This paper begins by questioning the subtitler’s traditional role, and the (f)utility of constraining audiovisual translation (AVT) into a single semiotic mode, disjoined from the action of the film. Nornes (1999) was the first to suggest that the “time is right” for abusive subtitling. Since then a number of scholars have discussed the use of pop-up glosses, in the main captioned verbal glosses, to be added to the subtitles. However, even though these ideas are no different from those used by fansubbers and by a number of film and TV directors, the subtitling profession is still extremely unwilling to take these ideas on board. Indeed, it is the “control of the industry [that] keeps a firm lid on the potential spread of innovative subtitling” (Pérez-González 2012: 13). In this particular experiment a short UK comedy TV sketch was transcreated into Italian using speech bubbles, thought balloons and visual pop-up glosses with the aim of not only reproducing the comedic effect but also of allowing the target audience to access at least some of the culture-bound associations available to the source audience. In particular, the experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that the use of thought balloons will actually help the viewer access the speaker’s culture-bound model of the world.

This article aims to give an overview of how translation strategy is affected by orientation to cultural difference. Given the numerous definitions of both “culture” and “translation, there are clearly numerous cultural approaches to translation. Here we will reduce the number to a manageable three, with the key to all three being the response to ‘difference’. Both culture and translation revolve around difference. We notice culture as difference, and we require translation when difference significantly affects communication. In the first case, “translating from cultures,” differences are explained. In the second, “translating for cultures,” differences are either be reduced (domestication) or highlighted (foreignization). The final approach, “translating between cultures,” gauges the likely tolerance for difference and attempts to mediate or reconcile differences, creating an interspace. In all cases, it is understood that texts are seen to relate to larger contexts, or frames of interpretation, and response to 'difference'. There is always a series of choices to be made regarding what exactly , and how exactly, language is to be translated. So here, it is argued, translation involves a form of intervention which will be in terms of decisions based on reaction to 'difference'.

The term ‘mediation’ has a long history both as a legal term (as in 'alternative dispute resolution’) and as a popular practice. It is also a well-developed discipline in, for example, sociology (c.f. Wadensjö (1992: 42). In one of the very many "Training & Resource Guide[s] for the Mediator", we learn that mediation "denote[s] the interaction of two parties gathered together with the assistance of a neutral party (mediator) to assist both parties resolve their dispute in a mutually satisfactory manner" (Bullen: 2012: 3). It is not immediately clear how translation and/or interpretation (T/I) might have anything to do with conflict resolution. Indeed, in a current survey on the subject, T/I respondents said they were "increasingly using 'mediation' activities, but not 'translation', since the latter is seen as a sentence-level replacement exercise" (Pym 2013). In many fields requiring T/I, ‘intercultural mediation’ is carried out by a growing group of non-T/I specialists. In business, for example, there are ‘intercultural consultants’, ‘writing consultants’ and ‘localization’ specialists. In public services, for immigration there are ‘cultural mediators’. Clearly the idea of interpretation or translation as a form of mediation has yet to become mainstream. Where T/I has been understood as a form of mediation, two very distinct strands have evolved: language (or linguistic) mediation, and intercultural (cross-cultural or cultural) mediation.

Critical interview between FIT Past president and the author (David Katan) regarding FIT, the translation profession and the future.

1. Intercultural Communication Audiovisual translation (AVT), as many have noted (see Gambier in this issue) has moved from its focus on the text to a more multimodal, multi-semiotic perspective. Along with this has come the interest in the cultural factor in AVT. However, the research on how to account for cultural difference in AVT has mainly focused on the translation of culture-bound terms, which, as we will see, are just the tip of the iceberg in intercultural communication (ICC). According to Rogers et al. (2002), ICC was first coined by E. T. Hall (1990) in 1959. Hall was working with Native Navaho Indians on a US government land project, and noticed in the negotiations between the government officials and the Navaho, that even though English was the lingua franca, misunderstanding over meaning was creating serious practical problems. What was particularly notable about Hall’s work was his ability to identify the differences as patterns, which are as he stressed, shared “out of awareness” within cultural groups. ICC has grown enormously since then, though Hall himself was little involved in theorising about the discipline. Milton Bennett, an American ICC consultant, one of the founder developers of the discipline, posits that «the intercultural communication approach is that cultures are different in their languages, behaviour patterns, and values» (1998: 3). Much of the work on the cultural in translation is, however, based on monocultural communication. The assumption is often that culture is a superficial difference, that underneath there are universal similarities (Katan 2004: 333-4), that once ethnographic knowledge is made available and the «original context is reactivated alongside the target context» (House 2006: 356; 2009: 12) then communication will in theory be successful. Reddy (1979: 297) labelled this monocultural approach to translation the “conduit” metaphor: once the language is “translated”, then meaning is successfully communicated in the same way as conduits transfer without loss or distortion. However, it is now accepted that meaning is not innate, nor is it simply relayed by language. Instead, language is a cue to what it is that is going on below the tip of the iceberg.

According to academics, the interpreting profession has moved on from its traditional impartial black-box role to that of intervention. The first part of this paper will describe what intervention means in practice, and the various levels of intervention open to interpreters. It will be shown through the use of the Logical Levels model how the interpreter’s habitus both allows and constrains some levels of intervention according to professional norms and beliefs about interpreter identity. The second part of the paper reports an online survey of some 300 interpreters to gauge their own beliefs about invisibility, intervention and responsibility. The respondents’ replies show a clear resistance to anything more than a strategic intervention, following that favoured by the Paris School, and little interest in more ideological or reflexive types of intervention. Finally, it will be suggested that openness to change may well come from those interpreters working in other capacities, rather than from those working within the interpreting habitus itself.

