ABSTRACT
Translators and interpreters face a basic ethical choice with every assignment: to reproduce existing ideologies as encoded in the narratives elaborated in the text or utterance, or to dissociate themselves from those ideologies, if necessary by refusing to translate the text or interpret in a particular context at all. Given that they are normally in a position to turn down an assignment, ‘accepting the work … implies complicity’ (Séguinot 1988: 105).1 Beyond this basic choice, translators and interpreters can and do resort to various strategies to strengthen or undermine particular aspects of the narratives they mediate, explicitly or implicitly. These strategies allow them to dissociate themselves from the narrative position of the author or speaker or, alternatively, to signal their empathy with it.
