994, 2003; Stecconi
2007; Goethals et al. 2003). The potential of pragmatisms contribution to the sociology of
translation and interpreting will be considered in detail in Inghilleri (forthcoming).
2 Wacquant (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 20 n35) names Bourdieu as Merleau-Pontys sociological heir, if one who innovates in ways that are sometimes incompatible with the spirit and
199
the letter of the phenomenologists work. In particular, Bourdieu goes beyond the subjectivist
apprehension of practical sense to investigate the social genesis of its objective structures and
conditions of operation.
3 Pragmatists reject the notion of rationality as fixed by a set of immutable rules and a priori
principles (as in Habermas presuppositions of rational discourse), preferring to view rationality
as revisable and contextual, grounded in public norms and practices. For a more comprehensive
discussion of Habermas discourse ethics in relation to interpreter (and translator) codes of
ethics, specifically its presumptions about universal validity claims and the workings of discourse, inter-subjectivity and an open and democratic public sphere, see Inghilleri (2012:
2651).
4 It is important to note Camayd-Freixas reluctance to question the boundaries of his own professional habitus (and that of the judges and lawyers). His preference to restore the social and
ethical disorder, generated by his decision to publicize his concerns, by situating his (and others) actions within, not outside of professional codes of ethics, is an example of the durability
of the habitus. This does not negate the significance of his writing the essay and sending it to
the press however (once the legal case was over, citing the professional code of confidentiality),
which unquestionably contributed to a productive public dialogue concerning the miscarriage
of justice.
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The Historian as Translator: Applying Pierre Bourdieu to

the Translation of History1
Mara Carmen frica Vidal Claramonte (University of Salamanca)
The starting point of this essay is the presupposition that objective history is never anything but
a signifier protected by the apparent omnipotence of the referent, that facts do not have meaning
by themselves, but are given one from a determined ideology, and that therefore history and translation are meaning systems through which we construct the meaning of the past. In this essay I will
apply Pierre Bourdieus concept of habitus and symbolic capital to demonstrate that history is a
way to translate reality which selects documents and facts by means of maneuvers charged with
ideological implications. The historian thus becomes a rewriter and history turns out to be an act
of translation. All this is exemplified by the historian Luis Surezs entry on Francisco Franco in
the Diccionario biogrfico espaol published by the Spanish Real Academia de la Historia.
Keywords: Bourdieu, Hayden White, Roland Barthes, history, translation, ideology, power
History and knowledge, istoria and episteme, have always been determined (and not only
etymologically or philosophically) as detours for the purpose of the reappropriation of presence.
JACQUES DERRIDA (1974: 10)
we are often told, get back to history. But where is this history that is so confidently invoked?
ROBERT YOUNG (1990: vi)
Translation is in history, always. It is, in many cases, a vital factor within history, and the
more we learn about its history, the more obvious this fact becomes. It is no coincidence,
therefore, that many histories of translation have been published over the last ten years, just
as it is no exaggeration to say that if we want to study cultural history, the history of philosophy, literature, and religion, we shall have to study translations to a much greater extent
than we have done in the past.
SUSAN BASSNETT AND ANDR LEFEVERE (1998: 6)
1. Towards a New Definition of History

Contrary to the definition given by Leopold von Ranke, who inaugurated modern historiography at the beginning of the nineteenth century, claiming scientific
objectivity and seeking to redeem the past by objectively remembering it, and
contrary to the definition which, consequently, is given in history dictionaries
as the systematic and chronologically organised setting out of a series of im-
204
Mara Carmen frica Vidal Claramonte
portant facts and events for a community, people or nation, this paper takes as
its starting point a starting point shared nowadays by many scholars the idea
that history itself has been, and continues to be, a deeply problematical concept (Young 1990: vi).
Far from the empirical approach to History, that is, far from believing that
it is possible to reach an objective recounting of historical facts, a disinterested
analysis of reality, I will take here the view that written history results from
culturally determined and power-related interpretations (Bandia 2006: 47), a
view that was born out of a general dissatisfaction with the traditionalist view
of history as an objectivized empiricist enterprise, in which the historian is an
impartial observer who merely conveys facts grounded in the belief in some
reasonably accurate correspondence between these facts and the events of
the past (Bandia 2006: 48).
History has been told until very recently from the point of view Hayden
White (1987: 20) calls the doxa of the historiographic establishment, a perspective which aims to erase all traces of subjects, the trail of their particular
circumstances, in order to make us believe that the discourse lacked any kind
of subjective bias and that the story was equivalent to the structure of the facts.
However, once we reject the presumption of truth of the historical method and
assume that history is a symbolic artefact interwoven by ideological premises,
we can begin to get a glimpse of the possibility that a natural universal History
adapted to the real (De Certeau 1988 [1975]) exists and new contemporary
aims to rethink new ideas on the true contemporary role of history become discernible: from the first Journal of the History of Ideas in 1940, which would
lead to the so-called linguistic turn in the sixties, to Walter Benjamins Theses
on the Philosophy of History in 1955 which promotes the experience of history,
just like the Benjaminian narrator in Critique of Violence, where the past is not
a simple chain of data but the image of the past exactly as it is presented to the
historical subject (Benjamin 2005 [1955]: 21) or to Michel de Certeau (1988
[1975]), who relates historiographical work with the representation of the Other
and, therefore, with the question of the Power of the West.
From these new points of view, history is not conceived as a linear development with a defined beginning and end, but as a concept referring to other
concepts like fragmentation or antiteleology. There are several histories of exclusion (histories of the marginalised other, of the subaltern), of inclusion (the
so-called natural, or normal) and of transgression (Bandia 2006: 49). It is
not so much the negation of history but rather a dehierarchised critical acceptance of all its eras and a recounting of history from a non-Eurocentric conception (Appiah 1995, Spivak 2003). Therefore, from different perspectives, the
suspicion of Hayden White, Paul Veyne (mainly in his 1971 book Comment on
crit lhistoire), Dominick LaCapra, Fredric Jameson (The Political Uncon-
The Historian as Translator: Applying Pierre Bourdieu to the Translation of History
205
scious, 1989), Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Michel Foucault2 or Michel de

Certeau towards historiography have not only given rise to scepticism in history
as a discipline but also to distrust in historians.
Furthermore, after the linguistic turn of the 1970s, doubts about the empirical-analytical method as the privileged path to historical knowing have not
merely emerged but have now become a major part of the landscape (Munslow
2004: 7). The importance of language (Munslow 1997: 25) is highlighted as an
unavoidably ideological medium for describing experience, tied to relations of
power, and thus never innocent (Bandia 2006, 2009). In history, questions of
truth and meaning have now to do with
how we represent our sources and how the form of that representation directly affects
what we think those sources really or most probably mean. [] In other words,
the rather nave idea that the past is re-interpreted only according to new evidence
quickly ceases to be either plausible or convincing. Instead we are led to think about
the self-conscious and ontological acts of writing/re-writing. (Munslow 2004: 7)
In other words, history is a representation, a re-writing; thus, the importance of

language and translation to get back to the past.
Historical discourse, according to Roland Barthes (1981 [1967]: 16) in The
Discourse of History is essentially an ideological creation, an imaginary construction: the historian is not so much a collector of facts as of signifies, which
he organises according to his habitus in order to create a signifier determined
by his ideology. For the historiographer it is not only a matter of collections
of terms in combination but a matter of argument. The historical discourse
does not have the rational character of the syllogism but relies on enthymematic reasoning, on rhetorical rather than demonstrative argument (cf.
Bann 1990: 58):
The fact can only have a linguistic existence, as a term in a discourse, and yet it is exactly as if this existence were merely the copy, purely and simply, of another existence situated in the extra-structural domain of the real. This type of discourse is
doubtless the only type in which the referent is aimed for as something external to the
discourse, without it ever being possible to attain it outside this discourse. We should
therefore ask ourselves in a more searching way what place the real plays in the
structure of the discourse. (Barthes 1981 [1967]: 17)
Barthes goes on to say that objective history is never anything but a signifier
protected by the apparent omnipotence of the referent. This would mean that
history no longer allows us to seek safe, homogeneous, universal values. Facts
do not have meaning by themselves, but are given one from a determined ideology. History and translation are meaning systems through which we construct
the meaning of the past:
206
Historiography (that is, history and writing) bears within its own name the paradox
almost an oxymoron of a relation established between two antinomic terms, between the real and discourse. Its task is one of connecting them and, at the point where
this link cannot be imagined, of working as if the two were being joined []. From
this standpoint, reexamination of the historiographical operation opens on the one hand
onto a political problem (procedures proper to the making of history refer to a style
of making history) and, on the other, onto the question of the subject []. (De
Certeau 1988 [1975]: xxvii)
2. History as Translation, a Dangerous Field

The supposedly neutral definition given of history in dictionaries, which we
mentioned at the beginning of this paper, forces us to question some of the terms
used in it. For example, what is a fact, what does it refer to, what is important, who says it is, for whom is an event important and why. And, on a second
level, who tells the story of this fact and with what words, because, from the
new way of understanding history, which we will adopt in this paper, the words
chosen to narrate events are the key element. That is why we understand the
original historical text as a translation. From this viewpoint, Pierre Bourdieus
ideas will be very useful to analyse how reality is constructed and represented
through historical texts starting from the new definition of history which, as we
have just seen, appears during the second half of the 20th century.3
From the viewpoint of philosophy, significant authors like Derrida, Foucault, Ricur or Barthes understand history as a translation of reality which selects documents and facts by means of maneuvers charged with ideological
implications. History is a narrative among other possible narratives, just as a
translation is one among other possible translations, to the detriment of the scientific aspirations of the Grand Rcits (Breisach 2003: 89121). From this point
of view, history as a representation of reality has its origins in language: with
language, historians create history by means of the words they choose to describe it (Derrida 1989: 11) and they show us how the world is constructed
through language, how it re-presents the Other in translation. Language is not
a mere intermediary with reality but it implicitly, by means of the words chosen
by the historian, generates a specific reality, which could have been completely
different according to a different historian. Although this idea was developed
with post-structuralism during the second half of the 20th century, its roots lie
in Nietzsches hermeneutics of suspicion, Heideggers redefinition of historicality in Being and Time and in Wittgensteins epistemological reflections.
Therefore, language does not only express and transmit meanings, but it also
creates and transforms them (Aurell 2006: 640). Of course, it is not a question
of suggesting a negation of factuality, but it is one of questioning the unequivocal nature of this factuality, because the unifying historical project is always
207
homogenizing, teleological and universalizing. On the other hand, history understood as translation recognizes the existence of many histories and the right,
as Spivak (1989) points out, to the West not appropriating marginal histories
and, therefore, the right to there not being what she calls othering, the process
by which those in possession of the cultural capital create its others. History
as his-story, as the poet Charles Olson said (1970).
The discourse of history is constructed with linguistic acts which translate
reality, and which, like all translation, take place in a specific context and not
in a void: A writer is a product of a particular time and a particular context,
just as a translator is a product of another time and another context (Bassnett
in Kuhiwczak and Littau 2007: 23). When understanding history as a cultural
and linguistic construct which is the fruit of the habitus of the historian-translator, as well as asking questions like who does the surviving history belong to,
who tells it, why, for whom, to whom do the truths they tell us belong, why do
they want history to be a universal, logical, homogeneous discourse, the resulting texts are translations which become the representative documents of an era.
In this regard, history, or rather its re-presentation, is a theoretical model, a
field which integrates translation right from the start, or to put it better, historys
representation is translation, thus incorporating translation in the conceptualization of Bourdieus field theory. History is the result of the language that constructed it, history presents particular versions of the colonized and strong
versions of reality and representation, and, in this sense, starting from the premise that the historian is a translator of reality and history a type of rewriting of
reality, translation has a lot to say, because it brings into being overarching
concepts of reality and representation. These concepts, and what they allow us
to assume, completely occlude the violence that accompanies the construction
of the colonial subject (Niranjana 1992: 2). This construction of the subject
will influence what Bourdieu calls symbolic domination, because history is
not simply about the past as such, but rather about our ways of creating meanings from the scattered and profoundly meaningless debris we find around
(Kellner 1989: 10).
History conceived as language and, therefore, as a translation of reality, becomes a dangerous field, because we should never forget that language, due
to its infinite generative capacity, is without doubt the ultimate support of the
dream of absolute power (Bourdieu 2008 [1985]: 17). The conception of
history as a narrative which constructs reality from language is, therefore, a
conception which takes the ideological and social aspects of both disciplines
history and translation into account (Wolf 2010), as well as the potential
danger in what is common to both: namely language as a system through which
power is exercised, because all linguistic exchanges are also a power game established in a specific relationship of symbolic forces between a producer, in
208
our case the historian, who has a certain linguistic capital, and a consumer or
market which provides a specific material or symbolic benefit (cf. Bourdieu
2008 [1985]: 49).
If we understand, therefore, historical discourse as a linguistic construction
and, as a result, as a translation of reality, we find ourselves in the post-positivist
theories of translation (Tymoczko 2007) but also in line with the new ideas of
many historians of the second half of the 20th century. For example, Hayden
White pointed out in Metahistory (1975: 129) and later at the beginning of his
now canonical work The Content of the Form that the historical text is one way,
among others, of translating reality, and, as a result, the historian is a translator.
In fact, in the first chapter of this latter work, basing his approach on Barthes,
Hayden White refers to history as the problem of how to translate knowing
into telling (White 1987: 1). Reinhart Koselleck (2002: viii), another wellknown conceptual historian, says that the history of historiography is a history
of the evolution of the language of the historians, a language that is ever more
conceptually self-conscious, ever more aware of the difficulty of grasping the
experience of others in terms adequate to its reality. That is why Hayden White,
in his preface to Kosellecks book, claims that historicality is a social mode of
being in the world (White apud Koselleck 2002: xi).
The historian thus becomes a rewriter and history turns out to be an act of
translation (Jenkins 1991: 48). But from the field of Translation Studies history
is also seen as a text. Michael Cronin reminds us that a globalization perspective
on translation history has implications for both the past and the future: In our
study of the past, it can allow hidden histories to emerge that are often neglected
or obscured by histories that are bounded by the paradigm of the nation-state.
These histories may often be non-textual and primarily involve interpreting but
they are histories that remain unwritten (Cronin 2003: 79). Nowadays, fields
such as cultural studies, postcolonial studies and history welcome translation
perspectives
because they often reveal the depth of multicultural and multilingual contexts that
might otherwise be obscured by the use of English and its homogenizing tendency in
research of this kind. Most notably, historians, particularly those who view history as
discourse and need reading knowledge of several languages to do their work, are open
to perspectives from Translation Studies. (Malena 2011: 105)
Another scholar (Foz 2006: 142) reminds us of the need of analysing the connections between translation history and the history of translation and concludes
her splendid essay offering a perspective that presents the advantage of allowing us to look at translation objects not as givens but as constructions, as representations, structured by translation scholars into categories which themselves
have a history and are based on different interests and power relations.
209
Let us consider, for instance, the relationship of Gayatri Spivak with the
discipline of history understood as history-writing and with the so-called Subaltern Studies in the important 1985 article titled Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography (Spivak 1985); or, from a very different perspective,
George Steiners reflections on the impossibility of there being presuppositionless interpretations of the past:
Historians are increasingly aware that the conventions of narrative and of implicit reality with which they work are philosophically vulnerable. The dilemma exists on at
least two levels. The first is semantic. The bulk of the historians material consists of
utterances made in and about the past. Given the perpetual process of linguistic change,
not only in vocabulary and syntax but in meaning, how is he to interpret, to translate,
his sources? [] even if such permanent units of meaning do exist, how is the historian to elicit them? Reading a historical document, collating the modes of narrative
in previous written history, interpreting speech-acts performed in the distant or nearer
past, he finds himself becoming more and more the translator in the technical sense.
(Steiner 1975: 134, 135; my italics)
What is needed is the idea of a history of singularity that defies repeatability or

generalization and that regards the past not as fixed, given, unalterable, but
open to future rewritings: never as a full presence that propels itself intact into
the future but always capable of giving rise to another reading, producing it
anew and rewriting new and diverse histories undertaken from different perspectives of the present, thus recognizing what the fissured and latent past enables, for the past is uncontainable within any one history or even all cumulative
histories (Grosz 2000: 10191020).
3. Applying Bourdieu to History as Translation

