The Translation Memoir: An Introduction

This introduction presents the frame and contents of this volume devoted to the translation memoir. The translation memoir is formed at the intersection of life writing and translation studies, in which translators interweave reflections on their practice, craft, texts they translate and positionalities they occupy. As such it is a kind of creative-critical research carried out by translators. It offers a unique entry into texts, languages, cultures and the work of translation. The contributions included in the volume explore the way in which the subject position of writing can be displaced and problematised by inserting the translator's voice and subjectivity into a text, as the translator is precisely the player within a textual ecology who is supposed to not occupy a central position, but reside on the margins, invisible or couched in shadows, speaking only through the voice of another. The writings discussed in this volume, and in some cases the writings themselves, are thus a form of translational experimentation insofar as they break some of the rules, or push the limits of translation as precisely that which is not traditionally considered an original, authored writing. As such it is also a location from which to carry out critiques of other dominant paradigms such as national or gender-based oppressions.