ABSTRACT
What does ‘queer’ have to do with translation? Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘queer’ and what you mean by ‘translation’. The former term is notoriously slippery, covering not only a wide range of non-normative sexualities and genders under the sign of the postmodern, but also a multifaceted set of political and theoretical interventions, at once ludic and profoundly serious, that originate in the sexual but are by no means limited to it. The latter word, translation, though it might seem deceptively straightforward and for a long time was only sparsely and partially theorized, turns out on closer inspection to be comparably indeterminate and similarly imbricated with issues of gender and sexuality, playfulness and power. In this edited collection, we explore the multifarious intersections between queer studies and translation studies in literature, media, politics, linguistics and culture. The aim is to queer and ‘queery’ ideas of translation and to analyse how queerness ‘translates’ – as a sexuality, a politics, or a concept.