History understood as discourse is, as we have mentioned, a dangerous field,
because discourse is where powers are exercised: the power of prohibiting and
excluding or of permitting and legitimising (Foucault 1987 [1970]). The historical text becomes a field of strengths and field of struggles which operates
as an autonomous social universe, with very clear goals and with agents who
come into play with the habitus, that set of dispositions which incline agents to
act and react in certain ways and which generate practices, perceptions and attitudes that reflect the social conditions within which they were acquired (Simeoni 1998: 1617) and which imply knowledge and recognition of the immanent
laws of the game (Bourdieu 1967) to achieve the necessary illusio (Bourdieu
1996: 227231). From this perspective, we understand history as a field in
which, if the translator-historian and the reader do not share the same habitus
or the same capital, misunderstandings are guaranteed: Dont even think of
210
entering a field if your habitus does not match the requirements. The more restricted the field, the better attuned the habitus, Simeoni says (1998: 17).
A very clear and quite recent example of all this can be seen in the historian
Luis Surezs entry on Francisco Franco in the Diccionario biogrfico espaol
published by the Spanish Real Academia de la Historia in 2011. In order to
analyse this rewriting of history, it would seem appropriate, first of all, to approach the authors habitus. Luis Surez (1924) is a Spanish historian who, on
Francisco Francos death, was one of the few historians with access to his files
which are now the property of the Francisco Franco Foundation. This enabled
him to publish an eight-volume work titled Franco y su tiempo. That he was
given exclusive access to the Francisco Franco Foundation archives was criticised
by many other historians. Surez is also the President of the Valle de los Cados
Association.4 During the Franco regime, he held important posts, like those of
Chancellor of the University of Valladolid or Director General of Spanish Universities. He has made public declarations in several articles and interviews expressing his disagreement with the fact that decisions are taken democratically
by the majority: for example, in his paper titled Esperanza en el futuro (2010),
in which he describes democracy as a world of ignoramuses, a world of sinners,
a world of utilitarians (here and hereafter: my translation) or in the interview by
Rafael Nieto published in the newspaper Ya on 10 October 2008. In this interview,
he mourns the fact that democratic Spain has abolished military service and considers that men have a more rational capacity for decision-taking, but women
have more instinctive capacity and have a greater emotional capacity.
Luis Surez is, in certain ideological camps, what Pierre Bourdieu (1967:
135) would call a legitimate author, and this allows him to describe the former
dictator in the Diccionario biogrfico espaol as authoritarian, not totalitarian
(Surez 2011: 607), and refer to him as Generalsimo or Head of State (ibid.),
with all the Fascist ideological connotations this title implies in Spain. Surez
also underlines Francos military worth (He was soon well-known for the cold
valour he displayed on the battlefield. [] Franco accomplished a great feat,
ibid.), and he describes the terrible Spanish Civil War as a long war lasting almost three years which allowed him to defeat an enemy who was superior at
the start (ibid.). Likewise, he accuses Juan Negrn, President of the Republic,
of leading a coup, while he describes Franco as being intelligent and moderate
(ibid.: 608). It must be pointed out that the Diccionario was given ample public
funding to cover publication costs, 6.4 million euros in government funding
from 1999.
In Diccionario, a vast 50-volume work, there are no entries by prestigious
historians like Paul Preston, Santos Juli or ngel Vias, among others, whose
habitus we may suppose to be quite different to that of Lus Surez and that of
other authors whose entries have been included. There are no visions/transla-
211
tions of Franco like that of Paul Preston, who for many years has been carrying
out research on the Second Republic, the Civil War and the dictatorship from a
very different viewpoint, as described in his works including Franco,Caudillo
de Espaa (2006), El gran manipulador. La mentira cotidiana de Franco
(2008) or El holocausto espaol (2011). It is obvious that if Paul Preston, who
is also a legitimate author (he is, together with Hugh Thomas and Ian Gibson,
among others, one of the Hispanists who has dedicated most effort to the study
of recent Spanish history, is a member of the British Academy and has been
awarded some of the most important decorations and prizes including the Gran
Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Catlica, the Ramn Llull International Prize, the
Premio Prncipe de Asturias among many other merits) had translated/rewritten
the Franco period of Spanish history with his habitus and not that of Surez,
the result would be completely different, because he would have chosen other
words and other adjectives to refer to Franco. His construction of the reality of
that era, therefore, would have been the complete opposite of Surezs. Something similar has happened with the historians chosen for other entries, like that
of Pasionaria, Dolores Ibrruri, the Spanish Communist Party leader, or Manuel
Azaa, President of the Second Republic.5 In this case, the Real Academia de
la Historia chose different translators of the reality according to their habitus
and their symbolic capital, and once they are considered in this light, the words
they choose are a reminder of the authority these authors are assumed to have.
And this is very important, because, as Bourdieu points out, any aspect of authorised language, of its rhetoric, its syntax, its lexis and even its pronunciation,
is only there to remind us of the authority of the author, an author whose symbolic capital serves as a consecration mechanism (Bourdieu 1996: 167). The
symbolic effectiveness of words only functions, according to Bourdieu (2008
[1985]: 97) insomuch as he who accepts it recognizes the authority of he who
is empowered to exercise it.
The Real Academia de la Historia is without a doubt an important institution
in Spain. That is why it can create what Bourdieu calls the production of belief, which helps to legitimise the translation of reality carried out by Luis
Surez: the permanent production and reproduction of the illusio, the collective
adhesion to the game that is both cause and effect of the existence of the game
(Bourdieu 1996: 167). The Real Academia is, in this case, the producer who
consecrates Surez and contributes to making the value of the historian offering him as a guarantee all the symbolic capital the merchant has accumulated (Bourdieu 1996: 168). However, the entry was the cause of many angry
reactions among those readers who did not share the same habitus as Surez,
and in these cases this led to the suspension of the illusio and the refusal to accept this consecration. To mention just two important names, Santos Juli, the
prestigious Spanish historian referred to above considers Surez to be a far right
212
historian, and Preston commented in an interview published in the newspaper

El Pas (29 May 2011) that La visin de Franco expuesta por Luis Surez es
tan oficialmente franquista que me sorprende, me habra esperado algo ms objetivo hoy en da.
Despite the controversy, the Real Academia has refused to make any modification and has, therefore, remained firm in its convictions. Although the
foundation of collective belief has not worked in this case, the Real Academia
has opted to maintain the necessary legitimate imposture to stay in the game:
The artist [] owes his magic efficacy to a whole logic of the field that recognizes
and authorizes him; his act would be nothing but a crazy and insignificant gesture without the universe of celebrants and believers who are ready to produce it as endowed
with meaning and value by reference to the entire tradition which produced their categories of perception and appreciation. (Bourdieu 1996: 169)
And it is precisely this, a crazy and insignificant gesture that the Real Academia
has achieved with this entry. Its symbolic capital has led to a significant amount
of symbolic violence by authorising a translation of Spains past which shows
that there are still celebrants and believers in public institutions who are ready
to endow with meaning the most ridiculous and, above all, most unjust interpretations. A clear example of Bandias reflection on history quoted above: historians generally construe meaning and impose their views on the past as
informed by their own cultural situation (Bandia 2006: 48).
Lus Surezs translation of this period of Spanish history reminds us of the
ontological complicity between the field and the habitus: whoever has the appropriate cultural capital and linguistic habitus will become the dominant interlocutor, that of greater performative force, because the form and content of
the discourse depend on the relation between the habitus and the market. There
is an unequal distribution of cultural capital which generates what Bourdieu
calls racism of intelligence. And, in this regard, perhaps the most important
thing when we analyse the words used by Luis Surez to describe the Spanish
dictatorship, is that, as Bourdieu points out, what is expressed by means of the
linguistic habitus is not only a language but all the class habitus the user belongs
to, the social position he occupies and the symbolic capital perceived and recognized as a value by others. By means of his habitus and his symbolic capital,
Surez apprehends the social world, that is, he mentally structures reality and
re-presents it according to a series of structural constraints which depend on
his social position as an agent and on his habitus, on his perception-scheme
systems and appreciation of everyday practices, because the habitus is the result
of unconscious learning which is translated into ways of seeing, ways of moving, of speaking and keeping silent, which surreptitiously transmit meaning by
means of suggestions which appear in the gaps in words. The translators habi-
213
tus is, therefore, a locus of tension revealing an extreme yet very representative
configuration of intercultural, as well as global influences (Simeoni 1998: 21).
That is why we must look into
the extent to which the stylistic decisions lexical, rhetorical and matricial made by
translators in their daily routines are a function of their personal habitus or [] whether
the differential of stylistic choices distinguishing different translators can be shown to
be a function of the differences in their specialized habitus. (Simeoni 1998: 21)
To describe a dictator like Franco as authoritarian, not totalitarian and brave

leads us to believe that it could be interesting to start a line of research which
understands this entry in the dictionary as an ideologically biased translation
of reality, and which, as a result, deduces the rules of the game taking as a starting point the observable acts of the player, or to study the power relations established between the different agents (the one who commissions the
translation, the one who does it and the one who reads it), because, as Gouanvic
points out (2007: 90), translation is marked by the power relations between the
source field and the target field.
This is an obvious example for the fact that historical narrative is a verbal
fiction whose content is invented (White 1978a: 82), and consequently a clear
case demonstrating that, as Hayden White points out explicitly and we mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the historical text is a translation, a
construction close also to neohermeneutics, as has been shown by thinkers
like Paul Ricur in Temps et rcit or Michel de Certeau in Lcriture de lhistoire.
What Foucault called agency, that is individuals capacity to act, proves,
therefore, to be fundamental in this translation. That is why it is so important
to analyse the historian-translator as an agent (Wolf 2010: 31) necessarily embedded within social contexts (Wolf 2007: 1): the capacity to act of the translator-historian is not a mere attribute of the subject, but one of his most if not
the most relevant performative acts. The voice of the author situates the analysis, and, from this point of view, the criticism of the universalist narrative of
History constitutes an undermining of the Wests ability to represent other societies (Clifford 1986: 10). Surezs translation makes it very clear that history is a field, a force-field as well as a field of struggles which aim at
transforming or maintaining the established relation of forces: each of the agents
commits the force (the capital) that he has acquired through previous struggles
to strategies that depend for their general direction on his position in the power
struggle, that is, on his specific capital (Bourdieu 1990: 143).
214
4. Concluding Remarks
The historical text is a commentary which enables us to say for the first time
what has already been said, it enables us to say something apart from the text
itself (Foucault 1987 [1970]: 24; also Foucault 1984 [1971]). The facts do not
tell themselves, and that is why, because there is an enunciator subject, there is
also a construction/translation of truth, which controls, chooses, selects, validates and circulates determined discourses. The cultural capital (the knowledge
we have gained throughout our lives, the way we have been taught to speak,
the tastes we have acquired, the manners we have been taught), the social capital (our relations network), the economic capital or symbolic capital (charm,
prestige) of the historian-translator have a powerful effect on his relationship
with others, and are particularly vulnerable to the action of his words, because
linguistic signs acquire a price and all verbal expressions carry the mark of their
reception conditions, as pointed out in What Does Speaking Mean? Understanding the original historical text as a translation based on Bourdieus conception
of language and on the application of concepts like habitus, capital, field or illusio has enabled us to reflect on the danger of choosing some words instead
of others to tell a hi/story. Because any history-translation
creates new knowledge, thus revealing its often neglected political and ideological dimension. Yet translation can both promote asymmetrical power relations between languages or cultures and offer a form of resistance. (Wolf 2010: 38)
Humans access reality through translations or versions of provisional, current,

