ABSTRACT
The Anthropocene, a term now widely adopted to describe a new geological epoch in which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment, is also a concept widely criticized for its Eurocentric framing of the climate crisis. This chapter explores how German writer Ulrike Almut Sandig and Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer have harnessed experiential translation to critique the ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism of Western environmental discourse and expand translation's framework to the non-human world. The chapter demonstrates how these works create a new imaginary framework for planetary relations that goes beyond the international framework of translation studies. Moreover, I argue that by performing the meaning-making agency of human and non-human agents often marginalized in Anthropocene discourses, these experimental eco-translations decolonize the Anthropocene by translating it from situated linguistic and cultural margins. The works of Sandig and Kimmerer, I argue, provincialize human language by acknowledging non-human forces as translation. By using translation strategies to ‘re-animate’ nature in environmental discourses, these works stretch the remit of our political communities beyond the traditional gaze of the nation to imagine alternative, more-than-human planetary relations.
