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Distribution and translation

  • Tong King Lee

    Tong King Lee is Associate Professor of Translation at the University of Hong Kong. He is Luce-East Asia Fellow at the U.S. National Humanities Center (2020–2021); NAATI-Certified Translator (Australia); Chartered Linguist (Chartered Institute of Linguists, UK); and Specialist at the Hong Kong Council for the Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications. He is also the author of Translation and Translanguaging (2019, with M. Baynham) and Applied Translation Studies (2018), and an associate editor of the Routledge journal Translation Studies.

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Published/Copyright: February 19, 2021

Abstract

Translation has traditionally been viewed as a branch of applied linguistics. This has changed drastically in recent decades, which have witnessed translation studies growing as a field beyond, and sometimes against, applied linguistics. This paper is an attempt to think translation back into applied linguistics by reconceptualizing translation through the notions of distributed language, semiotic repertoire, and assemblage. It argues that: (a) embedded within a larger textual-media ecology, translation is enacted through dialogical interaction among the persons, texts, technologies, platforms, institutions, and traditions operating within that ecology; (b) what we call translations are second-order constructs, or relatively stable formations of signs abstracted from the processual flux of translating on the first-order; (c) translation is not just about moving a work from one discrete language system across to another, but about distributing it through semiotic repertoires; (d) by orchestrating resources performatively, translations are not just interventions in the target language and culture, but are transformative of the entire translingual and multimodal space (discursive, interpretive, material) surrounding a work. The paper argues that distributed thinking helps us de-fetishize translation as an object of study and reimagine translators as partaking of a creative network of production alongside other human and non-human agents.


Corresponding author: Tong King Lee, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, E-mail:

Funding source: Research Grants Council, HKSAR

Award Identifier / Grant number: General Research Fund/17602219

About the author

Tong King Lee

Tong King Lee is Associate Professor of Translation at the University of Hong Kong. He is Luce-East Asia Fellow at the U.S. National Humanities Center (2020–2021); NAATI-Certified Translator (Australia); Chartered Linguist (Chartered Institute of Linguists, UK); and Specialist at the Hong Kong Council for the Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications. He is also the author of Translation and Translanguaging (2019, with M. Baynham) and Applied Translation Studies (2018), and an associate editor of the Routledge journal Translation Studies.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a General Research Fund from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project Code: 17602219).

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Received: 2020-11-18
Revised: 2020-12-10
Accepted: 2021-01-07
Published Online: 2021-02-19
Published in Print: 2023-03-28

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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