Chapter 2. Poetry in a political preface
Nevertheless, certain concepts from sociological models of profession may ap-
ply to poetry translators. Crucial, for example, is that professionals see themselves
as having the right to autonomy, “the nominal freedom to exercise discretionary
judgement”, and to the time and material resources to perform one’s job properly
(Freidson 1994: 210) – both of which I had with the essay editing.
Hence it is not certain how far the ‘expert network’ of published poetry trans-
lators may be called a profession: this will be discussed again in the final chapter.
Meanwhile, ‘expert’ and ‘professional’ will be used interchangeably.2.7.4 System
Generating texts is crucial to the habitus of certain actors, such as poetry transla-
tors or political commentators. Such actors, and members of their interest net-
works, share the perception that their texts form coherent networks, or ‘systems’- translated Bosnian poetry in English, say, or political analyses of the Yugoslav
break-up. The separation between human and textual networks in Figure 4, how-
ever, is merely for clarity’s sake. In reality, textual systems also involve writers and
readers, because they are writers’ and readers’ conceptual schemata. Thus, as
Hermans points out, systems should not be seen as “abstract and depersonalized”
entities, but as embedded in “actual political and social power relations” within
and between “institutions and groups with real interests to look after” (1999: 199).
Hence the system containing political texts about the Yugoslav wars involves a set
of non-human actors (books, newspaper columns, etc.) produced and used in a
wider network of actors, discourses and actions (historians, politicians, journal-
ists, etc. plus their communications and experiences). Similarly, Chang argues that
systems involving translated works (translated poetry, say) also interact with other
receptor-culture factors which the present framework would see as field-based,
such as the politics and economics of the publishing sector (2000).
2.8 Third-order networks
Third-order networks involving poetry translators (Figure 4) contain the human-
based ‘imagined’ communities’ described earlier. They also contain polysystems:
textual networks conceptualised by community members as belonging to or mark-
ing out their community. Below I discuss several third-order issues relevant to
poetry translators and other team members: background and identity; culture;
beliefs, and ideologies; and ethics. It should be noted, however, that the division
between orders of network (especially second- vs. third-order) is often fuzzy:
hence some issues affect various network types. Moreover, since relation is a core
element of subjectivity, network issues are also personal issues.