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Article In: Translation in Society: Online-First Articles

From reality to simulacra

Eco-translation and the visual representation of the environment

ORCiD logo with link | Independent Researcher
 | Allameh Tabataba’I University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
In an image-saturated era, our experience of the environment is increasingly mediated visually. Through the lens of eco-translation, this article explores how ecological realities are visually translated within the Tasvir Sal exhibition. Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s four stages of simulacra, this study conducts a qualitative analysis of 100 environmentally themed photographs, categorizing each work according to its degree of detachment from material ecological referents and identifying four corresponding modes of visual translation: evidentiary, interpretive, symbolic, and simulative. The results illustrate a predominance of Stage 4 images — pure simulacra — indicating a curatorial preference for aesthetic and cultural self-referentiality over direct ecological documentation. Conversely, the relatively rare Stage 1 and Stage 2 works, while demonstrating some communicative value through their stronger ties to material reality, have their capacity for environmental witnessing constrained and are more vulnerable to being overshadowed by dominant symbolic or simulated representations. By tracing how the photographs move between reality and simulacra, the study underscores that the ethical challenge of visual eco-translation is not simply to avoid symbolism, but to use it without losing sight of the world it claims to represent.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Eco-translation and visual representation of environment
    • 2.2Simulacra and the visual translation of ecological reality
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus and data collection
    • 3.2Analytical procedure
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Stage 1: Reflection of reality
    • 4.2Stage 2: Distortion of reality
    • 4.3Stage 3: Masking the absence of reality
    • 4.4Stage 4: Pure simulacrum
  • 5.Translational detachment in eco-translation
  • 6.Modes of visual translation across the four stages of simulacra
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • References
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