interesting and interested realities which are constantly being contextualised,
rectified and translated with the hermeneutical and ethical experience of the
translator. The representations of reality produced in translations are fictional,
contradictory constructions caused by social relations and different forms of
subjectivity: identities are linked to representations of cultures, and the discursive codes we use are only historically constructed arbitrary orders, fixed and
unchangeable in appearance, but biased by concrete ideologies, through which
we understand the World, because reality does not exist without representation.
Along these same lines, taking as a starting point the breakdown of mimetic
theory which understood language as a spontaneous grid or table and as an essential link between representation and beings (Foucault 1988), translating is
making a representation of reality which is never neutral, it is re-presenting reality from a concrete point of view.
The analysis of the entry dedicated to Franco in the Diccionario Biogrfico
Espaol shows us that reality can be translated depending on the habitus of the
person who rewrites it. The meaning of a text does not lie in the text itself, but
is always ideologically and historically produced: any representation implies
215
preexisting perspectives, plans, thought direction and discourses; and, like any
other representation, translations are discourses created from a specific habitus
and symbolic capital. For these reasons, from an ethical viewpoint, it is absolutely
essential that the observer is aware of the symbolic power of these representations
and of the responsibility of translators when it comes to transmitting the different
habitus of those who have gone before them in the translation of reality, habitus
which, on occasion, may clash with their own.
Notes
1 This paper is part of the research carried out in the project financed by the Ministerio de
Economa y Competitividad FFI201235000 Traduccin, medios de comunicacin y opinin
pblica.
2 Said (1986) and Spivaks criticism (1987) of the opposition between the history of the Self and
the history of the Other discussed by Foucault throughout his work is worth mentioning here.
3 It is true that Bourdieu was always interested in history, something which became clear in the
well-known work he wrote with Roger Chartier titled The Sociologist and the Historian, the
result of a series of five radio interviews which took place in 1988 and which revealed the
complicity between the two authors, but also the differences between them and their ways of
approaching their respective disciplines. My approach here, however, has a completely different
focus.
4 The Valle de los Cados is a monument located near El Escorial which Franco had built to honour those who died in the Spanish Civil War. It is where he is buried.
5 Dolores Ibrruri (18951977) was an important Communist Party leader during the Second
Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War, who fought for workers and womens rights.
She was imprisoned several times, went into exile in the USSR, and returned to Spain after
Francos death. Manuel Azaa (18801940) was a Spanish writer and politician, President of
the Spanish government (19311933, 1936) and President of the Second Spanish Republic
(19361939).
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Contributors to this Volume

Kristiina Abdallah holds a PhD from the University of Eastern Finland and is
Lecturer of English Studies at the University of Vaasa. She is chair of the teachers and researchers section of The Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters. Her research interests include agency, quality and ethics.
Email: kristiina.abdallah@uwasa.fi
Jean-Marc Gouanvic is professor emeritus at the Dpartement dtudes
franaises of Concordia University, Montral. In 1987, he founded with Robert
Larose the translation studies journal TTR. His research and publications are
on the sociology of translation as informed by Pierre Bourdieus social theory.
In 1999, he published Sociologie de la traduction: la science-fiction amricaine
dans lespace culturel franais des annes 1950, in 2007 Pratique sociale de
la traduction: le roman raliste amricain dans le champ littraire franais
(19201960), and in 2014 Sociologie de ladaptation et de la traduction. Le
roman daventures anglo-amricain dans lespace littraire franais pour les
jeunes (18261960). He is currently preparing a monograph on the translation
of the American Detective-Novel in the French field after WWII (Srie Noire,
ditions Gallimard).
Email: jean-marc.gouanvic@concordia.ca
Nadja Grbi has studied linguistics and Slavic languages and is Assistant Professor at the Department for Translation Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. She teaches translation and interpretation studies and is currently preparing
her post-doctoral dissertation (Habilitation) on the construction of sign language
interpreters as an occupational group in Austria. Her research topics include
sign language interpreting, sociological issues of translation and interpreting,
translation history, feminist translation, and scientometrics. She has conducted
several research projects on sign language interpreting and sign language
lexicography and developed a full time training program for sign language interpreters at university level, which started in the autumn of 2002 in Graz.
Email: nadja.grbic@uni-graz.at
Sameh F. Hanna is a lecturer in translation studies and Arabic at the University
of Salford, UK. After receiving his PhD from University of Manchester on the
220
Contributors
sociology of the Arabic translations of Shakespeares tragedies in Egypt, he

moved to University College London as a post-doctoral Andrew Mellon Fellow
in the Humanities. Sameh F. Hanna taught at a number of universities in Egypt
and the UK. His specific research interest is in the implications of Bourdieus
sociology for the understanding of drama translation on which he is currently
writing a book.
Email: S.Hanna@leeds.ac.uk
Moira Inghilleri is Assistant Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies
in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. She is the author of Interpreting Justice: Ethics, Politics and Language (Routledge 2012) and two forthcoming manuscripts, Sociological Approaches to Translation and Interpreting (St. Jerome) and Translation and
Migration (Routledge). She is co-editor of The Translator and guest-editor
of two special issues: Bourdieu and the Sociology of Translating (2005) and,
with Sue-Ann Harding, Translation and Violent Conflict (2010). Her research
has appeared in Translation Studies, The Translator, Target, Language and
Communication, Linguistica Antverpiensia and a number of edited collections.
Email: minghilleri@complit.umass.edu
Kalliopi Pasmatzi is a PhD student at the University of Manchester. She holds
a BA in English Philology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an
MA in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Manchester. Her thesis deals with the representation of the controversial narrative of the Greek Civil
War in the translation of Nicholas Gages Eleni and Louis de Bernires Captain
Corellis Mandolin. Her research interests lie in the sociology of translation
(Bourdieus theory of cultural production), the intercultural transfer of ideas
and cultural products and the translators agency.
Email: kalliopi.pasmatzi@manchester.ac.uk
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy is Associate Professor of Semiotics and Culture Research
and Chair of the Unit of Culture Research, Tel-Aviv University. Her research
interests and publications include culture theory, identity and status, talk and
self-representations, cultural models of emotion, diffusion and translation. In
recent years she has conducted an interview-based research on identity discourses in semi-professional groups, with Israeli translators as a case in point
(ISF 20062009, with Miriam Shlesinger). Among her publications are Literarische Dynamik und Kulturbildung: Zur Konstruktion des Repertoires
deutscher Literatur im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert (1999); Identity and Status
in the Translational Profession (co-edited with M. Shlesinger, 2011) and Cul-
Contributors
221
ture Contacts and the Making of Cultures: Papers in Homage to Itamar EvenZohar (co-edited with Gideon Toury, 2011).
Email: rakefet@post.tau.ac.il
Torikai Kumiko is professor at the Graduate School of Intercultural Communication, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, and is the former president of the Japan
Association for Interpreting and Translation Studies. She holds an MA from
Columbia University and a PhD from the University of Southampton. Her Publications include Voices of the Invisible Presence: Diplomatic Interpreters in
Post-World War II Japan (2009), Interpreting and Translation in a Japanese
Social and Historical Context in The International Journal of the Sociology
of Language (2011) and Conference Interpreters and their Perception of Culture: From the Narratives of Japanese Pioneers in Translation and Interpreting
Studies (2010).
Email: torikaik@rikkyo.ac.jp
Mara Carmen frica Vidal Claramonte is Professor of Translation at the
University of Salamanca, Spain. Her research interests include translation theory, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, contemporary art and gender studies.
She has published a number of books, anthologies and essays on these issues,
including Traduccin, manipulacin, desconstruccin (Salamanca: Ediciones
Colegio de Espaa 1995), El futuro de la traduccin (Valencia: Alfons el Magnnim 1998), Translation/Power/Subversion (co-edited with Romn lvarez,
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters 1996), En los lmites de la traduccin
(Granada: Comares 2006) and Traducir entre culturas: diferencias, poderes,
identidades (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang 2007). She is a practising translator specialized in the fields of philosophy, literature and contemporary art.
Email: africa@usal.es
Gisella M. Vorderobermeier holds a PhD from Karl-Franzens-University
Graz, where she is currently working as Assistant Professor at the Department
for Translation Studies. She is an academically trained translator for Russian
and Spanish (University of Leipzig). Her main research interests are in translation sociology and translation and politics. Most recent publication: Translatorische Praktiken aus soziologischer Sicht. Kontextabhngigkeit des
bersetzerischen Habitus? (Opladen, Berlin and Toronto: Budrich UniPress
2013); an entry on Translation and Interpreting: Sociological Approaches to
Translation appeared in The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (BlackwellWiley 2013).
Email: gisella.vorderobermeier@uni-graz.at
222
Contributors
Vasso Yannakopoulou has taught translation as an adjunct at the University

of Athens and is presently a Visiting Lecturer in Translation Studies at the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus. She is also a professional
translator in the language pair English-Greek. Her research interests and publications include translation sociology, translatorial style, and Shakespeare
translation reception.
Email: Vasso.Yannakopoulou@gmail.com
Index
A
Abbott, Andrew 98
Abdallah, Kristiina 50, 111, 112, 113, 114,
117, 118, 122, 123, 126n1
Abdu, Tanyus 5960, 66, 70
Aboulafia, Mitchell 186
Abrams, Lynn 137, 141142
Achard, Marcel 34
actor-network
definition 112
properties 113
actor-network theory; see also Latour, Bruno
critique 112
general characteristics 112
research process 112, 115
actors
follow the ~ 115; see also research
process
for and against 117, 120, 121125
non-human ~ 114, 116117, 125
Adams, Matthew 44
Adorno, Theodor 22n8
aesthetic choices 169
aesthetics of reception 164165
afterlives 167; see also Benjamin, Walter
agency
and structure 43, 64, 114, 124125, 188
definition 14
Foucault on 213
translatorial 60, 114
the scholarly ~ 61; see also habitus of
translation researcher / scholar; selfanalysis: reflexive; self-reflexivity
Alasuutari, Pertti 126n6
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 112, 117, 187
Alexandrou, Aris 76; see also Mission Box
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
194195
American micro-sociology tradition see
Goffman, Erving; identity: research;
identity: theory
amor fati 10
Amsterdamska, Olga 112

