The Translator' Dilemma with Bias
Babel: Revue internationale de la traduction/International Journal of Translation, (2002)Abstract
The translator is a sociable human being in the sense that he lives in a certain community of certain belonging and intricate complex of religious beliefs, feelings, cultural background, peculiarities, mental and psychological constraints, special language, dialect, idiolect and sociolect, etc. He is, therefore, under all kinds of pressure. Amid such infinite, endlessly changing and developing intricacies and biases, it is hard to expect anything else but a biased translator. The first part of this paper considers the fallacy of unbias with regards to the translation of major sensitive topics like culture, religion, politics and sex, as well as technical, general and abstract texts. It comes to the conclusion that the translator's bias, rather than unbias, is the case in the different types of topics and texts, but with varying degrees. The second part deals with bias in translation as two main types: negative (for reasons of impressiveness, snobbishness, hypocrisy, ignorance, negligence, prejudice, exaggeration, minimization, and the like) and positive (for showing respect, avoidance of insulting readers, glorification, euphemisation , etc.). It ends up with stressing the point that bias is not always bad, on the contrary, sometimes it can be good and advisable. At the same time, it reflects the inevitability of the translator's bias, whether he likes it or not. Thus, his dilemma continues.