Translation for the subaltern

ABSTRACT

This paper begins by posing the following questions: Who are the subaltern in the global present? What refigurations has the concept of subalternity undergone since its inaugural use in Antonio Gramsci’s writing? What does a genealogical account of such revisions and discontinuities suggest? Can the subaltern speak or be heard in a digital world? Why translate for the subaltern? If translation is an impossible necessity, what risks and pitfalls are encountered in translation for the subaltern? What potential does a politically empowering ethics of translation offer for surmounting such obstacles? Using these questions as a point of departure, this paper proceeds to explore how in the age of digital media communications the previously colonized or subalternized are further hegemonized, and what mechanisms are involved when digital imperialism is further marginalizing and silencing the subaltern. If the history of colonialism has witnessed translation being manipulated as a vehicle to achieve and maintain domination and control, the paper argues, then translation can also serve as a powerful site or tool for repairing social injustice and epistemic or representational violence against the subaltern, and therefore help enable the subaltern to speak for themselves and be heard sympathetically and respectfully.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation
• the subaltern
• the other
• universality
• jutice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See Nolan, “Language Barrier,” p. 27.

2. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest and a founding figure of the Jesuit China Missions. He was the first Western scholar reading and studying Chinese classics in Chinese.

3. See Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, chapter 10.

4. The Kiama, the council of elders, is responsible for looking after the ancestral land and maintaining social cohesion of the tribe, making decisions on judicial, religious, and political matters.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shaobo Xie

Shaobo Xie is Professor of English at the University of Calgary. He teaches literary theory, postcolonial literature and theory, and translation studies. His articles have appeared in journals such as Boundary 2, New Literary History, Cultural Critique, Telos, Neohelicon, Semiotica, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Science & Society, Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, and International Social Science Journal. Among his recent publications are “Green Religion as a Way of Life: Thoreau and his Ecocentric Aesthetics of Existence,” “Chinese Beginnings of Cosmopolitanism: A Genealogical Critique of Tianxia Guan,” “Translation and Globalization,” and “World Literature, Translation, Untranslatability.”