Delistathi, C. 2023. Translators’ work practices and the “correct” translation of Marxism. 7th European Congress of Modern Greek Studies. University of Vienna, Austria 11 - 14 Sep 2023
| Title | Translators’ work practices and the “correct” translation of Marxism |
|---|---|
| Authors | Delistathi, C. |
| Type | Conference paper |
| Abstract | In 1951, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) published a Greek translation of the Selected Works of Marx and Engels which included a statement on the work practices followed for its creation. Adopting a Foucauldian perspective, this paper considers work practices as processes of validated knowledge production and responds to the Congress’s theme of “creation of political and cultural terminology”. Based on KKE publications and archival material, it investigates how work practices were enacted to generate the “correct” translation of Marxist texts. It will be argued that the party’s efforts to dominate Marxist discourse entailed the codification of the theory and the creation of definitive translations aimed at being accepted as “correct”. To this end, the party instructed on the appropriate method to translate, and established an organisational model for the translation of Marxist texts, which encompassed a web of accountabilities of agents in translation. The paper will discuss how the party’s collaborative, centralised and professionalised organisational model alongside mechanisms of surveillance and discipline of agents in translation supported its claims of owning the “correct” interpretation of Marxism. The resulting translations would be accurate, fluent and objective renderings of their originals, and preserve the authors’ style. Only knowledge produced according to this method would be authorised and available to readers. This approach to translator work practices advances our understanding of the construction of Marxist discourse in Greece and of the relationship between social structures, power and processes of validated knowledge production. |
| Keywords | Translation of Marxism, Marxism and Greece, translator work practices, processes of knowledge validation, history of knowledge, translation process, collaborative translation, institutional translation |
| Year | 2023 |
| Conference | 7th European Congress of Modern Greek Studies |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | 2023 |