ABSTRACT
The relationship between translation and nations or nation-states is complex and paradoxical. Translation has thus become a very productive site from which to critique and deconstruct the claims of Romantic nationalism, as well as the attendant claims of Romantic authorship. Highlighting the discursive construction of the modern nation, Bhabha claimed that modern western nations are characterized by an “impossible unity”, and that, like narratives, they “lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully encounter their horizons in the mind’s eye”. There are also different ways of conceiving, and institutionalizing, the relationship between the nation and the nation-state. B. Anderson and other modernists argue that nations should be distinguished “not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined”. Translation policy and practices do not simply reflect and support the national imaginary but also play an active role in nation-building and the preservation of so-called minor languages, or languages of limited diffusion.
