Cover not available
Article published In:
Museums as Spaces of Cultural Translation and Transfer
Edited by Sophie Decroupet and Irmak Mertens
[Babel 70:5] 2024
► pp. 727–758

The ethnographic museum as a sensitive translation

The case of the AfricaMuseum in Belgium

| Ghent University
| University of Tartu | KU Leuven | Stellenbosch University
This article analyzes the recently renewed, permanent exhibition of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (AfricaMuseum) in Tervuren, Belgium. The museum is seen as a translational space, considering the parallels between, on the one hand, curatorial strategies to represent cultural otherness and, on the other, processes of cultural and interlingual translation (Sturge 2007). We draw on an interdisciplinary mindset of translation as change and choice, as a multimodal and multimedial activity, and as an inevitably meaning-transforming process. Pressured to keep pace with the rapidly evolving public debate on decolonization, the curators-translators of the AfricaMuseum are aware that they are dealing with “sensitive texts” (Simms 1997) and have, accordingly, adopted a set of strategies to reduce perceived “translation risks” (Pym and Matsushita 2018). The article explores these strategies at three levels of translation operating in the museum: cultural, intersemiotic, and interlingual. In particular, we reveal the inherent tensions in the current display by discussing scenographic interventions that undermine the decolonization efforts in a number of galleries. These tensions are conceptualized as incomplete or incoherent forms of translation and illustrate the “work in progress” in the AfricaMuseum.
Keywords: ethnographic museum, decolonization, sensitive text, risk mitigation, cultural translation, intersemiotic translation, interlingual translation
Article outline
  • 1.Museums as resemiotized and sensitive translations
  • 2.Analytical value of translation concepts in museums
  • 3.The renovated AfricaMuseum
  • 4.Translating the cultural other: Risk mitigation strategies
    • 4.1Collective workflows
    • 4.2Enhanced visibility
  • 5.Intersemiotic translation: Contradictions and disjunctions
    • 5.1The provenance problem
    • 5.2Time, culture and nature
    • 5.3The aestheticized fragment
  • 6.The actors in the interlingual translation process
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 28 May 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00399.spi
References (57)
References
AfricaMuseum. 2010. “Annual Report.” Accessed 13 March 2023. [URL]
. 2014. “Annual Report.” Accessed 13 March 2023. [URL]
. 2019. “Annual Report.” Accessed 13 March 2023. [URL]
. 2021a. “Elephant.” Accessed 4 March 2023. [URL]
. 2021b. “The Long Dugout Canoe.” Accessed 4 March 2023. [URL]
. 2021c. “War Trophies, Ethnographic Objects, and Political Documents Obtained by the Military Officer Émile Storms.” [URL]
Bal, Mieke. 1996. Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Barker, Craig, Helena Robinson, James L. Flexner, Anna Lawrenson, and Alex Burchmore. 2022. “The Future of Museums.” Museum Worlds 10 (1):159–169. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boria, Monica, and Marcus Tomalin. 2020. “Introduction.” In Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words, edited by Monica Boria, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin, 1–23. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Canfora, Carmen, and Angelika Ottmann. 2015. “Risikomanagement für Übersetzungen” [Risk management for translations]. trans-kom 8 (2): 314–346.Google Scholar
Celis, Abigail E. 2019. “Evaluating ‘Cultural Translation’ and Intermodal Address in the Musée du quai Branly’s Exhibition of African Material Objects.” TTR: Traduction, terminologie, rédaction 32 (1): 47–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Conway, Kyle. 2012. “Cultural Translation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies, vol. 3, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, 21–25. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Couttenier, Maarten. 2009. “Congo in België: Koloniale Cultuur in de Metropool” [Congo in Belgium: Colonial Culture in the Metropolis]. In De Impact van Congo in het Museum van Belgisch Congo in Tervuren (1897–1946) [The Impact of Congo in the Museum of the Belgian Congo in Tervuren], edited by Vincent Viaene, 115–130. Leuven University Press.Google Scholar
De Kooning, Mil, and Christophe Van Gerrewey, eds. 2011. Stéphane Beel Architecten : Nieuwe Werken & Woorden [Stéphane Beel Architects: New Works & Words]. Tielt: Lannoo.Google Scholar
Engels, Robin. 2018. “The Museum as a Museum Piece.” In The Making of the Renovation of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, edited by AfricaMuseum, 91–93. Kontich: BAI Publishers.Google Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Fiorin, Fausto. 2019. “Decolonising the Museum. New Perspectives for the XXI Century Ethnographic Collections.” Master’s thesis, Università di Siena.
Gryseels, Guido. 2015. “The Renovation of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium.” Museum of Cultures, Wereldmuseum, Världskulturmuseet, …What Else? Positioning Ethnological Museums in the 21st Century. Hannover, 21–23 June.Google Scholar
Halverson, Sandra. 2010. “Translation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies, edited by Yves Gambier, and Luc van Doorslaer, vol. 11, 378–384. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hermans, Theo. 2002. “The Production and Reproduction of Translation: System Theory and Historical Context.” In Translations: (Re)Shaping of Literature and Culture, edited by Saliha Paker, 175–194. Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press.Google Scholar
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. 2000. Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On the Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation, edited by R. A. Brower, 232–239. London: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kaindl, Klaus. 2020. “A Theoretical Framework for a Multimodal Conception of Translation.” In Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words, edited by Monica Boria, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin, 49–70. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kalonji, Billy. 2018. “Ridding the Museum of Colonialism Is Unfinished Business.” In The Making of the Renovation of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, edited by AfricaMuseum, 51–53. Kontich: BAI Publishers.Google Scholar
