First, the title could be seen from within linguistic ethnography proper: translation, interpretation and representation are all issues that an ethnographer is confronted with during the various stages of any ethnographic study. In such cases, translation can be understood in a variety of ways ranging from how discourse in one language (already a problematic notion) can be rendered in another to how interactions in the field can be rendered in terms of academic or other forms of discourse - a vital aspect of knowledge-making that received much attention throughout the whole event. During the Tuesday morning session, Roseleen Howard and Lindsey Crickmay touched on many of these issues in their discussions of Andean Quechua autobiographic narratives. In outlining the trajectory of Gregorio and Asunta Manani's narratives as recorded by the Chilean anthropologists, Valderama and Escalante, Roseleen pointed to how the code mixing and switching between Quechua and Spanish had been elided in the English translation of the work by Gelles and Escobar. Though the English translation was designed to make the study accessible for undergraduate readers and was commendable as such, the translation strategy involved occluded the hybrid nature of the voices in the narratives. The trajectory was set out in terms of the numerous contact zones involved, ranging from the genesis of the narratives to their appreciation by North American students, in which the very narratives themselves could be regarded as contact zones, given their hybridity. So how should these voices be translated and (re)-presented (see title of talk) across the many contact zones involved? This raised issues of approach, of definitions of language and text (endogenous versus exogenous (Jacquemond, 1992)¹ ; languages in contact (sociolinguistics) and contact zones (cultural studies)). Could any text be constructed for one socio-cultural locus only (endogenous) and hence be highly opaque in translation as opposed to exogenous and hence more available to an audience outside that locus? Could the contact zone in the narratives be safely broken down into Spanish and Quechua? It was felt that the binary nature of such distinctions was forcing us down a road that led away from the issues at hand. Perhaps we might be better served by the Bakhtinian notions of the dialogic and the multi-voiced in language and text. This would allow us to encompass narrative interaction as (re)-presenting both self and other and larger socio-political agendas in the same analytical framework. It was also felt that 'default' monolingualism often seemed to creep in through the backdoor and cloud understanding of the problems that became visible on examining the data gleaned during such studies (for further discussion see also O'Driscoll, 2000, 2001)² . For example, did Gregorio and Asunta see themselves as speaking two separate languages, Spanish and Quechua, when relating their stories or as performing various registers and accommodating numerous voices that belong in a complex social network (something that emerged quite clearly in Lindsey Crickmay's discussion of Asunta's stories)? So, how can we render such complexity in translation? Which repertoires of representation can we draw on? Is the lexicon of post-industrialist English capable of doing justice to such terms as 'paisano' for example, and the agrarian community in which it is used? And yet this task has to be engaged, were it only to prevent us from essentializing and exoticizing the foreign and hence silencing it. In this respect, voices within Translation Studies advocate a translation pendant of Geertz's³ 'thick description' i.e. 'thick translation' (see Hermans, inter alia)⁴. This in turn raises the issue of ethnography as a construction and of how the researcher makes his/her findings available to the research community. How much and in which ways does their story differ from those of the narrators involved? Here again the notion of audience or readership was seen as being crucial in the construction of such narratives. And, quite poignantly, are we doing all this solely to get a PhD or research grant? Well my response would be yes, that too, but not only that, as I don't believe anyone does anything for merely one reason. Nor do I think it entirely fair to equate scholarship with intellectual cannibalism. Reflexivity is a vital part of linguistic ethnography but it would become counterproductive if paralysed the researcher. And when does one start translating? Can we safely assume that we first read/hear something before moving on to the next phase? Minimally, interpretation raises issues of how understanding is brought about in situ and even of making interaction possible at all (third party interpreter) and it also involves constructing plausible versions of events as they emerge. Richard Barwell's exploration of a transcript of a talk between students in a multi-cultural classroom offered plenty of room for discussion and multiple perspectives in this case. Though, ostensibly, reflexivity formed the cornerstone of Richard's session his handout put our powers of interpretation to the test. The details and setting of the transcript were only revealed to us as the session went on. A plausible version of events was constructed from the multiple perspectives provided by the forum members. Richard let things run and only now and then did he feed us some relevant information. In retrospect, I was struck by a similarity between how the picture of what was happening in the transcript was slowly being constructed from and through the various takes on it and how the translators in my ethnography confer in collating possible meanings of words and lines in poems. It seems that it is not a matter of choosing the 'right' take from any number of possible takes but that the very scope of readings and interpretations provide a field in which plausible takes can emerge. These translators place much importance by such exchanges even though they may be conflictual and even though they may reserve the right to disregard all that is said in them, something I consider impossible to do. The importance of the exchanges themselves is never put into question, however. Takes on Richard's transcript ranged from a wary and critical "we don't know" to claims of insider status and recourse to common sense but all stances seemed informed by a recognition that the researcher was no 'objective' sideline observer when it came to knowledge making. The third term in the title, 'representation', involves a complex set of items, like capturing voice quality or emotion in a piece of written transcription, or making code-switching and mixing that is clearly visible in one text just as visible in subsequent translations, to mention but two such items. Another important item in this respect, which was pointed out by Roseleen Howard during her discussion of the Gregorio Condori case, was how the discourse between the anthropologists, Valderama and Escalente and Gregorio was rendered as Gregorio's monologue in the published work. Here the interaction through which the ethnography came about had been elided and (re)-presented as monologues, most probably with the best intentions in the world, i.e. to make Gregorio and Asunta's voices heard in the world. But is it not so that in the process of recontextualising these narratives in academic discourse, the elision of the ethnographer reasserts his/her status as objective knowledgeable observer. As Mary Bucholtz⁵ points out: "[a]s long as we seek a transcription practice that is independent of its own history rather than looking closely at how transcripts operate politically, we will perpetuate the erroneous belief that an objective transcription is possible". Following the wealth of discussion at the Linguistic Ethnography Forum I arrived back in Belgium with another unsolved problem: whom and what am I (re)-presenting in my own research?