Anderson, Leon 4950
Angelelli, Claudia V. 135
Angelidou, Maria 8285
habitus 8081
on her translation practice 81, 88
stance in translating CCM 78, 82, 8788
Antoniou, Giorgos 76
Apostolidou, Venetia 76, 89n4
Appiah, Anthony K. 204
Aquinas 910, 31
Aristotle 9, 10, 31
Association des Traducteurs Littraires de
France (ATLF) 39, 41n15
Aurell, Jaume 206
Austrian Association of Sign Language
Interpreters (sterreichischer
Gebrdensprach-DolmetscherInnenVerband, GSDV) 97, 99, 103, 105, 106
Azaa, Manuel 211, 215n5
B
Baker, Mona 80, 135, 164, 179n4,6,
180n22,25
Bandia, Paul 14, 204, 205, 212
Bann, Stephen 205
Barbalet, Jack 125, 126n4
Barthes, Roland 165, 167, 173, 179n10,11,
205206, 208
Bassnett, Susan 207
Beck, Ulrich 187
Benjamin, Walter 167, 204
Berman, Antoine 30, 38
Bernard, Lise 49, 50
Bielsa Mialet, Esperana 22n11
Bittlingmayer, Uwe 21
biographical research
biographical illusion 1819
natural complicity of the biographer 19
concrete vs. constructed individual 19
Simeoni, Daniel on 137
224
Index
Blanchot, Maurice 173, 177

Bloor, David 112
Blumer, Herbert 139
Boase-Beier, Jean 166, 179n1,3,7,8,12,13,
180n18,21
Bogic, Anna 111
Boltanski, Luc 160n4
boundaries
kinds of 99100, 102103, 105
properties 98
dynamics 99
boundary concept
origins 98
boundary theory
range of application 98, 99
boundary work
definition 98
research thrust 9899
strategies and techniques 99
strength of concept 100, 106
Bourdieu, Pierre
as modern vs. postmodern thinker 1011
critique of
Dewey, John 190
ethnomethodology 189
phenomenology 189
philosophy of consciousness 189
philosophy of the subject 189; see
also subject-object dichotomy;
Bourdieusian theory: overcoming
dualisms
power 186187, 191
scholastic view 152; see also logic
of theory; theoretical reason
on capturing the habitus 19
on high and popular art 190
on history 215n3
on history and sociology 63
on language 168, 192, 213
on project and protension 152
on neoliberalism 126n2
on taste 170
Bourdieusian theory
critique
determinism 43, 46, 65, 112, 187
multiplicity and variability of
dispositions see ~ from Lahirian
perspective
reductionism 112
from Lahirian perspective 4344,
4546, 74, 150151, 160, 179
differential anthropology of symbolic

forms 150, 151152, 159
overcoming dualisms 11, 64, 186
phenomenological influence 151152,
188189
relational character 112
research process 111112
reception
Anglo-American world 53n1
waves of reception 15, 150151
relevance for contemporary society 187
188; see also late- or post-modernity
temporal dimension 150, 151153,157
159; see also project; pretension;
Bourdieu on project and pretension;
differential anthropology of symbolic
forms
understanding of the social 191
Breisach, Ernst 206
Bridge, Gary 1415
Bucholtz, Mary 45
Bucholz, Larissa 15
Burke, Peter J. 44; see also identity
negotiation
Burnett, William R. 34
Buzelin, Hlne 43, 111, 112113,
114115, 117
C
Caldwell, Erskine P. 34
Callon, Michel 117
Camayd-Freixas, Erik 194198, 199n4
capital 11
cultural 12, 46, 53n1, 112, 169, 170, 214
economic 12, 214
linguistic 48, 192
social 12, 186, 214
symbolic 12, 48, 50, 79, 112, 214
Captain Corellis Mandolin (CCM)
criticism 75
narrative techniques 75
view of history 75
plot 75
Chamboredon, Jean-Claude 116
Chandler, Raymond 34
Charlston, David 68, 74, 7980, 82, 88,
89n13; see also hexis; honour-seeking
stance
Chartier, Roger 215n3
Chase, James H. 34
Index
Cheyney, Peter 34
Chiapello, ve 160n4
Clandinin, D. Jean 144145
Clarke, Adele E. 101, 105
classificatory schemes see schemata
Claudel, Paul 152; see also connatre /
natre avec
Clifford, James 213
Close, David 83
Cocles, Horatius 87
CODA (children of deaf adults) 97, 100,
101103, 105, 106
Coindreau, Maurice-Edgar 32, 3839, 41n6
Colapietro, Vincent 186
Cole, Rockne 194195, 197
Collet, Franois 4445
Colley, Helen 114, 125
Colliot-Thlne, Catherine 11, 151152
community of practice 45
competence: translatorial 4445
characteristics 45
development 45
perceptions of 45, 4748
Connely, F. Michael 144, 145
connatre / natre avec 152; see also
Claudel, Paul
consecration 211
constantia sibi 19
coping strategies 118119, 123124; see also
Hirschmann, Albert O.; voice; exit; loyalty;
neglect
Cox, Marian 75
Cronin, Michael 208
Crossley, Nick 188189
cultural repertoire see repertoire
culturalist paradigm 171
D
Daly, Carol J. 34
Dam, Helle V. 120; see also Korning Zethsen,
Karin; helpers and opponents; Greimas,
Algirdas J.
Davidson, Donald 198n1
Davvetas, Nikos 89n3
de Bernire, Louis de see Captain Corellis
Mandolin (CCM)
De Certeau, Michel 204, 206, 213
deaf club 101, 102, 107n2
death of the Author 165, 173, 179n10
decentering 38; see also Meschonnic, Henri
225
deconstruction 164165
Democratic Army of Greece 8990(n16)
Derrida, Jacques 173, 206
Dewey, John 186
critique of philosophy 189190
on habits 191
relationship Bourdieu Dewey 186, 190
trajectory 190191
Diccionario biogrfico espaol
characteristics 210
public funding 210
discourse 191
discoursive practices 191193
dispositions
plurality of; see also Lahire, Bernard
distinction 46, 53n1, 62, 8182, 167168
domestication see translation strategies
Dos Passos, John 36, 41n9
doxa 11, 35, 62, 67, 69
orthodoxy vs. heterodoxy 62
drama translation; see also Egypt: theatre
translators; Shakespeare translation into
Arabic; Shakespeare translation into
Greece
Dreyfus, Hubert 94
dualisms see also Bourdieusian theory:
overcoming dualisms
body and soul 10
mind and soul 10
Duhamel, Marcel 3132, 3839
habitus 3336, 41n6
Durkheim, mile 31
E
EAM (Ethnik Apelevtherotik Mtopo) 84,
8990(n16)
Eco, Umberto 165, 166, 179n9
EDES (Ethniks Dimokratiks Elliniks
Sndesmos) 84
Egypt: theatre translators (Shakespeare; late
19thearly 20th c.); see also drama
translation
economic status 66
generations (first and second) 66, 67
involvement in different fields 6566
academic field 66
field of translation of popular fiction
6566
field of popular culture 66
journalistic field 6566
226
Index
Levantine and Egyptian theatre translators

6667; see also provenience
linguistic habitus 6566
provenience 65
publishing vs. theatre market 66
eidos 154
ELAS (Elliniks / Ethniks Laiks
Apelevtherotiks Strats) 8485, 89
90(n16)
Eleftheratos, Lefteris 77, 89n10, 90n19
Elias, Norbert 43, 89n1, 159n2
emotions 114, 125, 126n4
empowerment 118119, 122
Engler, Steffanie 22n13, 2223(n15)
enjeux 12
equal agency 117; see also principle of
generalized symmetry
ethics 10, 173174
codes of ~ 197198, 199n3,4
deontological ~ 122123, 126n7
discourse ~ 199n3; see also Habermas,
Jrgen
embeddedness of habitus concept in ~ 10;
see also habitus concept: as Aristotelian
concept; habitus concept as Thomist
concept
interpreting ~ 194198
work ~ 99100; see also boundaries:
kinds of
diverging perceptions 117, 120, 126n7
ethos 8687, 154
class ~ 4546
euphemism(s) 8586; see also euphemization
Bourdieu on 82, 89n13
euphemization; see euphemism(s); translation
strategies
Evans, George E. 138
Even-Zohar, Itamar 52
exit 118119, 123, 124, 125; see also
Hirschmann, Albert O.
experience 38, see also Berman, Antoine
expertise 126n1
F
Farrell, Dan 118; see also neglect
feel for the game 4445, 136, 145, 188; see
also practice: (fuzzy) logic of
Faulkner, William 36, 37, 41n10
field 11, 12
as differentiated arena 46
definition 40n3, 46, 112

entrance into 4546, 153154, 155,
209210
ethos 4748
force ~ 213
of struggles 213
miraculous encounter with habitus 145;
see also ontological complicity with
habitus
ontological complicity with habitus 12,
152, 212; see also miraculous
encounter with habitus
positions in ~ 47, 5051
field of possibles 170
fields: different
cultural 82
historiographic 74, 85, 8788
in Greece 74
journalistic 6566
legal 12
literary 12, 74, 8788, 159
in Greece 74, 8788
of power 83
of popular culture see Egypt: theatre
translators (19thearly 20th c.)
of translation of popular fiction see
Egypt: theatre translators (19thearly
20th c.)
of translation (existence of) 19, 3839,
47, 52, 159
of translation studies 39
political 12, 74, 82, 85
in Greece 74, 82, 85
scientific 12, 14
Finnish Association of Translators and
Interpreters (Suomen kntjien ja
tulkkien liitto, SKTL) 118
first- and second-order-observation 14;
see also Luhmann, Niklas
Folaron, Deborah 112113
Foley, Lara 49
foreignization see translation strategies
forms of inquiry 193; see also James,
William
Foucault, Michel 204205, 206, 209, 213
214, 215n2
Foz, Clara 208
Francisco Franco Foundation 210
Franco, Francisco
entry on ~ in Diccionario biogrfico
espaol 210214
Index
Frankfurt School 22n8

