ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the research potential of combining two disciplines—sexuality and translation—that seem to have been progressively coming together over the last few years. An intimate interplay between sexuality and translation may offer critical insights into the subversive potential of the construction of identities and desires across languages and cultures, as "analyses of gender and sexual difference(s) in translation work will provoke new sites of knowledge production, as well as stimulate significant shifts in social identities and categories". " Gay, homosexual, or dyke; bisexual or transgendered; marriage or civil partnership; cunt or vagina; fuck or make love are not self-evident categories but provisional labels that emerge in local discursive practices, very often through harsh, culture-specific negotiations between conflicting ideological and ethical/moral positions. Queer researchers of translation and sexuality have problematized the notions of both sexuality and translation. While erotic literature has turned sexuality into a powerful social discourse, scholars have largely ignored questions related to the translation of erotic literature.
