By Joaquín Muñoz
 
If we wish to approach the concept of “power relations in society and position of a translator” in a correct way, and so can understand it, first of all, it is necessary to define what is power: the ability to influence people or events. In other words, the concept at issue is “relations of the ability to influence people or events in society and position of a translator”.
A translator, as any person, is influenced by the surrounding world. Certainly, the background of the article “The Global System of Translation: a Critical Analysis” has a perfect starting point to analyse this topic: “The cultural turn shifts focus to “the text embedded within its network of both source and target cultural signs” (Bassnett and Leferevere), and broadens the perspective and opens the doors to research on translation process revealing the power relations underlying any translation activity and therefore pointing to the fact that translation can never be neutral.” Another strong idea is translation as “socially regulated activity” (Hermans 1997). The points of view of Bassnett and Leferevere and Hermans show translation as a linguistic activity involving no linguistic factors.
There is a direct relation between the power of a society and the influence of its language in the world as well as between the power networks of this society and all the human activities within it.  A good example of the latter is the case of Étienne Dolet, a French scholar, translator and printer, who was burned in 1546 because his enemies saw atheism in his translations; by then, religion had a strong political power. At the present time, no translator would burned, but he or she also has to face various power relations, e.g., market, laws, etc.. The market “says” what, when and how the translators must translate according to the target public, and laws set certain rules about many issues, such as copywrite, translation contracts between translators and publishing houses or between translators and other kinds of customers.
As the phenomenon of the translation is an interlinguistic one, the power relations influencing the work of a translator can be seen in the transnational circulation of cultural goods easily. This area of analysis consists of three points: structure of the field of international cultural exchange; types of constraints – political and economic – that influence these exchanges, and agents of intermediation and process of importing and receiving these by the recipient country (Heilbron and Sapiro). The article at issue says “… both the writers (Heilbron and Sapiro) place transnational transfer of translation within space of nation states and language groups, and propose to analyze translation as embedded within the power relations of national sates and their languages.” In my opinion, this is correct, and the information given by authors is the evidence.
A translator must face three types of power relations: political, economic and cultural. As political, economic and cultural power is unequal -there are from very weak players to very powerful players-, the means of struggles are unequal and cultural exchanges become unequal, emerging a relation of domination. This scenario can benefit the translator or not, depending on where he or she is.
During the last three centuries, the most powerful country has been an English speaking one, British Empire first and then United States. This has given to English language a role of domination. It represents 50% of the translation in the world, French 12%, German 10%, Spanish 3%, and Italian 1%. France and Germany have been the main contestants of the English speaking countries. On the contrary, in England and USA, the translated books in comparison to national production of books just reach less than 4%, Germany and France 14% to 18%, and Italy and Spain 24%. In simply words, political, economic and cultural power is linguistic power, too.
The dominant countries export their cultural products widely, but translate little into their languages. The dominated countries have an opposite behaviour.
Other power relations between countries are the economic agreements, such as GATT (1986) and TRIPS (1994). A main actor is WTO (World Trade Organization). Ideology has also an important role in the cultural exchanges between countries. These factors influence the work of the translators because they determine what, when and how to translate.
To sum up, nation states and other agents play a main role transferring information and cultural goods what creates international relations of exchange forming global system of translation. These exchanges involve power relations, in this scenario both nation states and various agents compete with each other to gain supremacy using political, economic, social or cultural dynamics.
Undoubtedly, we the translators must consider many and various factors when we work. Our activity is a “socially regulated activity”, like any human activity. However,  translation is a public work in many opportunities, that is, the target of a translation can be a mass audience, this situation means the social regulation can be very strong sometimes. Hence the concept of “power relations in society and position of a translator” is a reality to analyse and consider to translate.
 
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