1. Translation: The role of intercultures
Anthony Pym
Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Tarragona, Spain
Facoltà di Scienze Politiche Università degli Studi di Milano February
© Intercultural Studies Group Universitat Rovira i Virgili Plaça Imperial Tàrraco Tarragona Fax: (++ 34)

2. Davos Culture? University degrees Employed by institutions Travel
Neo-liberalism
...the values of 1% of the world’s population

3. Forget this culture? We study power, not people
These are the people who might bring about change
They might even listen to us
...because we are their experts(?)
...and the elite is thus much larger.

4. A clash theory:

5. What’s missing? Cross-cultural intertextuality Overlaps of cultures
Positions for receivers (how many meanings?)
Positions for translators
Positions for experts…

6. An alternative model:

7. An even better alternative model:
Locale 4 IC
Locale 2
Locale 1
Locale 3

8. What is different here?
Translation moves out from a shared centre (an interculture)
It moves towards locales
There are no target texts in the interculture

9. What is an interculture?
Relations are professional
They have secondness with respect to monocultural communication
They become more independent the more technical their tasks are.
(They will one day rule the world?)

10. Examples of intercultures:
Professional associations of translators
Localization teams
Multinational communications companies
University language departments
(most of our classrooms?)

11. Where are cultures?

12. Where are intercultures?

13. Which means... Translators work in networks (of intermediaries).
Translations mark the limits of cultures.
The communication borders are nodes, increasingly in cities.
Translation precedes cultural identity.

14. General hypotheses
The provenance paradox: Diversity of provenance reinforces the group’s identity.
Agent-principle reversal within the field of expertise
Growth with technologization
Extension and loss of secondness.

15. The effects of globalization
Communications are characterized by complexity
Cooperation requires reduction of complexity
The intercultural can reduce complexity through calculation; the monocultural does so through imagery.

16. Monocultural vs intercultural
Pure vs hybrid
Sedentary vs nomadic
Image vs calculation
Iconic vs symbolic.

17. Why intercultures do not rule
Intermediaries are subject to mistrust.
Intermediaries use the iconic badly; they have no imagery for their identity.
Professionalism is exclusive and fragmentary.
Nations seek to protect their system of sovereignty.

18. How to intervene Normatively (teach people how to reduce complexity).
Critically (deconstruct the iconic; develop alterity; restore complexity).
Analytically (understand the reductions socially necessary for action).