Postcolonial， cultural-materialist and gender-based approaches to translation possess a broader conceptual hinterland and have generated a large amount of interest， discussion and research in recent years. They have vigorously foregrounded the social， political and ideological contexts and effects of translation， the kind of contextualization which the "cultural turn" in translation studies also favored， but which these researchers now elaborate from a committed， oppositional and critical angle. Viewed from that angle， the tormalism and literary insulation of some descriptive work leaves too many large and important questions unaddressed. In Tejaswini Niranjana's assessment， for example， most studies of translation elide both the political force of translation and its complicity in processes of subjugation and domination. Speaking of Toury's work in particular she contends that "the 'empirical science' of translation comes into being through the repression of the asymmetrical relations of power that inform the relations between languages" （1992： 60）. The call here is not just to focus on certain aspects of translation， but to do so from all explicit ideological standpoints.
This postcolonial position would probably meet with Lawrence Venuti's approval. His cultural materialism also entails a politically committed stance， as is borne out by the "Call to Action" which concludes his study of The Translator's Invisibility （1995）. For Venuti， "[r]esearch into translation can never be simply descriptive" （1995： 312） ， since even the decision to occupy oneself with the study of so marginalized a cultural practice like translation constitutes an act of opposition Venuti's eloquent appeal to translators to stand up and be counted with resistant translations implies in charge of timidity and complacency directed at a descriptivism apparently reluctant to mount the barricades.
……
展开
