Translation and trauma

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Deane-Cox, Sharon; Bassnett, Susan and Johnston, David, eds. (2024) Translation and trauma. In: Debates in Translation Studies. Routledge, London, pp. 42-57. ISBN 9781003104773 (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003104773)

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Abstract

This chapter starts from the premise that translation and trauma are often enfolded (and unfolded) in the articulation of difficult experience. Their coincidences, tensions, and potentialities can be plotted across multiple individual, cultural, epistemic, ethical, and salutary axes, and over a wide range of magnitudes, predictability, and outcomes, to form an assemblage that Translation Studies has only begun to probe. At the same time, this chapter argues that our interdisciplinary forays into translation and trauma are at risk of being confounded by the density of and debates within trauma studies, before proposing a more sure-footed critical pathway through conflicting trauma paradigms. In turn, it sets out key lines of enquiry that have generative potential and value for our understanding of those co-articulations. Specifically, the ethical and emotional positioning of the translator, the cultural embeddedness of trauma and its diagnostic implications, the need for disciplinary reflection on whose trauma is foregrounded, and a nuancing of the ‘translation as survival’ metaphor are identified as promising areas for the calibration of future research in Translation Studies.

ORCID iDs

Deane-Cox, Sharon ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5368-6531; Bassnett, Susan and Johnston, David
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)