Frhlich, Gerhard 15
Fukari, Alexandra 64
G
Gallimard, Gaston 34
Gartman, David 22n8
Gazi, Efi 89n6
Gebauer, Gunter 103104
general network theory 126n4
generative linguistics 180n18
geography 1415
Gibson, Ian 211
Gieryn, Thomas F. 98
globalization 41n12, 112113, 208
as economic and political actor 117,
121, 122
Goethals, Gregor 198n1
Goffman, Erving 4445, 4950, 141
critique 49
Goodman, J. E. 16
Gorlee, Dinda L. 198n1
Gouanvic, Jean-Marc 15, 22n9, 23n16, 41n6,
43, 74, 80, 95, 136, 150, 159, 179n14, 213
Goyen, William 37
Greek Civil War 75
narrative of 82, 83, 84, 85, 88
Greek publishing space 82
Greekness: notion of 82, 8588
Greimas, Algirdas J. 120; see also helpers
and opponents; Dam, Helle V.; Korning
Zethsen, Karin
Grele, Ronald 139
Gronow, Antti 186
Grosz, Elisabeth 209
group formation 74, 104, 107
Gumilev, Lev 13
Guzzoni, Alfredo 87
H
Habermas, Jrgen 199n3
habits
definition 191; see also Dewey, John
habitus and
reflexivity 188, 192
taste 169
habitus as
practical identity 19
second nature 10
227
sense of place 1415

unchosen principle of all choices 156
socially and historically conditioned 66
structured and structuring 115116, 169
vis insita 21
habitus: characteristics
coherence 153, 192
creativity 9, 10, 31, 46, 187
development 41n13, 4647, 5152, 67,
106, 115, 136, 173
destabilization 21, 39, 41n13, 153, 191
192; see also habitus forms: cliv
durability 103104, 191192; see also
hysteresis
dynamic nature 104, 180n16
embodied nature 10, 1112, 3031, 60, 186
formation see ~ development
generative capacities 9, 46, 187
mediating position 9, 10; see also middle
position
middle position 10; see also mediating
position
restructuring see ~ transformation
regulation see ~ transformation
transformation 51, 53n2, 103104, 106,
143, 153154, 191; see also
restructuring; regulation
habitus: forms
class ~ 4647, 112
cliv 21, 39, 41n13, 153, 192; see also
destabilization of habitus
contemporary ~ 188; see also Crossley,
Nick; Sweetman, Paul
field ~ 4647
linguistic ~ 65, 81, 212
occupational ~; see professional ~
of priest, prince and pariah 116, 122, 123;
see also Prun, Erich
original ~; see primary ~
primary ~ 32, 101, 136, 137, 143, 154;
see also original ~
professional ~ 113, 117118, 119,
126n5, 169
secondary ~; see also specific ~
social or generalized ~ 126n5
specific ~ 32, 101, 104, 106, 136, 154
definition 154
habitus concept
and norm concept 61
and ethics 10; see also ethics:
embeddedness of ~ in ethics; ~ as
228
Index
Aristotelian concept; ~ as Thomist

concept
as Aristotelian concept 910, 31; see also
Aristotle
as Thomist concept 910, 31; see also
Aquinas
as heuristic notion 30; see also epistemic
status
as individual vs. collective concept 73,
150151
critique; see also Bourdieusian theory:
critique
determinism 43, 187, 6465
differences and change (ability to
account for); see also Bourdieusian
theory: critique from a Lahirian
perspective
intentions, motivations and selfperception (disregard) 44
definition(s) of 11, 31, 115, 136, 137,
168, 186
development within Bourdieus thought 11
enhancement 48, 50, 51
epistemic status 30, see also ~ as heuristic
notion
genealogy of 911, 31
interrelation with other Bourdieusian
concepts 60, 61, 153
research tradition 44
status in Bourdieusian theory 11
habitus of researcher / scholar 14, 3940, 61,
70; see also self-analysis: reflexive
Hachette 34
Hammett, Dashiell 34, 35
Hanna, Sameh F. 69, 74
Harris, Brian 9697, 179n5
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 31
Heidegger, Martin 150, 151, 206
Heilbron, Johan 185
helpers and oppenents 120; see also Dam,
Helle V.; Korning Zethsen, Karin;
Greimas, Algirdas J.
Hekkanen, Raila 111112, 180n16
Hemingway, Ernest 36
Henderson, Jeffrey 112113
Heracleous, Loizos 98
Hermans, Theo 14, 6364, 164, 175, 179n5
hermeneutics of suspicion 206; see also
Nietzsche, Friedrich
hexis 62, 87, 8889
and style 6768
definition 67, 78
difference between ~ and habitus 79
insights from research on ~ 6768
language and ~ 8182
origins in Bourdieusian theory 7879
Hillier, Jean 1415, 104
Himonas, Yorgos
habitus 173
intellectual influences 173
reception 178
relation of translation to own writing 174
style 174
translation theory 173174
works as translator 174
Hirschman, Albert O. 118119, 125; see also
voice; exit; loyalty
hi/story 214
his-story 207
historicality 208
histories of exclusion, inclusion and
transgression 204; see also Bandia, Paul
historiography 203204
history; see also hi/story; his-story
and language 206
as discourse 209
as meaning system 205206
as symbolic artefact 204
as translation 206209
definitions 203206
of historiography 208
of the Self and of the Other 215n2
Holmes, Janet 45
Holz-Mnttri, Justa 126n1
honour-seeking stance 80, 87, 8889;
see also hexis; Charleston, David
Humphries, Tom 107n2
Husserl, Edmund 31, 151152, 188189
hyper-correction see translation strategies
hysteresis 9, 21, 23n17, 120, 122, 123124,
125, 153, 158159
origins in Bourdieus work 153
I
Ibrruri, Dolores 211, 215n5; see also
Pasionaria
ideal selves 49; see also Wieland, Stacey
M. B.
ideal translator / interpreter 9394
identity
discourse 5152
Index
dynamics 44, 52
negotiation 44, 4950; see also Burke and
Stets
research
general characterization 44
resources 4950
talk 50, 51
theory 49; see also identity: research
work
role in habitus formation 51
dependence of habitus 51
ethnographic research into 50
in relation to status 50
definition 49; see also Snow,
David A.; Anderson, Leon
range of application 49
illusio 11, 3233, 3435, 37, 40n4, 152, 154,
155, 159, 209
suspension of ~ 159, 211212
image-brokers 51
Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)
194
inferred author 166
informal learning 4748
Inghilleri, Moira 13, 15, 47, 6263, 64, 73
74, 9495, 117118, 135, 179n14, 185,
186, 192, 195, 198n1, 199n3
inscriptions 115
interaction 193
inter-action, see interaction
internal factors vs. external factors 23;
see also macro- and micro-perspective
interpreters(s)
(im)partiality 196198; see also
neutrality
(in)visibility 135136
neutrality 135136, 191, 196198
Italian Acqui Division 84
J
James, Daniel 138
James, William 193
Jameson, Frederic 204205
Janesick, Valerie 137, 142
Japanese Peace Constitution 143, 145n2
Jenkins, Harold 176
Jenkins, Keith 187, 208
Jenkins, Richard 74
Jula, Santos 210, 211212
Jurt, Joseph 23n16
229
K
Kalinowski, Isabel 39, 41n13
Kalyvas, Stathis 76
Kasdaglis, Nikos 89n3; see also The Teeth of
the Millstone
Kellner, Hans 207
Kelly, Michael 136
King, Anthony 112, 115,
Kinnunen, Tuija 14, 112, 114, 124125
knowledge 186
knowledge-society
critique of the concept of ~ 21; see also
Bittlingmayer, Uwe
habitus in the ~ 21; see also
Bittlingmayer, Uwe
knowledge of oneself, of others and of the
world 193
Knox, Macgregor 90n20
Korning Zethsen, Karin 120; see also Dam,
Helle V.; helpers and opponents; Greimas,
Algirdas J.
Koselleck, Reinhart 208
Koskinen, Kaisa 14, 22n11, 112, 114, 118,
124125, 126n1
Kotzias, Alexandros 80n3; see also The Siege
Krais, Beate 103104
Kreiner, Glen E. 49
Kuhn, Timothy 49
Kung, Szu-Wen C. 111, 117
Kunihiro, Masao 143144
L
Lacan, Jacques 173
LaCapra, Dominick 204205
Lahire, Bernard 4546, 74, 115116, 150
151, 160n6, 179n15; see also Bourdieu,
Pierre: critique
Laity, Cassandra 90n18
Lamont, Michele 53n1, 98, 99, 107n5
language
as form of life 193; see also
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
and power 207208
Lash, Scott 187188
late- or post-modernity 187188
Latour, Bruno 113, 115116
concept of agency 114
critique 112; see also actor-network
theory
230
Index
(in)commensurability with Bourdieusian

theory 114115
Lave, Jean 45
Law, John 112, 117,
Leech, Geoffrey N. 18170, 180n23; see also
stylistic competence; Short, Michael H.
legitimacy: sociological 2930, 40n2
legitimate author 210, 211; see also
consecration
Leopold, David 194195
life history vs. life story 137; see also
Sakurai, Atsushi
live as lived, as experienced and as told
137; see also Sakurai, Atsushi
linguistic market 48, 82
literary translators
in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
activity profiles 149
educational background 150
fields of activity 150
job satisfaction and sense of wellbeing 150
radius within literary field 150
symbolic capital 150
in Israel
elite-translators 5051; see also roleimages of literary translators in
Israel; vocational ethos; identity
linguistic turn 204, 205
Lizardo, Omar 15, 53n1
logic of theory 189, 62; see also Bourdieu:
critique on philosophy; theoretical
reason; scholastic view
loyalty 118; see also Hirschmann, Albert O.
Luhmann, Niklas 13, 14
Lyotard, Jean-Franois 89n2; see also
metanarratives
M
macro- and micro-perspective 43, 49, 74,
170, 171, 172, 178, 180n17; see also
internal factors vs. external factors
Malena, Anne 208
Marantzidis, Nikos 76
market of symbolic goods 48; see also
symbolic economy
Martin, Ruth R. 138
Mason, Ian 135
Mauss, Marcel 31
McAdam, Doug 49
McDonough, Peggy 114, 115116, 120, 122,

