Influence of Orientalism and Cultural Imperialism on Cultural Translation - Report Example

Influence of Orientalism and Cultural Imperialism on Cultural Translation As globalization increasingly gains recognition and popularity all over the world, cultural translation has continually suffered significant influence from cultural imperialism and Orientalism. This is particularly evident in the journalism and film industry, as majority of the media originates from Western civilization. Drawing upon the theory of cultural imperialism, Western nations dominate the media industry around the world, which consequently has a powerful effect on the other non-Orient and Third World cultures through the imposition of Western views. On the other hand, some media portray wrong or biased translation of certain cultures based on the concepts of cultural imperialism and Orientalism (Chinnammai, 2005:152). This paper seeks to assess the influence of cultural imperialism and Orientalism on cultural translation based on Egyptian Arabic-Islamic cultural translation. The paper further analyzes the contents of Sofia Coppola’s film “Lost in Translation” on grounds of cultural imperialism and Orientalism. Orientalism and cultural imperialism emerged into the academic world in the late 1970s by Edward Said book on Imperialism. According to Said, an unrecognized and unexamined western elites and scholars prejudice towards cultures in the Asian and Middle East as a whole, or generally termed as ‘The Orient’, was present. According to the author, orietalism represented the distribution of geopolitical awareness into scholarly, philosophical, economic, historical, and aesthetic texts that highlighted a distinct difference between the occident (the Middle East and Asian) and the orient (Western scholars and elites). In his text, Said was accusing both the western culture and western scholars of reductionism, arguing that United States perceives Arabs and Muslims as either potential terrorists or oil suppliers (Pym, 2003). The text further argues that the Western societies have very little awareness of the passion of Arabs and Muslims. What is present rather, according to Said, is a series of crude misrepresentation of the Islamic world, which essentially makes the world vulnerable to military aggression. Despite the varied critique on his work, Orientalism became a significant theory particularly in the media industry. On the other hand, cultural imperialism has various definitions, but the basic description states that it is the imposition of foreign civilization or viewpoint on a particular people or their culture. Consider the postcolonial Egyptian intellectual subjectivity for instance, with reference to Abdelfattah Kilito, a Moroccan literary theorist. Drawing upon his book ‘Thou Shall Not Speak my Language’, the author starts by an interesting digression on the psychological underbelly of translation in the modern and medieval Arab worlds. The author gives an example of an influential Egyptian man living in the early twentieth century, who was famous for offering free retranslation of other Arabic translation. The book notes that each page in the Egyptian’s discourse echoes the same question: “how do I become European?” The Arabic only stance donned by Egyptian suggests that it is a strategy to escape the charge of surrender to Europe. The author covers the Egyptian with Cairo’s Islamic institution of higher learning, thus presenting him as an exemplar of Arab-Islamic tradition. However, he sport European underwear underneath (Gillmor, 2006:97). By doing this, the author implicitly represents the Egyptian as willing to convert to European but not exposing this explicitly. In the above scenario, the translated colonized mimic is himself, not the colonizer. He camouflages his own Europeanness, not his nativity. This is because he has undergone European translation. Drawing from Walter Benjamin’s allegory for the relationship of translation to original, the Alzharite cloak is simply a robe hanging around the original (European undergarment). In essence, the colonized preserves the native’s sovereignty by equating himself with the European through fusing himself to the colonizer. It then follows that the Egyptian must don the Azharite royal robe because of the fusion of his native being and body. However, if mimicry becomes menace, in accordance with Homi Bhabha’s argument, then looking closely will show the European threatening to peek out (Chada and Kavoori, 2000:421). As both as a response and an instrument of cultural imperialism, cultural translation applies its power in trans-validating zone of seduction, beyond the boundaries of pure identity (or a meaning of forced homology, what Jacques Derrida refers to as transcendental signified) and pure difference: a seemingly liberationist, but equally forced preservation-in-transit literalness of the word. These two perceptions still dominate the postcolonial theories of translation, which are only initially breaking free from their tautology. In most