Cover not available
Article published In:
Special inaugural issue: Translating the Extreme
[Translation in Society 1:1] 2022
► pp. 105–124

From translation zone to sacrifice zone

Minor perspectives on the tradosphere

ORCID logo | Trinity College Dublin

One of the most extreme challenges facing humanity at present is the climate crisis. Responding appropriately to this crisis requires a fundamental re-examination of received ways of thinking about translation, among other things. Contrasting the eco-minor with the eco-major mode of representing ecological crisis, we argue for the importance of minority perspectives in developing an expanded remit for translation studies in the context of the climate emergency. The concepts of relational and situational minority are advanced to explore how indigenous translation hermeneutics can inform climate debates. In line with environmental debates around the importance of ‘thinking outdoors’, we advocate for a notion of ‘translating outdoors’ and seek to incorporate this line of enquiry into the development of the concept of the city as more-than-human translation zone. In the coming age of extreme climate conditions, no socially responsible understanding of translation can afford to ignore ecological perspectives on the practice.

Keywords: ecology, city, minority, indigenous, climate, environment, Mexico, Ireland, Anishinaabe, hermeneutics
Article outline
  • Eco-major
  • Eco-minor
  • Relational minority
  • Situational minority
  • Translating outdoors
  • The city as more-than-human translation zone
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 22 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tris.21014.cro
References
Alavez, Raymundo Isidro
2010 “Para que traducir a la lengua hñähñu – Why Translate into Hñähñu.” In Beyond Words: Translating the World, edited by Susan Ouriou. 20–29. Banff: Banff Centre Press.Google Scholar
Andrews, Edna
2003 Conversations with Lotman: Cultural Semiotics in Language, Literature, and Cognition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Apter, Emily
2006 The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arthur, Chris
2019 “Escaping Indoors.” World Literature Today, Summer 2019: 60–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bonneuil, Christophe, and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
2016 The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us [orig. L’événement Anthropocène: La Terre, l’histoire et nous]. Translated by David Fernbach. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Charney, Noah, and Charley Eisman
2010 Tracks and Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates: A Guide to North American Species. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole.Google Scholar
Cronin, Michael
2003 Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2017 Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deer, Gemma
2021 Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World. London: Bloomsbury Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
D’Hulst, Lieven, and Kaisa Koskinen
eds. 2020 Translating in Town: Local Translation Policies During the European 19th Century. London: Bloomsbury Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herrera, Servín Enrique
2010 “Literary Translation in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas.” In Beyond Words: Translating the World, edited by Susan Ouriou. 108–113. Banff: Banff Centre Press.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf
2006 “Animism, Fetishism, and Objectivism as Strategies for Knowing (or Not Knowing) the World.” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 71 (1): 21–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Horowitz, Alexanadra
2013 On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Ingold, Tim
2006 “Rethinking the Animate, Re-Animating Thought.” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 71 (1): 9–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Naomi
2014 This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno
2017 Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime [orig. Face à Gaïa. Huit conférence sur le nouveau régime climatique]. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Kolbert, Elizabe Th.
2021 Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. London: The Bodley Head.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno, and Timothy M. Lenton
2019 “Extending the Domain of Freedom, or Why Gaia Is So Hard to Understand.” Critical Inquiry, 45 (3): 659–680. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacCormack, Patricia
2020 The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene. London: Bloomsbury Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Macfarlane, Robert
2015 Landmarks. London: Hamish Hamilton.Google Scholar
Magan, Manchán
2020 Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape. Dublin: Gill Books.Google Scholar
Marais, Kobus
2019 A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation: The Emergence of Socio-Cultural Reality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Maran, Timo
2021 “The Ecosemiosphere is a Grounded Semiosphere: A Lotmanian Conceptualization of Cultural-Ecological Systems.” Biosemiotics, 1–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nergaard, Siri
2021 Translation and Transmigration. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
O’Connell, Mark
2020 Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back. London: Granta.Google Scholar
O’Connor, Ralph
2014 “Irish Narrative Literature and the Classical Tradition, 900–1300.” In Classical Literature and Learning in Medieval Irish Narrative, edited by Ralph O’Connor. 1–22. Cambridge: DS Brewer.Google Scholar
Noodin, Margaret A.
2019 “EZHI-GIKENDAMANG AANIKANOOTAMANG ANISHINAABEMOWIN: Anishinaabe Translation Studies.” In At Translation’s Edge, edited by Nataša Durovičová, Patrice Petro, and Lorena Terando. 123–135. Newark: Rutgers University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Gorman, Emily and Gaynor, Andrea
2020 “More-Than-Human Histories.” Environmental History 25 (4): 711–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ó Laoire, Lillis
2003 “’…d’imeodh an aois díom’: Tír na nÓg agus Talamh na hÉireann.” In Cruth na Tíre, edited Wilson McLeod, and Máire Ní Annracháin, Máire. 39–68. Dublin: Coiscéim.Google Scholar
Plumwood, Val
1993 Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2007 “Human Exceptionalism and the Limitations of Animals: A Review of Raimond Gaita’s The Philosopher’s Do .” Australian Humanities 421 (August). [URL]
2009 “Nature in the Active Voice.“ Australian Humanities Review 461. [URL]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rafael, Vicente
1992 Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule. Durham (NC): Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rahbi, Pierre
2010 Vers la sobriété heureuse. Arles: Babel.Google Scholar
Ring, Grete
1945 “St. Jerome Extracting the Thorn from the Lion’s Foot.” The Art Bulletin, 27 (3): 188–194. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, Hannah and Roser, Max
2019 “Urbanization.” Our World in Data. [URL]
Robinson, Tim
2006 Connemara: Listening to the Wind. Dublin: Penguin Ireland.Google Scholar
Rockett, Kevin
1996 The Irish Filmography: Fiction Films 1896–1996. Dublin: Red Box Media.Google Scholar
Rumiz, Paolo
2015 The Fault Line: Travelling the Other Europe, from Finland to Ukraine [orig. Aux frontières de L’Europe]. Translated by Gregory Conti. New York: Rizzoli Ex Libris.Google Scholar
Salmond, Anne
2017 Tears of Rangi: Experiments across Worlds. Auckland: University of Auckland Press.Google Scholar
Simon, Sherry
2019 Translation Sites: A Field Guide. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simon, Sherry, and Michael Cronin
2014 “Introduction: The City as Translation Zone.” Translation Studies, 7 (2): 119–132. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smethurst, Paul
2013 Travel Writing and the Natural World 1760–1840. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Snowden, Frank M.
2020 Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Van Ingen, Frederika
2016 Sagesses d’ailleurs. Paris: Les Arènes.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
2008 The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. 2nd edition. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2019 Contra Instrumentalism: A Translation Polemic. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wallace-Wells, David
2019 The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Woodworth, Paddy
. “An Exciting – and Scary – Time for Ecological Restoration.” The Irish Times, September 16 2017.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Mancosu, Paola
2023. Hacia una aproximación ontológica en los Estudios de Traducción: El caso de José María Arguedas. Meta 67:2 ► pp. 337 ff. DOI logo
Torres-Simón, Ester, Susana Valdez, Hanna Pięta & Rita Menezes
2023. Is indirect translation a friend or a foe of sustainable development?. Translation Spaces 12:2 ► pp. 204 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.