ABSTRACT
While maintaining that there can be no easy answers about which to follow, this chapter outlines different strategies for translating instances of racism in the source text. Ultimately, the choices made by the translator will depend not on the intent of the author but on the potential impact of the racism in the text as well as on the function and audience envisioned for the translation. In the first strategy discussed, translators may remove or soften racist discourse in the interest of harm reduction, a move supported by the problematization in translation studies of the sacrosanct nature of the original. In some cases, though, this strategy may function as a type of whitewashing that obscures how racism operates in society. The translator may instead choose to leave racist discourse in a text, either to give information about the racial ideology of a person or group in a time period or cultural milieu or because it functions in the text as a critique of racism. However, confronted with a text rife with racist discourse, the translator should ask whose and what interests would be served by translating it and consider the strategy of deplatforming since canons are no more sacrosanct than originals and always shift over time.