scenarios, masses understand translation as a bipolar choice between domestication and foreignization, drawn back to the precarious understanding of imperialism as a bipolar dynamic of resistance and domination (Galeota, 2004:32). We may argue that even Bhabha, who initially opposed the simple politics of anti-colonial and colonial imposition write back, tends to favor the oppositional native. Thus, he describes the mimicry language, a native hybrid idiom that civil disobedience and civility of the colonizer, as a form of resistance. While criticizing Lisa Lowe’s concept of static dualism of difference and identity, Lydia Liu argues that the current trend in postcolonial theory may lead to reduction in the power relationship between the West and the East to that of Western domination and native resistance. Evaluating the politics of translation under colonialism, Liu concludes that a non-European language does not necessarily reflect some form of resistance to European languages. However, the inception of her insight has been slow. Lawrence Venuti, another early-twentieth-century translator, argues that domesticating translation, which essentially conceals foreign attributes, thus passing itself as non-translation, is more dangerous to the concerned culture, and more likely to conform to audience and translator foreign ideologies as it deeply absorbs foreign ideologies into the familiar body. The writer further argue that foreignization translation, which attempts to convert the culture of interest consciously through the introduction foreign ideologies, encourage a more critical and selective appropriation of the translation into the target culture. However, Richard Jacquemond disputes this preposition, arguing that the translation of Egyptians from French literature were the most freeing and freest translations, as they suggest that Egyptians held the French at an epistemological position. Contrary, he assert s that later French translations on Egyptians, which were more faithful to the original and thus likely to make foreign the target language and culture, thus contorting Arabic to approximate French, mark the start of French hegemony over Arabic (Griffin, 2002:12). It thus follows that both Jacquemond and Venuti adopt the resistant translation as the desirable translation, one that avoids the surrender to seduction of translation. Their divergent views on domestication results from their investment in resistance: Venuti contends that the native signifier conceals the surrender to the colonizer, while the former argues that it signifies a greater resistance to that surrender. Nonetheless, the two do not exactly say what happens when a native signifier connects to a foreign signifier to shore up the native power through the foreign power. Through examples of unbroken native Arabic, which combines overt self-preservation and self-assertion to covert intimacy the dominant European language, these authors leave the audience wondering whether surrender to translation and resistance to translation might translate each other (van Elteren, 2003:171). We may argue that the muse of European culture has approached and seduced the Egyptian translator, leaving a relic behind and clinging to that fondness. In this regard, affect complicates resistance. Consider al-Isawi’s trans-historical comparison of post-1066 England and post-1798 Egypt, particularly the fate of English after William the Conqueror to that of Arabic after Napoleon Bonaparte. The author argues that Egypt is less colonized that England, its former colonizer. According to him, England had lost much of its “original tongue”, absorbing about two-thirds of its current language in only one century, while Egypt, occupied for the same duration by the French, gained and lost nothing. However, the author’s assumption is not true as French dominated Egypt for only three years from 1978 to 1801. It appears that the author bases his long French occupation premise on the fact that the French significantly influenced the Egyptian culture long after its presence in the country. Furthermore, the author exempts one important cultural element from such influence: language. Focused on proving the Arabic immunity to the French influence, the author dismisses any influences of the French dominance to Arabic as a language, thus equating the unequal field between Arabic and French and therefore the distinction between a dominated Egypt and a dominant France (Terry, 2007:64). In addition, he positions to oppose any distinction between English and Arabic, thus also a difference between a dominant England and a dominated Egypt. Thus, al-Isawi advocates two fictions; first, that Egypt did not suffer any cultural or linguistic losses due to imperialism, and second, that colonial Egypt is not equal, in whatever ways, to its European colonizers. He strongly opposes the impacts of cultural imperialism; he cements its seductive logic, thus dissolving the inequality of colonized and colonizers in the possibility of their equality. Most Egyptian literati