Chrizelyn A.
Gesmundo
Bsed- IV
Memes of Translation
Memes of Translation is a search for coherence in translation theory based on the notion
of Memes: ideas that spread, develop and replicate, like genes. The author explores a wide range
of ideas on translation, mapping the “meme pool” of translation theory with chapters on
translation history, norms, strategies, assessment, ethics, and translator training. The aim of the
book is to search for a perspective from which the immense variety of ideas about translation can
be related.
The unifying thread is the philosophy of Karl Popper. The book proposes the beginnings
of a Popperian theory of translation, based on the fundamental concepts of norms, strategies, and
values. A key idea is that a translation itself is a theory or hypothesis concerning the source text.
This hypothesis is then subjected to testing, refinement, and perhaps even rejection, just like any
other hypothesis.
Memes
Translation Studies is a branch of memetics
This is a claim, a hypothesis. More specifically, it is an interpretive hypothesis: I claim
that Translation Studies can be thus interpreted, and that this is a useful thing to do because it
offers a new and beneficial way of understanding translation.
Memetics is the study of memes.
So what is a meme?
An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by nongenetic means,
esp. imitation.
The term was proposed and first used by Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene (1976).
This was a popular book about genetics, about how the behaviour of organisms is influenced by
the way genes seek to promote their own survival. Towards the end of the book, Dawkins
introduced the notion of a meme as the cultural equivalent of the gene:
A meme is a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. “Mimeme” comes from a suitable
Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classical friends will
forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be
thought of as being related to “memory” or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to
rhyme with “cream”.
Examples of memes are the ff.:
Tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building
arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body
via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from
brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a
scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students.
He mentions it in his articles and lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to
propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. (1976: 206; p. 192 in the 1989 edition)
The term has since been taken up by many scholars. The philosopher Daniel Dennett uses
it in his attempts to explain consciousness (1991). The sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson uses it
in his theory of gene-culture coevolution. One particularly interesting aspect of Wilson’s
application of the meme concept is the way he links it to neurology. A meme, says Wilson, is “a
node of semantic memory [as opposed to episodic memory] and its correlates in brain activity”.
That is, a meme is both an “idea” and the corresponding set of “hierarchically arranged
components of semantic memory, encoded by discrete neural circuits” (Wilson 1998: 149). This
view suggests that memes exist not only in Popper’s World 2 (the subjective world) and World 3
(the world of objective ideas, expressed thoughts), but also in World 1 (the world of physical
objects).
The most recent full-length treatment of memes is the book The Meme Machine by the
psychologist Susan Blackmore (1999). One of the themes in Blackmore’s book is the evolution
of memes, and their effect on the evolution of the brain. She suggests that both brains and
language actually developed in order to spread memes: in other words, the cultural and even
neural development of homo sapiens was to some extent meme-driven.
Memes were explicitly brought into Translation Studies by Chesterman (1996, 1997), and
independently by Vermeer (1997).
Memes, are everything you have learned by imitating other people — habits, jokes, ideas,
songs... Memes spread like genes, they replicate, often with mutation. Some memes spread, and
thus survive, better than others. Memes survive well if they are easily memorable, useful, sexy
or emotive. Some memes tend to co-occur with others, in groups: these groups are called
mememes or memeplexes. Examples are languages, religions, ideologies, scientific theories.
Blackmore suggests that the very notion of a self may well be no more than a memeplex.
From a meme’s-eye view, human beings are just convenient and rather efficient machines for
spreading memes, as memes engage in their Darwinian struggle for space and survival. Memes
spread as people talk to each other, as they read books and listen to music — or as they attend a
lecture. Memes also spread via translations, of course. In fact, this is really what the whole
translation business is about: spreading memes from one place to another, making sure that they
get safely across cultural borders. So Translation Studies is a way of studying memes and their
transmission under particular circumstances.