The second angle on the title of the Edgehill forum involved making translation, interpretation and representation themselves the foci of ethnographic study and many of the issues involved here were raised during Moira Inghillieri's opening talk. This process involves a considerable shift in paradigm within the field, not least putting into question many of the methodological and substantive givens of Descriptive Translation Studies. Once translation, interpretation and representation are posited as situated practice, structural or system-like approaches to such phenomena fall short in rendering the complexity involved, which is not to say that they are without value. Norm and System theories provide (intuitive) categories that may prove useful to ethnographers when studying situated translation processes. Steps towards situatedness have been taken in the literature (see Venuti (1998) and Hermans (1999)⁶, to name but two), and Hermans in particular says that much could be gained in the field of Descriptive Translation Studies from drawing on the insights provided by ethnography, especially as far as reflexivity is concerned (Hermans, 1999, p150). Moira's talk encompassed much of this discussion and more, and the various steps in her argument could seen as a genealogy of thought within Translation studies, as a move away from examining translation as a system or as disembodied exchanges between language systems to seeing it as a form of language use grounded in social and cultural interaction. Much of the literature within Descriptive Translation Studies recognises how translation and its products mirror the socio-cultural climate at any given time in history, which plays out in terms of what gets translated when and how and by whom, (e.g. see the role of English translations of Irish epic in the construction of 19th Irish nationalism in Tymoczko p62ff, 1999). This has given rise to calls for serious historical inquiry into how particular translations came about (see Pym, 1998)⁷. Norm and system theories posit a number of categories that translators bring to texts, ranging from initial choices of text in the first place to aesthetic codes, notions of genre, constraints from publishers, etc. Such norms function within literary (text) systems that are viewed as dynamic in that they undergo horizontal and vertical changes. Works and genres are replaced at the top of particular canons while those at the periphery move to the centre and vice versa. Translation is seen as fulfilling a vital role in all of this. Broadly speaking, the main goal of such inquires has been to identify (universal) translation strategies that underlie yet remain visible in translations and to see how these function in given societies at given times. Simply speaking, norms are a step down from the 'hard' grammatical rules encountered when dealing with any two languages in translation and as such, a step away from the notion of translation as (maximum) transfer of meaning from one language system to another. System theory recognises the grounded nature of text, that it cannot be examined outside the context in which it was written or recorded. On the face of it, there is little that a liguistic ethnographer would disagree with here. But on the whole, system theory, though it does recognise tension and resistance, does little to examine it to any great extent. Other writers fully recognise the many conflicts lying at the heart of translation, particularly those who examine it in the context of Post Colonial Theory. Yet there still is a need for more empirical study into how translators work, notwithstanding the elaborate taxonomy of translation norms extant in the literature. As this brief outline indicates, much of the discussion till now has been held at the 'macro' level. It seems that the discipline of Descriptive Translation Studies has been at a crossroads for a number of years, in that it still has to back up its assertions with findings in the field, as Pym (1998) suggests. As I understood it, Moira wondered in this respect how micro interaction might fit into a larger social context and vice versa (please excuse the clumsiness of my representation of her talk here). This required a social model that recognises the constructed nature of language and positions within it, which made Bourdieu the obvious though not unproblematic choice for the task. The question is at which stage of the proceedings Bourdieu's work becomes useful. Moira's ethnography of interpreters working within the asylum-seeking process draws the focus away from (literary) translation, which has been the subject of the bulk of writing in the field. The complexity of the data she has gathered, and the richness of description she brought to bear on it, certainly deserve more room and time for contemplation. One can certainly ask whether the mainly text-based models of analysis within Descriptive Translation Studies have the wherewithal to deal this complexity or even map out the processes involved. Such interactions cannot be (re)-presented in terms of source and target text or other forms of two-dimensional mapping available in the literature.