of the early twentieth century emphasized on the political, economic, and military havoc wreaked by European imperialism on their land, but majority opposed the suggestion that the European dominance also resulted to cultural violence ob their understanding of literature and language and their broader knowing and thinking. In most cases, their relationship to European epistemology and aesthetics in terms of love, not subjection. Thus, elite Egyptians brought European culture into Arabic at an era when Europe was displaying formidable power over the Arab-Islamic world. However, their awareness of this power was denied, first moving to perceive European knowledge for self-validation, then emulating European episteme, and translating the Arabic-Islam and their cultural forms towards the greater Europeanness (Tomlinson, 2001:73). Lost in Translation, a film by Sofia Coppola, has come under criticism over racist themes. There are two camps of critics: one that feels that the movie is a mockery of the Japanese people, and the others who feel the urge to defend the authenticity on Coppola’s representation of dislocated foreigners in Tokyo. The first group advocates for fair representation, while the other that political correctness should not lock out the romance and humor of sincerely produced film. The first camp argues that the film presents Japanese as clowns rather than people. Moreover, the performances are flawlessly hilarious. Take Yitaka Tadokoro for instance, a character that plays the mop-headed hipster, directs a commercial by Bob with the precision liveliness of Stravinsky by Seiji Ozawa. Hayashima, a call girl, plays comically with Murray, a straight man, accusing him of “liping her stocking”, elevating the joke about Japanese confusion on R’s and L’s, as well as the absurdity of her solo tussle on Bob’s hotel room. Then there is Matthew Minami, who represents the Japanese archetype: the silly, teahouse homosexual. The setting and timing of all gestures, lines, and editing is perfect, but the comedy is based on the ‘otherness’ of the Japanese (Paik, 2006). Consequently, we tend to laugh at them as opposed to laughing with them. This is the fundamental reason for the racist accusations. The style of footage of the entire film focuses on representing Japanese as a sorry lot, primarily preoccupied with adopting western things. An example is the Arbus-detachment shot of spiky-haired youth with a videogame guitar. The footage alternates such scenes with appropriate reverent, though equally inscrutable temple and shrine sequences. In addition, the film seems both smug and scornful because imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Actually, this statement occurs in a Charlotte’s husband dialogue, where he states that “let them be who they are! They are trying to be Keith Richards but they are just nerdy and skinny”. The important point to note here is that when westerners ape the rolling Stones, it is okay and normal: but when kids from Asian try doing the same, they are simply pathetic wannabes. The western perception is that they should not be playing rock and roll, but rather meditating on a dojo somewhere (Paik, 2006). The creation of a universe, which singles out a single group and represents them as cartoons or dolls, has political consequences. Arguably, this is the most effective method of showing the “otherness” of that group. Once such otherness is establish, there will always be justification for violence against that group. This is particularly evident in Hearts and Minds 1974 documentary by William Westmoreland, where he dismisses Vietnamese causalities stating, “In the Orient, life is cheap”. In other words, Westmoreland is saying that “they” experience death in a different way than “us”, thus it is not a big deal to them. The otherness concept can justify any subjugation, occupation, or incursion, the myth of otherness has implicit corollary. The basic assumption is that the west knows better, thus, the orient cannot fend for them without the assistance of the west (Paik, 2006). This further translates to the military need of the orient to install their military for democracy since they cannot afford it, and genetically modified foods since they are dying of poverty. To give its meaning to the protagonists, Lost in Translation entirely depends on the “otherness” of the Japanese people, as well as to shape its plot and color its scenery. The inaccessibility of Japan acts as an extension for the loneliness and alienation of Charlotte and Bob in their lives, thus providing the perfect germination environment for the romance: only they can understand one another. Now, taking away the hilariousness of the Japanese people will automatically cut out the comedy, and the intense yearning of eth characters becomes neutral and evaporates the plot (Tomlinson, 2001:79). The “otherness” is evidently a sincere and innocent construction, only meant to set up the dramatic tension, not to victimize people. However, art does not isolate the political context form