ABSTRACT
For the last four years I have worked on the ‘Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community’ project led by the University of Manchester. The subproject I lead aims at examining the role of the literary translator in the process of construction and preservation of a country’s cultural memory. With project partner AATI (Argentine Association of Translators and Interpreters), the BCLT (British Centre for Literary Translation) has facilitated literary translation workshops in both Buenos Aires and University of East Anglia. This chapter, based on my practice-led research, examines the potential of the literary translation workshop for creating a space in which narratives are shared, re-imagined, and passed on. It also investigates the nature of this space as a transnational, multi-vocal, collaborative, and creative space. I will show the potential contribution that this transnational, multi-vocal collaborative space of the workshop can make to the work of other disciplines and discourses, such as Memory Studies. I will address questions having to do with the ‘ethics of translation’ for translators working on these texts, as well as more practical questions related to what a literary translator needs to know when working in contexts which are difficult, conflict-ridden and multi-vocal.
