ABSTRACT
Fictionalized representations of translating and interpreting have been attracting a great deal of attention in what is emerging as a vibrant new subfield in translation studies. Translation, including interpreting, is ubiquitous in the real world, more and more so as globalization, migration and the digital revolution have become defining features of the twenty-first century. The translator’s power, in fiction as in real life, can be assessed in terms of two variables: the intrinsic importance of the message, and the distance between the two languages and cultures which enter into communication via the translator. The translator’s ability to make a difference can have potentially heroic or tragic dimensions, as in the three kinds of stories just surveyed. George Steiner made the very bold claim that Borges’s short story ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quichote’ is “the most astute, most concentrated commentary anyone has offered on the business of translation”.