its function. Despite this, the otherness logic has dominated cinematic storytelling and English literature for centuries so much that even a film like Lost in Translation, whose setting is in a state of superior social condition, superior technological prowess, and superior politesse; the European protagonist still manages to cop the popular attitude in accordance with Kipling. Indeed, the campaign tagline for the film should have been “West is west and east is east, and their twain shall never meet”. The operative word here is “arrogance”. In the film, neither Charlotte nor Bob tries to communicate in Japanese, not even a single reply to the warm welcome and courtesy of the local people. Worse, Bob directs a joke at the unknowing bystanders, whose only crime is being Japanese nationalists (Paik, 2006). Considering the attraction that colonial attraction possibly represents for the postcolonial subject may leave the door open between resistance and domination open, not for the mere structural collision but also for the positioning of translational seduction between the two, thus for the reinterpretation of cultural imperialism. On the threshold between resistance and domination is a force that diverts the two. The text that exerts this power mobilizes affect (the connection of the colonized to them, which historically is also a connection to their lost sovereignty) to represent the colonized as the flattering likeness of eth colonizer (Tomlinson, 2001:102). This translational mobilization of affect may lure the colonized into adoring the colonizer in similar intensity and terms as they would themselves, thus ultimately embracing the very power they are said to resist. Therefore, this paper draws inference from Said’s understanding of the influence of European cultural imperialism on the current Arab-Islamic world. In summary, Said’s cultural imperialism theory generally focuses on resistance and dominance binary. In this structure, culture emerges as a discursive shield that the colonized always opposed and the colonizers always impose, though the attack on the target culture may turn its very terms. Drawing upon Said’s argument, we may argue that it is not possible to extract the translational politics during the post-1798 era in Egypt from the colonial powers that shapes it. Furthermore, it is not possible to understand the effects of cultural imperialism based on imposition alone. However, by crossing the “or-else” with the “come-hither” of the British and the French imperialism and their perception of Egyptian, it is possible to determine the effects of this imperialism on the Egyptian ideologies of literary and translation transformation, and perhaps explain why the Egyptian translated the European literature so deceitfully (Morley, 2000:132). Indeed, that is the same reason why Tomlinson wonders why cultural imperialism bases on the perception that alien cultural practices and products are imposed on culture, though most receivers do not perceive them as a form of imposition. He further argues that such an idea presupposes the independence of cultures, thus urging us to view cultural imperialism as a loss rather than an imposition. However, this paper attempts a rather complex theorization of cultural loss. It further conjectures that loss is a function of the very will of the colonized to redefine their independence through the colonizer’s translation: a will primarily motivated by the colonizer’s force apprehension. The power of Orientalism to produce the non-western subject as an inferior and the combining the alleged superiority of eth European resides in the radical difference it raise between East and West. Thus, Orientalism replaces an inception of the self, where the self contains its own difference, with a self-Other dualism (Main, 2001:89). From this European standpoint then, there was an eminent fiction creating an absolute separateness between the European purified self and the excluded Orient. Therefore, cultural translation suffers significantly from cultural imperialism and Orientalism in that the West feel more privileged than the orient. In a broader sense, this directly affects how the West perceive the Orient, and since the West largely dominates the media, it tends to produce cinematic and literary discourse that reflect their actual perception of the “other”. The supplementation logic, which is essentially between the dominance and resistance, essentially describes the imperial universalism that continually haunts the cultural translation theory, despite the sensitivity to incommensurability of languages. This is so because the logic stirs up the relationship between languages-in-translation, which Benjamin calls the notion of languages to supplement each other in their intention mode in such a manner that their supplementary form approximates pure language (White, 2001:13). Therefore, we may argue that if the imperial power of Egypt’s status was peculiar, so was that of its postcolonial era. 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