ABSTRACT
The uses of translation outlined in the preceding chapter are eminently instrumental: translation could be described as a reactive agent, a methodological tool in the study of the metamorphoses undergone by travel writing as it moves from one literary system to another. Yet the relationship between travel and translation involves a more complex pattern of representations, interferences, readings and re-readings, cultural and linguistic transfers, which need to be unravelled before the 'reactive agent' can be applied to the analysis of individual cases of translation and of their possible significance in the context of historically defined cultures and literary systems. Following the various threads of the web can also highlight what translations 'do' through their representational strategies and the uses they are put to in the socio-historical systems in which they operate. Questions of translation can then be seen as complex practices involved in the construction of images and identities, and in the interaction between cultures.
