post-colonial_translation

Introduction 5
Europe could the colonized break away from what was imposed upon
them. And at the same time, the devouring could be perceived as both a
violation of European codes and an act of homage.
The cannibalistic metaphor has come to be used to demonstrate to
translators what they can do with a text. Translation, says the great
Brazilian translator Haraldo de Campos, whose work is discussed in
detail by Else Vieira in her chapter in this book, may be likened to a
blood transfusion, where the emphasis is on the health and nourishment
of the translator. This is a far cry from the notion of faithfulness to an
original, of the translator as servant of the source text. Translation,
according to de Campos, is a dialogue, the translator is an all-powerful
reader and a free agent as a writer. This is a vastly different view of
translation from that described by George Steiner as involving the
‘penetration’ of the source text (Steiner 1975).
At this point in time, post-colonial theorists are increasingly turning
to translation and both reappropriating and reassessing the term itself.
The close relationship between colonization and translation has come
under scrutiny; we can now perceive the extent to which translation
was for centuries a one-way process, with texts being translated into
European languages for European consumption, rather than as part of
a reciprocal process of exchange. European norms have dominated
literary production, and those norms have ensured that only certain
kinds of text, those that will not prove alien to the receiving culture,
come to be translated. As Anuradha Dingwaney and Carol Maier point
out, translation is often a form of violence (Dingwaney and Maier 1995).
Moreover, the role played by translation in facilitating colonization is
also now in evidence. And the metaphor of the colony as a translation,
a copy of an original located elsewhere on the map, has been recognized.
This shameful history of translation that is now being exposed has
led to some extreme reactions. There are those who maintain that
translation into European languages should be restricted, even curtailed,
that texts should not be translated into dominant linguistic and cultural
systems because this perpetuates the colonizing process. They have a
point, of course. But to restrict translation is to tread perilously close to
other forms of censorship. A ban on translation can lead one down the
same pathway that ends with the burning of books judged unacceptable
by a tyrannous regime. Much more productive is the approach proposed
by such writers as Homi Bhabha, and many of the Canadian women
translators discussed by Sherry Simon in her chapter, who argue
persuasively for a new politics of in-betweenness, for a reassessment of
the creative potentialities of liminal space. As Homi Bhabha puts it: