The other on display: translation in the Ethnographic Museum

The ethnographic museum in the West has a long and troubling history. The display of 'exotic peoples' in travelling exhibitions began as early as the sixteenth century, but it was the mid and late nineteenth century that saw the great expansion of museums as sites to show artefacts collected - under anything but reputable circumstances - from what were considered the 'primitive', 'natural', or 'tribal' peoples of the world. Today the ethnographic museum is still a feature of large European cities, though faced with newly formulated dilemmas in the postcolonial world. For how can the material culture of a non-western people be collected and displayed in the West without its makers being translated into wordless and powerless objects of visual consumption? In national museums the processes of choosing, contextualizing and commentating exhibits help form national identity; in the ethnographic museum, similarly, they shape perceptions of the apparently distant Other. Like written ethnography, the museum is a 'translation of culture', with many of the associated problems traced by Talal Asad (1986). Like the written form, it has to represent the dialogic realities of cultural encounters in a fixed and intelligible form, to propose categories that define and order the material it has gathered. As the public face of academic ethnography, the museum interprets other cultures for the benefit of the general reader, and in that task museum practice, like all ethnography, operates within very specific historical and political parameters. How are museums in western Europe responding to the issues raised by critical ethnographers like James Clifford (1988), with their focus on the politics of representation? Is globalisation increasing the degree of accountability imposed on the ethnographic museum, or merely reinforcing older patterns? What opportunities and problems are raised by the use of more words - more 'translation' in the narrower sense - in ethnographic museums, and how do museums gain from introducing a reflexive and contextualizing concept of "thick translation" (Appiah 1993) into their work of interpretation?

Representing others:translation, ethnography and museum

Cultural anthropology has always been dependent on translation as a textual practice, and it has often used 'translation' as a metaphor to describe ethnography's processes of interpretation and cross-cultural comparison. Questions of intelligibility and representation are central to both translation studies and ethnographic writing - as are the dilemmas of cultural distance or proximity, exoticism or appropriation. Similarly, recent work in museum studies discusses problems of representation that are raised by ethnographic museums as multimedia 'translations'. However, as yet there has been remarkably little interdisciplinary exchange: neither has translation studies kept up with the sophistication of anthropology's investigations of meaning, representation and 'culture' itself, nor have anthropology and museum studies often looked to translation studies for analyses of language difference or concrete methods of tracing translation practices.

Parallel texts in translation

Creating an appropriate translation often means adapting the target text (TT) to the text-typological conventions of the target culture. Such knowledge can be gained by a comparative analysis of parallel texts, i.e. L2 and L1 texts of equal informativity which have been produced in similar communicative situations. Some problems related to (cross-cultural) text-typological conventions and the role of parallel texts for describing translation strategies are described, as well as implications for teaching translation. The discussion is supported with examples of parallel texts that are representative of various genres, such as instruction manuals, international treaties and tourist brochures.

Third Ways and new centres - ideological unity or difference?

This chapter illustrates extratextual and intratextual aspects of ideology as related to translation with a case study, a policy document by Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, jointly published in English and German in June 1999. Textual features of the two language versions are compared and linked to the social contexts. Concepts and methods of critical discourse analysis and of descriptive and functionalist approaches to translation are applied for this purpose. In particular, reactions to the German text in Germany are explained with reference to the socio-political and ideological conditions of the text production, which was a case of parallel text production combined with translation. It is illustrated that decisions at the linguistic micro-level have had effects for a political party, reflected for example in the German Social Democratic Party debating its identity due to the textual treatment of ideological keywords. The subtle differences revealed in a comparative analysis of the two texts indicate the text producers' awareness of ideological phenomena in the respective cultures. Both texts thus serve as windows onto ideologies and political power relations in the contemporary world.

Representational modes of thinking employed by children aged thirteen and fourteen, and their relationship to performance in standardised tests of ability, measures of creativity and personality

This thesis proposes that despite many experimental studies of thinking, and the development of models of thinking, such as Bruner's (1966) enactive, iconic and symbolic developmental modes, the imagery and inner verbal strategies used by children need further investigation to establish a coherent, theoretical basis from which to create experimental curricula for direct improvement of those strategies. Five hundred and twenty-three first, second and third year comprehensive school children were tested on 'recall' imagery, using a modified Betts Imagery Test; and a test of dual-coding processes (Paivio, 1971, p.179), by the P/W Visual/Verbal Questionnaire, measuring 'applied imagery' and inner verbalising. Three lines of investigation were pursued: 1. An investigation a. of hypothetical representational strategy differences between boys and girls; and b. the extent to which strategies change with increasing age. 2. The second and third year children's use of representational processes, were taken separately and compared with performance measures of perception, field independence, creativity, self-sufficiency and self-concept. 3. The second and third year children were categorised into four dual-coding strategy groups: a. High Visual/High Verbal b. Low Visual/High Verbal c. High Visual/Low Verbal d. Low Visual/Low Verbal These groups were compared on the same performance measures. The main result indicates that: 1. A hierarchy of dual-coding strategy use can be identified that is significantly related (.01, Binomial Test) to success or failure in the performance measures: the High Visual/High Verbal group registering the highest scores, the Low Visual/High Verbal and High Visual/Low Verbal groups registering intermediate scores, and the Low Visual/Low Verbal group registering the lowest scores on the performance measures. Subsidiary results indicate that: 2. Boys' use of visual strategies declines, and of verbal strategies increases, with age; girls' recall imagery strategy increases with age. Educational implications from the main result are discussed, the establishment of experimental curricula proposed, and further research suggested.

