Presentation

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the connection between translation and politics, with a number of publications providing an initial mapping of a territory that is still to a large extent neglected especially from a diachronic perspective. The issue of TTR (34.1) to which this essay is an introduction, has a marked diachronic focus, with papers ranging from the early modern period until the early nineteenth century in Europe. The essays presented share a view of translation as a particular form of political doing and thus a perspective that highlights the performative aspect of translation. As an act which involves the shifting of meaning from one linguistic and cultural environment to another, translation relies on a particular translating subject with an agency which invalidates any supposed neutrality. The choices made in the act of translation involve, in other words, a conscious positioning and commitment on the part of all those involved, and as such inevitably carry with them a political dimension. The political act of translation, in these contributions, emerges in a number of different ways and through different methodological approaches. The standard comparison of source and target texts enables critics to focus on the ways in which lexical choices and the amplification or cutting of the original contribute to the political orientation and objectives of the translator. Paratextual apparata used to frame texts (prefaces, notes and such like) are also clearly a conduit for the political aims of translators. This presentation provides an overview of some views of translation as a political act as they emerge in the essays in the edited volume.