123, 125
Merleau-Ponty, Marcel 12, 188189, 198
199n2
Meschonnic, Henri 30, 38, 40n4
metanarratives 75, 89n2; see also Lyotard,
Jean-Franois
Meyerhoff, Miriam 45
Meylaerts, Reine 47, 64, 74, 95, 113, 115
116, 126n5, 160n6, 169, 179n14,15,16; see
also Bourdieusian theory: critique from
Lahirian perspective; sociology at the
level of the individual
micro-entrepreneur 113, 118, 121, 122, 124;
see also translation: industry in Finland
micro-level analysis 49
micro-level interactions 49
Miki, Takeo 143144
Miller, Henry 34
Milton, John 14
Mische, Ann 53n1
Mission Box 76; see also Alexandrou, Aris
Molnr, Virg 98, 99
Munslow, Alun 205
Muramatsu, Masumi 143
N
namings 83
narrative
analysis 138; see also oral history
forms 85
narratives 19, 75; see also Greek civil war:
narratives of; metanarratives; oral history
occupational 47
of mystery novels 3435
personal 137145; see also oral history;
life-story interviews
native interpreter 96; see also Harris, Brian
native translator 97; see also Toury, Gideon
natural translator 9697; see also Harris,
Brian
negative vs. affirmative critique 21; see
also Sonderegger, Ruth; Rancire, Jacques
neglect 118; see also Farell, Dan; Rosbult,
Caryl E.
Negrn, Juan 210
New Criticism 171, 173, 180n18
Nickl, Peter 1011
Nielsen, Sven 34, 3536; see also Presses de
la Cit
Index
Nietzsche, Friedrich 77, 89n7, 206; see also

hermeneutics of suspicion
Niranjana, Tejaswini 207
Noble, Greg 46
non-Eurocentric view 204
norm concept
strength and limitations compared with
habitus concept 6364
norms 43, 52, 60, 61, 6364
O
OBrian, Sharon 180n29
OConnor, Flannery 37
occupational ethos 50; see also vocational
ethos
Olson, Charles 207
one-off cases
importance 178
opus operatum and modus operandi 172
oral history
criticism 138
different methods 138; see also
Thompson, Paul
methodological questions
friendship role 141
reliability 140142
representativeness 140
silence and ambiguous answers
144145; see also Tokyo Tribunal
as example for silence and
ambiguous answers
sources of bias 141
truthfulness 139
transcribing and writing 142
validity 140142
scope of application 138
Orthokosta 7677; see also Valtinos,
Thanasis
Ostrow, James M. 190
Othello 69
othering 207; see also Spivak, Gayatri Ch.
P
Pachucki, Mark A. 99
Padavic, Irene 49
Padden, Carol 107n2
Paivanas, Dimitris 76, 77, 89n5,6
Panofsky, Erwin 11
Parks, Tim 165, 180n30
231
Pasionaria, see also Dolores Ibrruri

PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) 76
Passeron, Jean-Claude 116
Patton, Michael Q. 113; see also purposeful
sampling
Peirce, Charles Sanders 198n1
Prez-Gonzlez, Luis 94
Personal Narratives Group 139
personal(ity) traits 45, 52
Peterson, Cassie L. 196
phenomenology
influence on Bourdieus thought 11
Pigasse, Albert 3536
Pinto, Louis 23n16
place 1415
Plummer, Ken 141
Polletta, Francesca 4546
Polzer, Jessica 114, 115116, 120, 122,
123, 125
Popper, Nathaniel 195
Portelli, Alessandro 140
post-positivist theories of translation 208
post-structuralism 206
Postville Case 194198
power 21, 186
concurring conceptions in social theory
21; see also Strecker, David
practical sense 80, 189
practice
(fuzzy) logic of 4445, 46, 154, 186
theory of 12, 62; see also theory of
practice as practice
pragmatism 193194; see also Dewey, John
Presses de la Cit 35
prestige 79
Preston, Julia 195196
Preston, Paul 210212
Prvert, Jacques 33
principle of generalized symmetry 117, 120;
see also equal agency
production network 112113, 114, 121, 122,
123, 124, 125
definition 112
difference to actor network 113
professional
attitudes as resources 4748
dignity 50, 51
professionalism and anti-professionalism 47
48; see also field ethos
professionalization 105
conceptions of
232
Index
models 94
research on 9394
non-, semi- and pre-professional practices
of interpreting 94
non-professionalism 94
situation in Israel 45
suspended 44, 52
(under)- ~ 45
project 150, 152153, 157; see also Bourdieu
on ~ and protension; Bourdieusian theory:
temporal dimension; differential
anthropology of symbolic forms
project-based polis 160
protension 150, 152153, 157; see also
Bourdieu on project and ~; Bourdieusian
theory: temporal dimension; differential
anthropology of symbolic forms
Prun, Erich 116, 119120, 122, 123, 124; see
also habitus of priest, prince and pariah
public discourse 7576, 83
purposeful sampling 113; see also Patton,
Michael Q.
Pym, Anthony 64, 114, 122
Q
quality 9394, 117, 120121, 126n7
questionnaire design 155
R
Raftopoulous, Dimitris 89n3
Rancire, Jacques 21
Ranke, Leopold von 203204
rational-action-theory 4445
reader-response theory 164165, 166
Real Academia de la Historia 210
Reay, Diane 43, 114, 125
Reger, Jo 49
Rehbein, Boike 15
Reiss, Katharina 126n1
repertoire(s): cultural 4546
representation of the Other 204, 206
reproduction: social 46, 53n1
and / vs. change 6465
Richie, Donald A. 137
Ricur, Paul 206, 213
Risku, Hanna 118
Rist, Gilbert 910
Ritzer, George 115,
Robinson, Douglas 45, 48
role 49
translators ~ 166, 185
role-images 5051; see also self-images
of literary translators in Israel
artist 51
cultural gate-keeper 50, 52
cultural mediator 5051, 52
Rooksby, Emma 1415, 104
Rori, Labrini 85, 89n14
Rorty, Richard 198n1
Rosbult, Caryl E. 118; see also neglect
rules: explicit 4445
rules of the game 189
S
Safouan, Moustapa 69
Said, Edward 204205, 215
Sakkatos, Vaggelis 77, 90n19
Sakurai, Atsushi 137; see also life history
vs. life story; live as lived, experienced
and told
sanitizing see translation strategies
Sapiro, Gisle 185
schemata 85, 188189
classificatory 85, 186, 190, 193
cultural 82
mental 4546
interpretative 88
of perception 85, 212
schemes of perception, thought and
action (Bourdieu) 136
schemes of perception and appreciation
(Bourdieu) 168
schemes of perception, conception and
action (Bourdieu) 1112
Schodterer, Andreas 104
Schoeller, Guy 34
Schrager, Samuel 138, 139
Schreiber, Gerhard 87, 90n20
Schultheis, Franz 21, 23n16
Schwingel, Marcus 1011; see also Bourdieu,
Pierre: as modern vs. postmodern thinker
Scott, Clive 167, 174
scriptor 165
Sela-Sheffy 15, 22n9, 44, 45, 4647, 4748,
5052, 64, 7374, 95, 107n4, 115116,
117118, 157, 179n14, 180n16, 185
self-analysis: reflexive 14, 3940; see also
self-reflexivity
self-fashioning 46
Index
self-images 44, 48, 4950, 51; see also selfperception; sense of (occupational) self
self-perception 49
self-reflexivity 14, 20, 180n26; see also selfanalysis: reflexive
self-worth 49
semiotic theory 164165, 198n1; see also
Peirce, Charles Sanders
Sennett, Richard 26n4
sense of (occupational) self 48, 49
Srie Noire 3132, 34
Shakespeare translation
into Arabic see Egypt: theatre translators
into Greece see Himonas, Yorgos
Sheffy, Rakefet 4647
Sheppard, Richard 75
Short, Michael H. 168170, 180n23; see also
stylistic competence; Leech, Geoffrey N.
Short, Mick 179n6
Shusterman, Richard 186, 189, 190
sign language interpreters (SL interpreters)
certified ~ 97
CODAs as ~ 100
acquisition of sign language (SL) 102
primary habitus 102103
social workers as ~ 100
acquisition of sign language (SL) 102
specific habitus 101102
social world of ~ in Austria 106
teachers at schools for the deaf as ~ 100
sign language interpreting (SL interpreting)
as a profession
curriculum-development in Austria 96
educational possibilities in Austria
(development) 97
history of ~ in Austria 95, 97, 102, 103,
105, 107
signifiance 40n4, see also Meschonnic
signifier and signified 205
Simeoni, Daniel 1213, 15, 22n9,12, 4647,
61, 6263, 74, 115, 116, 117118, 119, 135,
137, 150, 179n14, 185, 209210, 212213
Sinclair, Mark 89n7
Snow, David A. 4950
social aging 19
social learning vs. explicit instruction 45
social sense 10
social space 11, 82
in Greece 74
social worlds 94, 97, 101; see also Strauss,
Anselm
233
sociology at the level of the individual

