‘Stars’ or ‘professionals’: the imagined vocation and exclusive knowledge of translators in Israel
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Inquiring into the suspended professionalization of the translation occupation in Israel, this article examines two types of self-presentational discourses and status strategies – that of top literary translators, on the one hand, and that of technical translators, subtitlers and non-elite literary translators, on the other. Analysis of the former is based on several hundreds of profile articles and other reports in the media, which foreground 23 acclaimed translators, while that of the latter is based on interim findings from open‐ended interviews with 22 non‐elite translation workers (selected from a larger sample accumulated in an ongoing research project; Sela-Sheffy & Shlesinger 2008). Whereas the former show unambiguous use of a vocational rhetoric, which includes denial of economic considerations, artistic‐like occupational competence and a claim for the role of culture custodians, the latter betray an ambivalent use of this elitist discourse, wavering between embracing and rejecting it. This complex discursive dynamics suggests an artization process which, so I hypothesize, serves as a buffer to professionalization in the field.
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