ABSTRACT
Activist translation refracts memory into political action to counter-hegemonic uses of translation that seeks to erase alternative narratives, and by doing so it questions the state’s articulation of citizenship as well as its legitimacy. Throughout history, translation has occurred when a prestigious text or group of texts come into a literary system to establish the legitimacy of a rising power that sponsors the act of translation in the first place. A translatio imperii occurs when the rising power succeeds in sanctioning its new political order by means of translation projects, securing the hegemony of its new rule. Throughout the several moments of resistance and activism since World War II, translation as an ethical, political act rewrites memory, encodes culture, avoids censorship, and promotes interculturality. Since World War II, the United States has used translation and a scientific discourse for the acculturation of people around the Global South and the formation of new markets for a global capitalist economy.
