ABSTRACT
This chapter starts by critically examining debates about the politics of translation within translation studies around the key notions of domestication and foreignisation. It then focuses on approaches to translation developed in various social scientific disciplines, including international relations, human rights studies and critical policy studies, which have foregrounded an understanding of translation as transformation. The chapter argues for an alternative conceptualisation of the politics of translation that can accommodate insights from these different research domains while contributing to a greater visibility of the significance of translation within the social sciences more widely. This requires directing attention not just to texts, but especially to the positioning and intervention of translating agents. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's approach to the politicisation of art, the chapter develops a reconceptualisation of the politics of translation around the notions of assimilatory and reflexive translation.
