TRANSLATION STUDIES AND MEMETICS

PRESENTED BY: NIMA MEHDIZADEH ASHRAFI

OVERVIEW

•Glossary

1. Memetics

1.1 What is a meme?

1.2 Meme Definitions

1.3 Meme Transmission

1.4 Parasitic memes

2. Memetics in Translation Studies

2.1 Memes in translation teaching

2.2 Memes in translation research

Conclusion

GLOSSARY

• Culture: the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that, for a certain group, define their

general way of life and that they have taken over from others

• Natural selection: the process by which certain organisms that can adapt to their

environment survive and reproduce, while the others disappear

• Cultural evolution: the development of culture over time, as conceptualized

through the mechanisms of variation and natural selection of cultural elements

• Replicator: an information pattern that is able to make copies of itself, typically

with the help of another system. Examples are genes, memes, and (computer)

viruses

• Meme: a cultural replicator; a unit of imitation or communication

• Meme pool: the set of all memes present in a given human population (cultural

context), in an analogy to gene pool

• Memeplex (or meme complex): a collection of mutually supporting memes,

which tend to replicate together

• Memetics: the theoretical and empirical science that studies the replication,

spread and evolution of memes

• Fitness: the overall success rate of a replicator, as determined by its degree of

adaptation to its environment, and the three requirements of longevity,

fecundity and copying- fidelity

• Longevity: the duration that an individual replicator survives

• Fecundity: the speed of reproduction of a replicator, as measured by the number

of copies made per time unit

• Copying-fidelity: the degree to which a replicator is accurately reproduced.

GLOSSARY

1. MEMETICS

1.1 What is a meme?

The word meme is a neologism coined

by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish

Gene (1976, 2006), and defined as a

self-reproducing and propagating

information structure analogous to a

gene in biology. Memes consist of

information which persist, propagate,

and influence human behavior.

1.2 MEME DEFINITIONS

•A few of the many definitions extracted from the literature:

A unit of cultural transmission (or a unit of imitation) that is a

replicator that propagates in the meme pool leaping from brain to

brain via (in a broad sense) imitation; examples: tunes, ideas,

catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of

building arches

Information patterns infecting human minds

An observable cultural phenomenon, such as a behavior, artifact

or an objective piece of information, which is copied, imitated or

learned, and thus may replicate within a cultural system.

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1.3 MEME TRANSMISSION

•A meme is transmitted after either being created in the mind of an

individual or re-transmitted after being received by an individual

from elsewhere.

• The potential host becomes an actual host if the meme satisfies

certain selection and fitness criteria. The new host replicates and

transmits the meme (perhaps with a different vector, such as a text

message instead of speech).

• Because the number of memes at any given time typically exceeds

the number of recipients able to absorb them, fitness criteria

determine which memes will survive (Natural Selection).

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1. Longevity:

The longer the meme survives, the

more copies can be made of it.

2. Fecundity:

The faster the rate of copying, the

more the replicator will spread.

3. Copying-fidelity:

the more accurate or faithful the

copy, the more will remain of the

initial pattern after several rounds of

copying.

Characteristics of a successful replicator (meme):M

emet

ics

1.4 PARASITIC MEMES

•We may call some memes selfish or parasitic, as they free ride on

the effort invested by individuals to gather and communicate

useful information. Such information parasites succeed by faking

the criteria that we use to recognize high-quality information.

•Memes have therefore been described as “mind viruses”, since

they similarly exploit our cognitive machinery to get themselves

replicated.

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EXAMPLES OF PARASITIC MEMES

• Chain letters, emails or text messages

• Certain religious cults

• Pseudo-sciences

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2. MEMETICS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES

•Memes were explicitly brought into Translation Studies by

Chesterman (1997), and independently by Vermeer (1997).

•Memes can spread via translations.

• So translation studies is a way of studying memes and their

transmission under particular circumstances. Translation studies is,

in fact, a branch of memetics!

• If we look at translation this way, it is not a matter of moving texts

or messages or meanings from one place to another, but rather of

replicating them (with inevitable mutations) in a different

environment: to translate is to spread ideas.

• Some memes have to do with translation itself: traditional ideas

about translation, ideas that have been carried down from one

generation to the next and spread from one culture to another.

• Chesterman suggests that there are also supermemes in this meme-

pool (TS):

The free vs. literal meme

The equivalence meme

The untranslatability meme

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TS

Dichotomy

Concept

Idea

2.1 MEMES IN TRANSLATION TEACHING

2.1.1 Memes as conceptual tools

2.1.2 Encouraging mutualist memes

2.1.3 Teaching translation historyMem

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TS

2.1.1 MEMES ARE CONCEPTUAL TOOLS

•All professionals have acquired a stock of concepts about

translation. These shared concepts — we could call them

professional translation memes — are the conceptual tools of their

trade. Professionals acquire these conceptual tools partly from

experience, but partly (perhaps mostly) from their training. The

task of a translation trainer, therefore, is to spread memes about

translation — useful memes.

Translation is a memetic activity

Strategy memes

Norm memes

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TS

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2.1.2 ENCOURAGE MUTUALIST MEMES!In teaching translation, we should try to encourage mutualist memes

and discourage parasitic ones.

1) Parasitic memeThere is no need for a theory of translation.

The untranslatability meme

The sameness/identity meme

2) Mutualist memeRelevant similarity between ST & TT

The translator as an expert, rather than a humble slave of the source text or

its author, or the client.

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TS

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2.1.3 MEMES EVOLVE: TEACH TRANSLATION HISTORY!

•Chesterman sees the history of translation as the evolution

of translation memes.

•Memes mutate as they evolve. Trainees can also be

encouraged to take part in this mutation. This would mean

exploring and experimenting with norm-breaking

translation, new solutions, new combinations of ideas...

maybe also keeping up with the latest innovations in

translation research.

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TS

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2.2 MEMES IN TRANSLATION RESEARCH

2.2.1 The cultural turn

2.2.2 The historical curve

2.2.3 The cognitive twistMem

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TS

2.2.1 THE CULTURAL TURN

•One of the fashionable concepts in cultural turn has been that of

manipulation. This can be understood in two senses:

a) Manipulating the target culture

b) Manipulating the source text

•A memetic scholar would be particularly interested in questions

like these: What happens to ideas as they mutate via translation?

Which ideas tend to survive better than others, and why? How

does translation affect their survival, both in the target culture and

in the source culture?

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TS

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2.2.2 THE HISTORICAL CURVE

• Predictions:

If we discover that the evolution of translation memes tends to occur in

certain waves or patterns, we might be able to make predictions about up-

and-coming memes in a particular culture.

• Retranslations:

The decision to translate a given work again into the same target language,

seems to suggest the need to revive certain memes that were perhaps in

danger of fading away. What are the characteristics of translations that need

to be supplemented by retranslations? What are the characteristics of

translations that seem to survive without retranslations? More powerful

memes?

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TS

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2.2.3 THE COGNITIVE TWIST

• The central questions in cognitive approaches are: What happens

in the translator’s head? How are decisions made? What kind of

decisions are made? When? How can we observe this?

• From the memetic point of view, however, the crucial question is:

Do memes exist in the brain, in some observable form?

Chemically? Neurologically? Perhaps the TAP studies of the

future will come up with some evidence.

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TS

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CONCLUSION

We translate ideas, not languages

Modification is an inherent aspect of this process

Equivalence in translation is not identity but more like continuity

Translation, like all communication, is always relative, never

absolute. So translatability is not a problem.

Any many more assumptions that are going to be

presented and criticized in my thesis!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

Now that you are infected with the memetic framework

it’s your turn to infect another

person!