ABSTRACT
European encounters with Asian religions–Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, among others–laid the foundation for an entrenchment of Orientalism in the nineteenth century, when the term Orient grew to encompass lands further east from Europe, namely India and the Far East, owing to burgeoning interest in the civilizations. Through a large body of writings about the Orient, Europe incrementally formed an identity that distinguishes itself decisively from the cultures of lands deemed different, strange and inferior. The promotion of religious causes required the translation of Oriental languages in Europe as early as the eighth century, when the Catholic Church began to study the languages of the Islamic world in order to thwart the Muslim advance. Translation from the perspective of Orientalism is virtually synonymous with appropriation, or in Venuti’s terms, domestication. Orientalism is also said to be responsible for making the translated text strange and inaccessible, in other words, for explicitly foreignizing the Orient through translation.
