This volume, edited by Jeremy Munday, brings together the contributions of nine researchers on various aspects of translation as intervention. The data come from different cultures and disciplines, and the contexts include Canada, the European countries, the United States, India, China, South Africa, and the Arab countries.
Readers can find reflections on and analyses of the translator’s perspective in the first two chapters. Chapter 1 sheds some light on the role of translator as an “intervenient” being. The second chapter elaborates on the notion of voice. The translator addresses the readers in a certain voice, or combination of voices. The translator chooses to write in “my voice,” “your voice,” or “his voice.” The following two chapters discuss intervention in translation studies in India and China, respectively. The former is concerned with the significance of the target language choice as the most important intervention in the translation process. The latter examines the question of representational justice in translation. The author challenges the injustice in the selection of source texts and justice in the determination of translation strategies and in the development of translation concepts appropriate to the non-Western translation studies.
Jef Verschueren, in chapter 5, is concerned with a pragmatic perspective on translation. His emphasis is on the significance of a dynamic view of context for translation. Basil Hatim, in chapter 6, examines intervention at text and discourse levels. He believes the translator must find ways to project appropriate pragmatic and semiotic values. The last three chapters are concerned with endeavors to intervene in the translation process by participants other than translators. The translators/interpreters are, then, less intervenient and more intervened on.
All the chapters are well written and contribute to a better understanding of the nature of intervention in translation. Some of the issues discussed are similar in certain ways but differ depending on the political and social contexts. Some chapters offer a very specific analysis of intervention in translation; others offer a more general view. On the whole, this edited volume provides interesting contributions toward a better understanding of translation as intervention.
