ABSTRACT

Literary translation can be political. Because literature engages with the world, it can also engage with politics – and translating literature makes this engagement international. Images of the source culture promoted by literary-translation teams may engage with target readers’ stereotypes about that culture, thus participating in the political power-play between cultures. The future trajectory of literary-translation studies is hard to predict. In language-form terms, literary texts are usually written – even if also spoken likes drama. Literary translations can convey political messages in three key ways: which texts are chosen for translation, how the translator translates, and how they are presented to readers. Similarly, it is often crucial but not always easy to retain gender-political messages in translation. The chapter focuses on interlingual translation, where texts are transmitted in roughly similar form across languages. Intralingual adaptations within one language may also be politicised.