Cover not available

In:Translation Studies between Disciplines and Practices
Edited by Luc van Doorslaer and Yves Gambier
[Benjamins Translation Library 174] 2026
► pp. 69–86

Chapter 4
Memory studies and translation studies

From local histories to transcultural mnemonic landscapes

 | Ghent University
 | Tallinn University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This chapter is structured as a dialogue between two scholars from different disciplines, each exploring the potential of concepts and methods from translation studies to shed light on the formation, circulation and reception of transnational memories, while also considering how insights from memory studies can highlight the multidirectional engagements and local embedding of memories originating from diverse contexts in cultural practices of translation. The interdisciplinary exchange prompts reflection on the specific formats and mechanisms through which memories “travel” via translation across geographical, cultural and linguistic boundaries, as well as their subsequent “instantiation” in particular locales, where they are reshaped through interactions with local repertoires, audiences, and agendas.
Our focus is on how translation-as-transformation acts as a driving force behind the evolution and preservation of memory. This entails engaging with the ethical implications of translating local histories and narratives for global consumption. Through an analysis of various media forms — including testimony, literature, film, and museums — we examine how the dynamic interplay between interlingual and cultural translation unlocks the mnemonic potential of a given text or narrative. Approaching memory through a translational lens ultimately compels us to challenge conventional notions of authenticity, native language and stable originals, and to question the presumed unidirectionality of transfer processes.
Article outline
  • 1.Interdisciplinary encounters
  • 2.Back and forth between the local and the global dimensions:
    Ethical considerations
  • 3.Translation as transformation
  • 4.Interlingual and cultural translation — or why we must challenge
    fixed originals and traditional source-target orientations
  • Author queries
  • References
References (49)
References
Aydemir, Murat, and Alex Rotas. 2008. “Introduction: Migratory settings.” in Migratory settings, edited by Murat Aydemir and Alex Rotas, 7–28. Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bachmann-Medick, Doris. 2009. “Introduction: The translational turn.” Translation Studies 2 (1): 2–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere. 1998. Constructing ccultures: Essays on literary translation. Cromwell Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bassnett, Susan. 2002 [1980]. Translation studies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. “Translation as re-membering.” In Cultural memory: Essays on European literature and history, edited by C. E. J. Caldicott, Anne Fuchs and Edric Caldicott. Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 2000 [1923]. “The task of the translator.” (orig. German “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers.”) Translated by Harry Zohn. In The translation studies reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bond, Lucy, Ben De Bruyn, and Jessica Rapson, eds. 2018. Planetary memory in contemporary American fiction. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brodzki, Bella. 2007. Can these bones live? Translation, survival, and cultural memory. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brownlie, Sioban. 2016. Mapping memory in translation. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Craps, Stef, Rick Crownshaw, and Rebecca Dolgoy, eds. Forthcoming. Special issue of Memory Studies Review 2 (2).
Cronin, Michael. 2017. Eco-translation. Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dasca, Maria, and Rosa Cerarols, eds. 2024. Translation studies and ecology: Mapping the possibilities of a new emerging field. Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Peter. 2018. Witness between languages: The translation of Holocaust testimonies in context. Boydell & Brewer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deane-Cox, Sharon, and Anneleen Spiessens. 2022. The Routledge handbook of translation and memory. Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dickinson, Kristin. 2021. DisOrientations: German-Turkish cultural contact in translation, 1811–1946. Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Erll, Astrid. 2011. “Travelling memory.” Parallax 17 (4): 4–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Transcultural memory.” Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire (119): 178. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Faye, Gaël. 2016. Petit pays [Small country]. Grasset.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. Gahugu gato [Small country]. Translated by Olivier Uwineza Bahizi. Éditions d’en bas.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gambier, Yves, and Luc van Doorslaer. 2016. “Disciplinary dialogues with translation studies: The background chapter.” In Border crossings: Translation studies and other disciplines, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer. Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gentzler, Edwin. 2017. Translation and rewriting in the age of post-translation studies. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Henckel von Donnersmarck. 2006. Das Leben der Anderen [The lives of others]. Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hirsch, Marianne, and Leo Spitzer. 1993. “Gendered translations: Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.” In Gendering war talk, edited by Mariam G. Cooke and Angela Woollacott. Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jünke, Claudia, and Désirée Schyns. 2024. Translating memories of violent pasts: Memory studies and translation studies in dialogue. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaakinen, Kaisa. 2017. Comparative literature and the historical imaginary: Reading Conrad, Weiss, Sebald. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. “For future reference: A twenty-first-century reading of Peter Weiss’s poetics of parataxis and scenes of walking.” New German Critique 49 (3): 93–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2025. “Narrating historical experience for heterogeneous readerships: translational reading as limited participation in Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus project.” In Literature and mnemonic migration: Remediation, translation, reception, edited by Eneken Laanes, Jessica Ortner and Tea Sindbæk-Andersen. De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Francine. 1993. “Interview et interprétation consécutive dans le film Shoah de Claude Lanzmann.” [Interview and consecutive interpreting for the film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann] Meta 38 (4): 664–673. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuhiwczak, Piotr. 2007. “The grammar of survival. How do we read Holocaust testimonies??” In Translating and interpreting conflict, edited by Myriam Salama-Carr. Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laanes, Eneken, and Hanna Meretoja. 2021. “Editorial: Cultural memorial forms.” Memory Studies 14 (1): 3–9. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laanes, Eneken, Jessica Ortner, and Tea Sindbaek Andersen, eds. 2024. Literature and mnemonic migration: Remediation, translation, reception. De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laanes, Eneken. 2021. “Born translated memories: Transcultural memorial forms, domestication and foreignisation.” Memory Studies 14 (1): 41–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2024. “Katja Petrowskaja’s translational poetics of memory.” New German Critique 152: 51–78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mintz, Alan. 2001. Popular culture and the shaping of Holocaust memory in America. University of Washington Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nergaard, Siri, and Stefano Arduini. 2011. “Translation: A new paradigm.” Translation. A Transdisciplinary Journal 1 (1): 8–17.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oksanen, Sofi. 2009. Puhdistus [Purge]. WSOY.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Petrowskaja, Katja. 2014. Vielleicht Esther [Maybe Esther]. Suhrkamp Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Radstone, Susannah, and Rita Wilson. 2021. Translating worlds: Migration, memory, and culture. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Radstone, Susannah. 2011. “What place is this? Transcultural memory and the locations of memory studies.” Parallax 17 (4): 109–123. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rigney, Ann. 2005. “Plenitude, scarcity and the circulation of cultural memory.” Journal of European Studies 35 (1): 11–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. “Transforming memory and the European project.” New Literary History 43 (4): 607–628. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. “Articulations of memory: Mediation and the making of mnemo-regions.” In Regions of memory: Transnational formations, edited by Simon Lewis, Jeffrey Olick, Joanna Wawrzyniak and Malgorzata Pakier. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the age of decolonization. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Multidirectional memory in migratory settings: The case of post-Holocaust Germany.” In Transnational memory studies: Circulation, articulation, scales, edited by Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney. De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simon, Sherry. 2006. Translating Montreal: Episodes in the life of a divided city. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. Translation sites: A field guide. Rouledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spiessens, Anneleen. 2019. “Deep memory during the Crimean crisis.” Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 31 (3): 398–419. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stoicea, Gabriela. 2006. “The difficulties of verbalizing trauma: Translation and the economy of loss in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 39 (2): 43–53. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walkowitz, Rebecca L. 2015. Born translated: The contemporary novel in the age of world literature. Columbia University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue