This study aims to enhance the understanding of translation as a social practice and ultimately improve the social visibility of translators by carrying out three-phase analyses on three cases of translators engaging in the field of business books and...
This study aims to enhance the understanding of translation as a social practice and ultimately improve the social visibility of translators by carrying out three-phase analyses on three cases of translators engaging in the field of business books and thus exploring the existence and functioning of the social space where business book translation takes place.
In the Korean publishing market, business books have been regarded and treated as a separate genre since around the early 2000s. Hit drastically by the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, and other subsequent and less-serious crises, the demand for business books has risen sharply. The sales of business books surpassed literature genre for the first time in 2021. Despite the popularity and the high proportion of translated books in the Korean publishing market, business books and their translators have received little, if not no, attention from Korea’s translation scholars whose primary interest has long been in literature genre and the translated texts themselves rather than other genres and the social context in which translation is practiced. It is only recently that the research focus began shifting from the texts into what’s outside the texts. Too often, however, those studies fail to see the holistic picture of translation as a social practice, ending up with a limited focus, i.e., using translators’ notes only instead of the whole paratexts, looking at either the texts or the social context instead of both, etc. What’s also evident in domestic literature, however, is the underrepresentation of field theory by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu which has been pursued most extensively by international translation scholars. Against the backdrop, this study aims to contribute to broadening the horizon of domestic literature on book translation and translation sociology by tracing the social trajectories of three business book translators (translator A, B, and C) from the perspective of Bourdieu’s field theory and the key concepts put forward by the theory such as habitus, field, capital, hexis, and illusio. For this, the study employed triangulation methodology to cross-validate the results and ensure the reliability and stability of the research findings. Beginning with a preliminary analysis–a ¬mini literature review–on the current shape of the Korean book translation field that is a parent field of the field in question, the main part of analysis consisted of three parts: qualitative coding on paratexts; qualitative analysis on one-on-one interviews; and hexis analysis that includes both move analysis on translators’ notes, and quantitative and qualitative corpus analysis on published translations. All of the data were designed to explore what strategies the research participants employed to acquire capital in the field, how they interacted with the structure and the agents in the field, and how their linguistic products actually reflected what they said about their hexis–the linguistic part of habitus. Based on the findings, this study brought to the fore two ultimate questions. How is Korea’s business book translation field working? Does Korea’s business book translation field constitute a “field” in Bourdieu’s term?
Through the above research methods, this study yielded the following results regarding the field of business book translation.
First, the preliminary analysis on existing literature revealed that the field was directly influenced by events such as economic crises in the economic field, one of the parent fields to the field studied. It was also discovered that the emergence of the business book translation field had been triggered by the Asian financial crisis in two ways. In the wake of the crisis, Korea signed on the IMF rescue package that came with then-unfamiliar Western economic ideas and systems, namely, restructuring, more flexible labor policies, neoliberalism and globalization. First, many large corporations, including those in the financial sector, underwent restructuring and laid off their employees. There was some high-quality labor force with domain knowledge and corporate experience that came to enter the book translation field, and translator B and C were among those. Second, although the sudden influx of Western economic ideologies pushed up the demand for relevant knowledge, Korea then had no sufficient pool of authors who could cater to such demand. It was only natural for business book translators to play a crucial role in Korea’s reception of Western ideologies. With the rise in demand for business book translation, publishers began to favor translators with a degree in business administration to those without one. This was how translator A made a debut as a book translator. Another important finding is that the publishing field, to which the field in question belongs, prioritized commercial success over anything else.
Secondly, based on the preliminary findings, the paratexts of the three participants were collected, classified, and coded according to the Bourdieusian framework. The first round of findings was then vigorously cross-verified with one-on-one interview results. It was found that although the three translators followed different processes of capital accumulation through their translation practices in the field studied, they deployed one common strategy¬¬¬¬: the accumulation of objectified cultural capital in two forms–translated books, and paratexts. It was true that each of the three translators entered the field with a different amount and kind of embodied cultural capital–all with a business administration degree, but only B and C with abundant corporate and business experience. Their strategical move to build symbolic capital was found to be starkly different as well: Translator A concentrated on objectified cultural capital–mainly social media, while B started his own translation agency and educational institution to secure social capital and C put much effort to translate renowned books in his attempt to bring to this field the symbolic capital embedded in the original work and the author.
Those findings led to an important implication. The previous work of each translator was considered important credentials. Therefore, translators tried to build their reputation in the field by translating books they considered significant. However, because publishers that prioritize commercial success want to mobilize as much symbolic capital as they can muster from the original author, the original book, the proofreader, or the translator. It is not rare for them to invite a celebrity for endorsement. This could be, at least partly, why translators strategically accumulated various paratexts by writing books, giving lectures, appearing on broadcasts, engaging in social media activities, and doing whatever it takes to publicize themselves.