Karp, Ivan, and Steven D. Lavine. 1991. Exhibiting Cultures: The poetics and politics of museum display. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Karp, Ivan, and Corinne A. Kratz. 2014. “Collecting, Exhibiting, and Interpreting: Museums as Mediators and Midwives of Meaning.” Museum Anthropology 37 (1): 51–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kortekaas, Niek, and Johan Schelfhout. 2018. “A New Structural Backbone for the Museum.” In The Making of the Renovation of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, edited by BAI & Royal Museum for Central Africa, 121–123.Google Scholar
Koskinen, Kaisa. 2010. “Agency and Causality: Towards Explaining by Mechanisms in Translation Studies.” In Translators’ Agency, edited by Tuija Kinnunen and Kaisa Koskinen, 165–187. Tampere: Tampere University Press.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 2011. “Rhetorics of Value: Constituting Worth and Meaning through Cultural Display.” Visual Anthropology Review 27 (1): 21–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013. “The Ethnographic in the Museum: Knowledge Production, Fragments, and Relationships.” In Beyond Modernity: Do Ethnography Museums Need Ethnography?, edited by Vito Lattanzi, Elisabetta Frasca and Sandra Ferracuti, 61–78. Rome: Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini.”Google Scholar
Liao, Min-Hsiu. 2019. “Translating Multimodal Texts in Space: A Case Study of St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art.” Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies 171: 84–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2023. “Translation as a Practice of Resemiotization: A Case Study of the Opium War Museum.” Translation Studies 16 (1): 48–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lismond-Mertes, Arnaud, and Billy Kalonji. 2019. “‘Comprenez notre déception’ [interview].” Ensemble (99): 37–38.Google Scholar
Lung, Rachel. 2003. “Translating Sensitive Texts.” Perspectives 11 (4): 255–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Donata. 2019. “Everything Passes, Except the Past: Reviewing the Renovated Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA).” Science Museum Group Journal (12). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neather, Robert. 2008. “Translating Tea: On the Semiotics of Interlingual Practice in the Hong Kong Museum of Tea Ware.” Meta 53 (1): 218–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Intertextuality, Translation, and the Semiotics of Museum Presentation: The Case of Bilingual Texts in Chinese Museums.” Semiotica 1921: 197–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. “Museums and Translation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies, edited by Yves Gambier, and Luc van Doorslaer, vol. 51, 159–164. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2022. “Translation, Memory, and the Museum Visitor.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Memory, edited by Sharon Deane-Cox and Anneleen Spiessens, 155–169. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oliveira, Cinthya. 2016. “Human Righs & Exhibitions, 1789–1989.” Journal of Museum Ethnography (29): 71–94.Google Scholar
Pym, Anthony, and Kayo Matsushita. 2018. “Risk Mitigation in Translator Decisions.” Across Languages and Cultures 19 (1): 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2003. “The Ghost of Leopold II: The Belgian Royal Museum of Central Africa and Its Dusty Colonialist Exhibition.” Research in African Literatures 34 (1): 58–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sandell, Richard. 2007. Museums, Prejudice, and the Reframing of Difference. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schorch, Philipp. 2020. “Sensitive Heritage: Ethnographic Museums, Provenance Research, and the Potentialities of Restitutions.” Museum and Society 18 (1): 1–5. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simms, Karl. 1997. Translating Sensitive Texts: Linguistic Aspects. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simon, Roger I. 2011. “A Shock to Thought: Curatorial Judgment and the Public Exhibition of ‘Difficult Knowledge.’” Memory Studies 4 (4): 432–449. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spiessens, Anneleen, and Sophie Decroupet. 2022. “Translating Spaces and Memories of Migration: The Case of the Red Star Line Museum.” Perspectives 31 (3): 484–504. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Staniszewski, Mary Anne. 2001. The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sturge, Kate. 2007. Representing Others: Translation, Ethnography and the Museum. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Thorne, Jos. 2008. “Designing Histories.” Kronos (34): 139–158.Google Scholar
Tymoczko, Maria. 1999. Translation in a Postcolonial Context. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
van Doorslaer, Luc. 2020. “Translation Studies: What’s in a Name?” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 7 (2): 139–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Doorslaer, Luc, and Irmak Mertens. Forthcoming. “Translation as Metonymic Cultural Transmission: The Case of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums.” In Translating Modernity, edited by Salah Basalamah. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
van Doorslaer, Luc, and Jack McMartin. 2022. “Where Translation Studies and the Social Meet: Setting the Scene for ‘Translation in Society’.” Translation in Society 1 (1): 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vergo, Peter. 1989. The New Museology. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Visitors Observatory of the Federal Scientific Institutions. 2023. “Moniteur visiteurs individuels AfricaMuseum 2022.” [Monitoring of individual visitors at the AfricaMuseum 2022] Monitoring Report.Google Scholar