Socio-cultural Aspects of Translation Quality Evaluations

In this article, I examine the concept of translation quality in­ter­pret­ed from the emic, or the insider’s perspective, i.e., by various actors (specif­ically translators, authors, and the publisher) at the publishing com­pa­ny Paul Zsolnay Verlag in interwar Vienna. Focusing on the communication between the agents of translation, I examine the notion of translation quality in correspondences, how it was used, by whom and under which cir­cum­stances, and moreover how it can be interpreted based on the agents´ in­ter­ests, networks, status at the company and qualifications. Relying on the field the­ory of Pierre Bourdieu (1986) and the translation culture concept of Erich Prunč (1997), I show in this essay that the concept of quality was used a century ago as a social construct, as a means of manipulation and as a demon­stration of power. Furthermore, I apply the method of histoire croisée (Zim­mermann 2020, Werner/Zimmermann 2006), which addresses his­tor­i­cal intercrossings from different time periods, but also the perspectives of dif­ferent agents on the same subject or process. Indeed, multiple levels of in­terpretation have to be considered, I argue, when working with historical trans­lations, professional communication and quality evaluations. Finally, I claim that, when speaking about different interpretations of quality, it is es­sen­tial to take into account its socio-cultural nature.