Thirdly, the analysis on paratexts and one-one-one interviews also revealed how three translators interacted with the social structure and other entities in the field: It was found that each translator adjusted their stance flexibly with regard to whether to resist or accept norms of the field depending on the degree of capital they accumulated, and the expected reactions from the counterparties of their social interactions.
It was also observed that the common process of cultural capital accumulation pursued by the three translators was a result of various interactions. In the business book translation field, celebrity endorsements are generally preferred over translators’ notes. But the interaction with that norm varied across translators: B who is a translation agency CEO acting as an intermediary between publishers and translators and A who usually finds translation work from A’s agency instead of directly from clients were more receptive to the practice without much disagreement. This however is not the case for translator C. Despite his expertise in business, he initially accepted the norm upon entering the field, but later strongly demanded publishers or editors to include his translators’ notes as he acquired symbolic capital little by little in the field. Notably, translator A who was often not invited to write translator’s notes was found to actively utilize the translator biography to express his voice as a translator.
Also found in this part of analysis was the implicit assumption shared by all three translators, in other words, illusio–a common belief that a good translator is someone who translates good business books. It is according to the illusio that they appeared to struggle in order to translate the books they desired. In the early stages when none of the three translators had established themselves as translators, they had passively received translation requests from agencies or publishers and had little say about what to translate. But as they gained recognition in the field, translator A started bidding on translation work, while B established his own agency to freely choose books to translate. It was also in that stage when translator C began looking for publishers that would allow him to translate books of his choice, while also proposing a publicity plan with celebrity endorsement based on his social capital in the field studied. What is noteworthy is his social capital became effective only after he had proved his translation skills in the field.
Fourth, according to the hexis analysis which was divided into two parts––a move analysis on a total of 58 translators’ notes, and a corpus analysis on the 595,897-token samples from the first chapters of 60 original works and 60 translated books, three translators showed different levels of source orientation. Their tendency was partly consistent with the results from paratexts analysis and interviews. Two translators (A and B) appeared to regard source texts as so important that they tried to write mostly about source texts in translators’ notes and to maintain the structure and form of source texts in their translation. By contrast, translator C stressed the importance of incorporating the translator's voice in the translator's notes, and shifting the form and structure of source by splitting or rearranging sentences, and deleting or adding information if necessary for the sake of enhanced readability in the target culture. The corpus analysis found that C’s translations showed a higher frequency of shifts such as deletion, sentence splitting, and domestication strategies, while A and B adopted foreignization and addition strategies with their overall frequency of shifts statistically lower than C. In the case of translator's notes, the moves related to translation or the translator's voice appeared rarely in B's notes, while they accounted for 31% in C's. It was found that their different hexis was related to their translator training. According to C, his tendency to prioritize the target language was influenced by the book he read for self-learning translation skills. Translator A learned source-oriented translation during his enrollment in a Master’s degree translation program. Presumably, the foreignization tendency shown in the translations of A and B could be shaped by the social setting of the field that saw a massive, abrupt influx of Western economic theories and ideologies in the wave of neoliberal globalization.
In aggregate, the field of business book translation is a social arena where translators with expertise in business vie for more latitude to choose books they desire to translate based on their translation skills. Such struggles occur because translators practicing in the field share common illusio that translating good books leads to success as a translator.
Then, can we say that the field of business book translation in Korea is a space of struggle over the appropriation of capital as defined by Bourdieu? Even in the sociology of translation literature which considers translation as a social practice, there are quite a few studies questioning the existence of translation field, citing translation’s peripheral and non-institutional aspects, and lack of clear entry barriers. However, this study argues that the field of business book translation does constitute a field in Bourdieu’s term, as it is an autonomous arena where agents with domain knowledge share common illusio and struggle for symbolic capital and power to choose books they want to translate based on the field’s unique interest–translation skills.
This study is a sociological translation study that tracks down the life trajectories of three individual translators for exploring the existence and functioning of the business book translation field. It holds significance in terms of its subject and analytical methodology as follows.
First, the study adopted systematic triangulation combining a quantitative and qualitative analysis on translation texts and translators’ notes as well as the social context and background in which these texts are produced with detailed description on analysis techniques and procedures. By presenting a research model that can be applied to translators in various fields, it can contribute to filling the quantitative and qualitative gaps in existing literature and broadening the horizons of Korea’s sociological translation research.
Furthermore, this study provides rich data that can be of practical help to translation pedagogy in two aspects. Firstly, by presenting in detail the career trajectories of translators from entry into the high-demand field of business book translation to gaining recognition as a translator in the field, it can provide practical assistance not only to translation learners who want to enter this field but also to instructors who desire to shape relevant courses with more real practice cases. Secondly, by providing concrete examples of translation strategies utilized in actual translations with the cultural and social contexts that led to the selection of these strategies, it can be used as valuable material in translator training.
Lastly, this study placed translators at its center, ultimately contributing to enhancing the social visibility of translators and expanding the perception that translation is a significant social practice. It is hoped that the research model presented in this study will lead to further research on various translation fields and translators.