translation studies. retrospective and prospective views

Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective Views ISSN 2065 - 3514
(2008) Year I, Issue 1
Galaţi University Press
Editors: Elena Croitoru and Floriana Popescu (First volume)
Proceedings of the Conference Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective Views
9 – 11 October 2008 “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, ROMANIA
pp. 90 - 97
LANGUAGE IN LITERATURE: COMMUNICATION OR
POLITICS?
Michaela Praisler and Alexandru Praisler
“Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
Human communication, that direct and efficient strategy of socially
influencing the political behaviour of individuals, has an extremely
powerful impact on attitudes and beliefs which, in turn, determine a given
culture. Part of the cultural context is literature – technically, a discoursegenerating
mechanism – which cannot exist in complete isolation from the
political situation and cannot but breathe of ideological substrata. In other
words, within a closed circle or along a repeated, cyclical pattern,
communication, politics and literature coexist, mutually influencing and
revisiting one another. Things however are more intricate than they appear
at first sight, with the fictions of politics overlapping the politics of fiction,
and with both converging towards the act of communication – mediated
(or not) via translation.
Along these lines, a good example of how literature functions as an
act of political communication and translation seems to be George Orwell’s
ground-breaking novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The text in question
illustrates all the above mentioned and formulates an artistic credo at the
same time.
In a letter written to Julian Symons, dated 10 May 1948, Orwell says:
“I am not a real novelist anyway… One difficulty I have never solved is
that one has masses of experience which one passionately wants to write
about… and no way of using them up except by disguising them as a
novel.” (in Brown, 1977: 16) The literary wrapper Orwell refers to clearly
underlines at least two ideas: that reality and fiction constantly contaminate
each other’s territories and that, if one needs to make one’s voice heard, the
best communication exercise remains fiction itself. Nineteen Eighty-Four
assumes them both at the level of structure and at the deeper level of
content.
Structurally, the novel is made up of three parts: the first sets the
scene, the second contains the simple plot and the third evolves around
Winston Smith’s breakdown and re-education.
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