Crique of Mossop's work. on 'invarance

As a profession, translation may be one of the oldest, but it still has “no official status” (Gouadec 2007: 245) or “relative social or professional position”. What is more there are no agreed indicators of the translator’s status (Grbic 2010), and the concept itself is “a complex, subjective and context-dependent construct” (Dam and Zethsen 2008: 74). That said, status, here, will refer to translation as a valued specialist field requiring unique translating skills; and that competence and quality are considered key requisites for working professionally. Three contexts will be discussed: the academic, the market, and that of the translators themselves. A detailed overview of the translator’s status globally is that in the academic world it has high status due the “accademization” of the discipline, while the market in general is still convinced that translating is an automatic, ‘conduit’ copying task. The translators themselves, accrue status in niche areas and through the individual acquisition of the goodwill of their clients.

This introducion gives an overview of the state-of-the-art in modelling the transcultural phenomeno, and of the contents of this issue of the journal. Each of the papers offer a paradigm shift, whether they call it a framework or model, in response to the fact that though such a thing as ‘culture’ and ‘interculturality’ might exist and be useful if not critical concepts in communication, we can no longer presume to ‘locate’ individuals and cultures as neatly as before. The second set of papers reflects on the quality of the intercultural training for translators in particular and also of translation practice.

The aim of this paper is to explore the ‘literary’ in literary translation. It begins with a discussion of what makes a text literary, focussing on some very famous literary works which did not (and indeed do not) necessarily fit what is generally considered the literary canon. The features that translators should identify when first reading a text, on the look-out for potential literary value, are then outlined. These features are both textual (covering non-casual language, rhetorical features and equivalences) and contextual (connotations, implicatures, intratextual and culture-bound associations). The paper then discusses changing translation theory and practice, in particular illustrating points with comments made by translators and theorists in this book and elsewhere. Importance is also given to the profession itself, to literary translator beliefs about their role, the changing importance of the model reader and to changing beliefs about accepted style, making reference also to results of a global survey recently carried out on the subject.

This paper covers two main areas. The first area is an analysis of the various facets and meanings of ‘heritage’ and ‘culture’ when linked to tourism, both in theory and in practice, with examples taken from Guide Books, Heritage sites and Tourism organisations. The focus is on the tourist gaze, as a necessarily simplified, generalised and distorted ‘pseudo’, or ‘staged’, model of ‘the Other’. Here the Environmental Bubble and Cultural Adjustment models are also briefly introduced. To conclude this section, the culture-bound tourist model of perception, along with tourist promotion, is categorised in terms of 3 macro levels of culture: the visible heritage; the more submersed practices and traditions of a people; and the more hidden system of internal values and beliefs that both form the model of reality and guide it. Secondly, the paper focusses on translation and Outsider interpretation. After a brief review of language phrase guides, the discussion turns to the translation of culture-bound concepts at the 3 macro-levels of culture and the need for the translator to have intercultural competence at those 3 levels. A translator must also follow the skopos; and to do so Greimas’ theory of action is introduced. The article concludes with translated texts focussing on skopos, culture-bound contexting styles; and on the Outsider Gaze, the Outsiders' needs and cultural orientations, taken from an analysis of traveller blog pages. In conclusion the article highlights how little emphasis is given to translator cultural competence, and introduces instruments to help the translator mediate for the culture-bound tourist.

Translation at the cross-roads: time for the transcreational turn? Translation Studies is a young discipline, with its “name and nature” still the object of discussion in the 1970’s (Holmes, 1988). As to the “nature” of the discipline, ‘interpreting studies’ has generally been seen as a sub-discipline of the generic term ‘translation’, and this paper will follow suit. Clearly, though, literary translators, technical translators, court and community interpreters require very different skills and are rewarded different status. Yet, these translators and interpreters (T/Is) are all very much at the same crossroads for exactly the same reasons: to what extent can or should these professionals mediate? The idea that translation should be considered a form of ‘intercultural mediation’ (IM) (Katan, 2013) has been popularised in academic circles ever since the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1980s. As a result, academics have been calling T/Is "experts in intercultural communication” (Holz-Mäntäri, 1984); "mediators" (Hatim & Mason, 1990); "cross-cultural specialists" (Snell-Hornby, 1992); "cultural mediators" (Katan, 1999/2004) and “cultural interpreters” (Gonzalez & Tolron, 2006; Harris, 2000; Mesa, 2000). This ontological change of perception of T/Is as cultural mediators, however, remains very much more of an academic rather than professional understanding of the role and habitus (Katan, 2011; 2012). Moreover, the T/I’s traditional language mediation role is itself under threat. The focus of this paper is, hence, first to clarify the difference between language and IM, then to analyse who is actually doing IM in practice, and finally to suggest a way forward for the translator at the crossroads.

Uncertainty in the Translation professions This issue focusses on two principal areas: uncertainties in the translation profession and transcreation; with transcreation being tentatively suggested (see Katan, forthcoming) as a possible solution to this uncertainty. The uncertainties themselves are legion, first and foremost because it still remains to be shown that translation is indeed a profession (Katan 2011). Many of the classic signs of a profession are not yet in place, and may well never will be, such as: an accepted school (or schools) of theory and practice; a national register of certified practitioners; national laws regulating the practice and safeguarding clients from malpractice, and so on. Also, clearly a sign of a profession is the increased payment given to those who are more qualified, along with public recognition of the worth of a professional translator’s creative abilities – which translators do not appear to have (e.g. Katan 2011: 149). We know for a fact that certification and legislation is unlikely to make a significant impact in the near future, partly because in the handful of areas where there is some form of regulation, there has been no discernable difference to translator status (Katan 2012), and also because (based on anecdotal evidence only) successful translators themselves are not keen on certification, as this would reduce their own individually gained status.