Production, tradition, and importation: A key to the description of literature and translated literature

Abstract

In recent Translation Studies, the question of culture is a key issue. At this moment the link between translation and culture is generally accepted in the canonized theories, the difficulty is how exactly to define the cultural context. Culture indeed is both complex and multiple: which culture, what kind of a culture exactly? In empirical-descriptive research, it is crucial to establish which is the exact cultural environment and which are its relations with the neighbor cultures. Translation is one of the key areas in any cultural system and, while trying to interpret the position of translations in a given cultural system, there is no way of excluding a few hypothetical logics. Each cultural area seems to function as a synchronic and diachronic combination of (at least) three key units: (1) Production: in synchronic terms, everything a given cultural system produces (documents, activities, internal and external contacts); which takes place in a diachronic perspective; (2) Tradition: the full set of activities and positions along the diachronic axis, which of course depends on dominants options and selections (norms); (3) Importation: the organized selection of  productions of neighbor cultures, - in which translation is inevitably present. The cultural profile of a given situation depends on the dynamic configuration of the three key components; (1), (2) or (3) may be dominant, but never by the full elimination of any of the other units. This implies that the dominant position of one among the components may explain why the other ones are more or less reduced.