ABSTRACT
Like other forms of cultural traffic which follow in the wake of colonial contact, translations are objects of suspicion. As vehicles of colonial influence, as purveyors of foreign novelty to the metropolis, they travel the routes opened by conquest. But they also enter into relations of transfer whose results are not entirely predictable. It is because they are products of the interaction between cultures of unequal power, bearing the weight of shifting terms of exchange, that translations provide an especially revealing entry point into the dynamics of cultural identity-formation in the colonial and post-colonial contexts.
