The translator's task

Recent debates in translation theory have moved beyond hegemonic – and gendered – conceptions of ‘fidelity’ and ‘betrayal’ to consider translation’s transformative, rather than derivative, effects. This essay builds on this body of scholarship to propose translation as a capacious, self-reflexive idiom for articulating literary influence in a multilingual frame. Beginning with the understudied influence of Jorge Luis Borges on Harold Bloom, I then constellate Borges’ translation theories with those of Yasemin Yildiz and Abdelfattah Kilito, before turning to several feminist reflections on the politics of translation. These theorists, I argue, conceive of literary history itself as an ongoing process of translation, contestation, and critique

Narrative · Translation Studies and Practices