The author draws on Benjamin, Derrida, and De Man to show that translation has long been a site for perpetuating the unequal relations among peoples, races, and languages. The traditional view of translation underwritten by Western philosophy helped colonialism to construct the exotic 'other' as unchanging and outside history, and thus easier both to appropriate and to control. Examining translations of Indian texts from the eighteenth century to the present, the author urges post-colonial peoples to reconceive translation as a site for resistance and transformation.