150151, 179n15; see also Lahire, Bernard
sociology of associations 117; see also
Latour, Bruno; actor-network theory
sociology of professions 95, 98
sociology of science 95
sociology of translation
as sub-discipline 14
conceptual and methodological claims 16
sociological turn 14
state of the art 1314
Sonderegger, Ruth 21; see also negative vs.
affirmative critique; Rancire, Jacques
sources of data
(auto-)biographical documentation 18, 149
ethnography / fieldwork 137
interview(s) 80, 89n12,15, 102103, 104,
111, 119
life-story interviews 137, 139, 143;
see also oral history; biographical
research
longitudinal interviews 111, 113
114, 115116, 117118, 125
narrative interviews see life-story
interviews; oral history
varieties of ~ 137
survey data 18, 149
space 1415
Spanish Civil War
depiction in Diccionario biogrfico
espaol 210
Spinosa, Charles 94
Spivak, Gayatri Ch. 204205, 207, 209,
215n2; see also othering
Spurgeon, Caroline 171
standards 9394
Star, Susan Leigh 101
status: occupational 44, 50, 94; see also
professional status
Stecconi, Ubaldo 198n1
Steinbeck, John 34, 37, 41n11
Steiner, George 209
Stets, Jan E. 44; see also identity negotiation
stigmatization 46, 50
strategies 48, 50
rhetorical 50
Strauss, Anselm 101
Strecker, David 21
structuralist linguistics 180n1
Stryker, Sheldon 49
Sturgeon, Timothy 112113
234
Index
style; see also taste

definitions of 163, 166
research in Translations Studies on ~ 164
stylistic competence 168170, 180n23; see
also Leech, Geoffrey N.; Short, Michael H.
Surez, Louis 210213
habitus 210211, 212
position 210, 211212
symbolic capital 112
Subaltern Studies 209
subcontractors see micro-entrepreneurs
subject-object dichotomy 64; see also
Bourdieu, Pierre: critique of philosophy of
the subject; Bourdieusian theory:
overcoming dualisms
submissiveness-hypothesis see subservant
translatorial habitus
subservant translatorial habitus 1213, 62
63, 114, 116, 118, 119, 125; see also
submissiveness-hypothesis
Suderland, Maja 21; see also hysteresis
Surrealist Phalansters 33
Susam-Sarajeva, ebnem 16, 94
Swartz, David L. 115, 116, 119, 120
Sweetman, Paul 188
Swidler, Ann 4546
symbolic domination 207, 112; see also
symbolic violence
symbolic economy 48
symbolic violence see symbolic domination
systems of preferences and tastes 193
systems theory 14
T
Tanguy, Yves 33
taste 53n1, 167168
Taymur, Muhammad 69
the honest spokespersons norm see the
true interpreters norm
The Siege 80n3; see also Kotzias, Alexandros
The Teeth of the Millstone 89n3; see also
Kasdaglis, Nikos
the true interpreters norm 179n5; see also
Harris, Brian
theory of practice as practice 12
Thomas, Hugh 211
Thompson, John 80
Thompson, Paul 138
Tobis Klangfilm Company 3435
Tokyo Tribunal (International Military
Tribunal of the Far East)

as example of silence and ambiguous
answers in interviews 144145
Torikai, Kumiko 135, 143, 144
Toury, Gideon 45, 52, 6364, 97
trajectories
as resources 4748
translation
as derivative vs. creative activity 164
history and history of ~ 208
industry in Finland 118, 121, 124, 126n1
sociology see sociology of ~
strategies
domestication and foreignization 52
euphemization 82, 8587, 89n13
hyper-correction 82, 8788
omissions 82
(discourse) sanitizing 82, 8586
stylistics / translator stylistics 163
translational shifts 84
translator training
situation in Israel 45, 4748; see also
professionalization
attitudes towards 4748
translator(s)
as cultural agent(s) 43
ideal ~ / interpreter see ideal translator /
interpreter
translators meaning 166
translator-cum-reader and translator-cumwriter 166
translatorial choices 52, 172, 174, 177, 178,
180n23
patterns 172, 174, 178
deviance 172, 174, 175, 177, 178, 180n23
translatorial competence see competence:
translatorial
Tymoczko, Maria 208
Tyulenev, Sergey 1314, 151
Tziovas, Dimitris 77
U
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) 194195
urbanization studies 1415
Urry, John 187188
V
Valle de los Cados Association 210, 215n4
Index
Valtinos, Thanasis 7677; see also

Orthokosta
Vasilikos, Vasilis 89n11
Venuti, Lawrence 80, 135
Verdonk, Peter 163, 165, 166, 167, 172,
179n7,12, 180n17,22,24
Vermeer, Hans J. 126n1
Veyne, Paul 204205
Vicinus, Martha 86
Vidal Claramonte, M. C. frica 22n11
Vias, ngel 210
vocational ethos 51
voice 118119, 120, 123, 125; see also
Hirschmann, Albert O.
Vorderobermeier, Gisella M. 22n2,10, 95, 151
W
Wacquant, Loc J.D. 11, 15, 63, 111112, 114,
154, 189, 190, 192, 198199n2
Wadensj, Cecilia 9394, 135136
Watkins, Megan 46
235
Watson, Tony J. 49
Weber, Max 31
Wenger, Etienne 45
White, Hayden 204205, 208, 213
Whitfield, Raoul 34
Wieland, Stacey M. B. 4950
Willis, Paul 4546
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 193, 206
Wolf, Michaela 14, 15, 22n10,12, 43, 4647,
64, 9495, 115116, 135, 159, 171,
180n20, 185, 207, 213, 214
work satisfaction 116
writerly texts vs. readerly texts 165
Y
Young, Robert 204
Yow, Valerie Raleigh 142
Z
Zerubavel, Eviatar 98
Earlier volumes in the APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION STUDIES series
The Voices of Suspense and Their Translation in Thrillers

Volume 39 Edited by Susanne M. Cadera and Anita Pavi Pintari
Reclaiming Romeo and Juliet: Italian Translations for Page,
Stage and Screen
Volume 38 By Vincenza Minutella
Audiovisual Translation through a Gender Lens
Volume 37 By Marcella De Marco
Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility at the Crossroads
Volume 36 Edited by Aline Remael, Pilar Orero and Mary Carroll
The Translation of Fictive Dialogue
Volume 35 Edited by Jenny Brumme and Anna Espunya
China and Its Others
Knowledge Transfer through Translation, 1829-2010
Volume 34 Edited by James St. Andr and Hsiao-yen Peng
New Insights into Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility
Volume 33 Edited by Jorge Daz Cintas, Anna Matamala and
Joslia Neves
Translation as Stylistic Evolution
Italo Calvino Creative Translator of Raymond Queneau
Volume 32 By Federico Federici
The Politics and Poetics of Translation in Turkey, 1923-1960
Volume 31 By Sehnaz Tahir Graglar

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Remapping Habitus

APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION STUDIES

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014

Cover design: Studio Pollmann

Introduction: (Translatorial) Habitus A Concept that Upsets

Gisella M. Vorderobermeier (University of Graz)

Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation

Translators Identity Work: Introducing Micro-Sociological Theory

Remapping Habitus: Norms, Habitus and the Theorisation of Agency

Translatorial Hexis and Cultural Honour: Translating Captain

Interpreters in the Making: Habitus as a Conceptual Enhancement

The Interface between Bourdieus Habitus and Latours Agency:

PART III: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEORY AND EMPIRICAL

Oral History as a Research Method to Study Interpreters Habitus ............ 135

The (Re-)Construction of Habitus: A Survey-Based Account of

The Influence of the Habitus on Translatorial Style:

Bourdieus Habitus and Deweys Habits: Complementary Views

The Historian as Translator: Applying Pierre Bourdieu to the

Contributors to this Volume ........................................................................ 219

Introduction: (Translatorial) Habitus A Concept that

1. Bourdieus Habitus Concept Some Characteristics thereof and

The dispositions mentioned in the above quotation are reflected in common

In Bourdieus theory of practice as practice, the habitus takes on a key role

2. The Habitus Concept in Translation Studies and the Perspectives

3. The Aims of the Volume

ography, thus becoming intricately connected with concepts pertaining to space

within the same translators work in a methodological sound and illuminating

In his monograph, Strecker (2012: 84) endeavours to systematise concurring

Vorderobermeier, Gisella M. 2013a. Translatorische Praktiken aus soziokognitiver Perspektive.

PART I: GENERAL THEORETICAL ASPECTS

Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in

field of translation studies, legitimacy here being understood in the sociological

Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation Studies?

to define the action of agents as emanating from deliberate strategies whose

Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation Studies?

Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation Studies?

Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation Studies?

Thus, Coindreaus specific habitus is based on two historical series with no

Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation Studies?

Is Habitus as Conceived by Pierre Bourdieu Soluble in Translation Studies?

Translators Identity Work: Introducing Micro-Sociological

The growing use of Bourdieus theory within Translation Studies in recent

Translators Identity Work

Translators Identity Work

Accordingly, in order to understand the performance of translators and their

Translators Identity Work

Translators Identity Work

3. Identity and Habitus: Concluding Comments with some Further

Translators Identity Work

Translators Identity Work

PART II: INTRA-DISCIPLINARY INTERRELATIONS (RE)VISITED

Remapping Habitus: Norms, Habitus and the Theorisation of

Figure: A photograph of Tanyus Abdu (18691926) with three lines of Arabic

Remapping Habitus: Norms, Habitus and the Theorisation of Agency

2. Understanding Habitus: A Few Theoretical Implications

understanding of agency in cultural production and consumption, on the one

Remapping Habitus: Norms, Habitus and the Theorisation of Agency

of habitus that is triggered by investigating a different translation setting, with

3. Translatorial Agency: Norms or/and Habitus

Remapping Habitus: Norms, Habitus and the Theorisation of Agency

the translation field. However, reproduction of social structures and institutions,

Remapping Habitus: Norms, Habitus and the Theorisation of Agency

4. The Habitus Made Visible: Translatorial Hexis and