Towards understanding promiscuity in multidrug efflux pumps

Drug export from cells is a major factor in the acquisition of cellular resistance to antimicrobial and cancer chemotherapy, and poses a significant threat to future clinical management of disease. Many of the proteins that catalyse drug efflux do so with remarkably low substrate specificity, a phenomenon known as multidrug transport. For these reasons we need a greater understanding of drug recognition and transport in multidrug pumps to inform research that attempts to circumvent their action. Structural and computational studies have been heralded as being great strides towards a full elucidation of multidrug recognition and transport. In this review we summarise these advances and ask how close we are to a molecular understanding of this remarkable phenomenon. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Introduction : special issues on key debates in advertising material

Research on advertising has been conducted mainly from within disciplines such as marketing and reception studies. Within translation studies, research has focused more on comparative analysis of language pairs for intersystemic differences, and more recently on intercultural differences in product appeal and cultural values. Advertising as text type was most comprehensively used and developed within Western cultures, then 'exported' to other cultures. Initially the assumption was that the message could be translated and the product would sell on the basis of Western value-based market research, although this is now clearly shown not to be the case, as contributors to this volume all demonstrate through empirical studies. The introduction to this volume offers a comprehensive survey of work done in the field, both within and outside translation studies, outlines the use of semiotics as a suitable framework for research, and summarizes the key issues relating to the global vs. local debate.

Special issue:key debates in the translation of advertising material

Much has been written about the marketing aspects of promotional material in general, and several scholars (particularly in linguistics) have addressed questions relating to the structure and function of advertisements, focusing on images, rhetorical structure, semiotic functions, discourse features and audio-visual media, amongst other aspects of the genre. Not much, on the other hand, has been written within translation studies about the complexities involved in the transfer of an advertising message. Contributors to this volume explore various interdependent aspects of the interlingual and intercultural transfer of an advertising message. They emphasize features of culture specificity, of multi-medial semiotic interaction, of values and stereotypes, and most importantly, they recommend strategies and approaches to assist translators. Topics covered include a critique of the Western-based approach to advertising in the context of the Far East; different perceptions of the concept of cleanliness in advertising texts in Italy, Russia and the UK; the Walls Cornetto strategy of internationalization of product appeal, followed by localization; the role of the translator in recreating appeal in different lingua-cultural contexts; what constitutes 'Italianness' in advertisements for British consumers; and strategies for repackaging France as a tourist destination.

Deficiency in catechol-O-methyltransferase and 2-methoxyoestradiol is associated with pre-eclampsia

Despite intense investigation, mechanisms that facilitate the emergence of the pre-eclampsia phenotype in women are still unknown. Placental hypoxia, hypertension, proteinuria and oedema are the principal clinical features of this disease. It is speculated that hypoxia-driven disruption of the angiogenic balance involving vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)/placenta-derived growth factor (PLGF) and soluble Fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFLT-1, the soluble form of VEGF receptor 1) might contribute to some of the maternal symptoms of pre-eclampsia. However, pre-eclampsia does not develop in all women with high sFLT-1 or low PLGF levels, and it also occurs in some women with low sFLT-1 and high PLGF levels. Moreover, recent experiments strongly suggest that several soluble factors affecting the vasculature are probably elevated because of placental hypoxia in the pre-eclamptic women, indicating that upstream molecular defect(s) may contribute to pre-eclampsia. Here we show that pregnant mice deficient in catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) show a pre-eclampsia-like phenotype resulting from an absence of 2-methoxyoestradiol (2-ME), a natural metabolite of oestradiol that is elevated during the third trimester of normal human pregnancy. 2-ME ameliorates all pre-eclampsia-like features without toxicity in the Comt(-/-) pregnant mice and suppresses placental hypoxia, hypoxia-inducible factor-1alpha expression and sFLT-1 elevation. The levels of COMT and 2-ME are significantly lower in women with severe pre-eclampsia. Our studies identify a genetic mouse model for pre-eclampsia and suggest that 2-ME may have utility as a plasma and urine diagnostic marker for this disease, and may also serve as a therapeutic supplement to prevent or treat this disorder.

Inspiring young people to engage in engineering education:The Aston University Engineering Academy Birmingham

This paper initially reports concerns about the falling interest in engineering and mathematical disciplines and looks at some of the reasons for this. It then discusses the aims of the Engineering Diploma - a qualification for 14-19 year olds in the UK - and the pedagogical research that that has informed the design and development. The paper highlights the key learning theories that support the delivery of this qualification and provides an example of how this pedagogy has been applied effectively through the curriculum partnership that has been developed between a consortium of schools in the Birmingham local authority, Aston University and employers. It establishes the importance of aligning the curriculum and articulating clear engineering progression routes from the age of fourteen to enable young people to be inspired and motivated towards careers in engineering. The paper presents the view of parents, teachers and pupils involved with the Diploma, during the first year, and the way in which the partnership is informing future developments in the delivery of engineering curriculum within the region. The success of this regional partnership model has resulted in the Department of Children, Schools and Families agreeing to fund the development of the Aston University Engineering Academy Birmingham. This is a school for 14-19 year olds that will open in 2012 on the Aston Science Park adjacent to the University. The final part of the paper looks at the benefits to the young local engineers of this initiative. © 2009 Authors.