The points outlined above are sketchy at best and do little justice to the richness of discussion at the forum. Unfortunately, I had to leave during the business meeting and am therefore unable to comment on the Tuesday afternoon session. But it was not my intention to be complete, and if anything, the items discussed above reflect the issues I am struggling with in my own research. In order to understand what is happening within translation I found myself looking outside the field and discovering the perspectives and insights available in Linguistic Ethnography. Like the explorer at the beginning of this piece, I now find myself wondering whether to go home or go native: the perpetual predicament of a translator.

Peter Flynn 
Department of English 
University of Gent 
30 April 2003

1 Jacquemond, Richard 1992 “Translation and cultural hegemony” in Lawrence Venuti ed. Rethinking Translation Discourse Subjectivity Ideology pp 139-158, Routledge, London

2 O’Driscoll, Jim, 2000 Sociolinguistics in a straightjacket.  Functions of Language 7:1: 133-148, John Benjamins B.V. Amsterdam

O’Driscoll, Jim, 2001 Hiding your Difference: How non-global Languages are being Marginalised in Everyday Interaction, Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, Vol. 22: 6, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon

3 Geertz, Clifford. 1973 "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture." In The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, New York

4 Hermans, Theo  2003 'Cross- cultural Translation Studies Thick Translation', a paper given (UCL) during HET EIGENE EN HET VREEMDE: ONTMOETING VAN CULTUREN IN TEKST 1973EN VERTALING, at the HIVT, Antwerp, 12-13 March.

5 Bucholtz, Mary 2000, The politics of transcription, Journal of Pragmatics 32 1439-1465, Elsevier Science, Amsterdam

6 Venuti, Lawrence, 1992, Rethinking Translation. Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology Routledge London & New York; Hermans, Theo, 1999, Translation in Systems: Descriptive and System-oriented Approaches Explained,  St. Jerome, Manchester