ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the act of translation in evoking local languages and particular places to illuminate aspects of planetary thinking and analyzes the double-edged role of translation in both facilitating and restricting the circulation of knowledge and information. I argue that translation employed as a fluvial force in literature has the power to connect voices in the multilingual, transcultural, and more-than-human world. Drawing on theories of eco-translation and planetarity, I consider two novels as eco-translation narratives, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh and Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan, which broach issues about migration and displacement driven by environmental crises from different localities in India and China. What connects the ecologically minded writers of these two texts is their engagement with translation and migration as intertwining themes and underlying processes in the fabric of their narratives. Viewing translation and multilingualism as a textual approach as well as an embodied experience, this article explores the connections between words and worlds and the potential of creative engagement with planetary thinking through the homing and un-homing of translators and translations.
