Book review
Abdel Wahab Khalifa, ed. Translators have their say? Translation and the power of agency
Zurich: LIT Verlag, 2014. 205 pp.

Reviewed by Liu Honghua and Huang Qin
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Table of contents

Translators Have Their Say? Translation and the Power of Agency, edited by Abdel Wahab Khalifa, is an offshoot of the 2013 CETRA Research Summer School. It follows two earlier important edited volumes devoted to the issues of agents and agency in translation, Agents of Translation (Milton and Bandia 2009) and Translators’ Agency (Kinnunen and Koskinen 2010). In contrast to these earlier volumes, which focus primarily on translators’ agency, the volume under review also considers the agency of mediators (humans and non-humans alike) that are involved in the production of translations. This volume attempts “to understand the complex nature of agency in terms of its relation to agents of translation; the role of translatorial agents and the way they exercise their agency in (de)constructing narratives of power and identity; and the influence of translatorial agency on the various processes of translation and hence the final translation product as well” (14). The eight contributions that make up this volume aim for a closer understanding of the concept of translatorial agency by “revealing how agency is exercised or agents’ choices are made and reflected in the final translation product” (15).

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References

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