Title: “Decolonial and Postcolonial Perspectives on Translation”

Abstract:  This talk seeks to stage a critical conversation between postcolonial and decolonial frameworks using their shared interest in translation theory and practice. Decolonial scholars have tended to stress the distinctiveness of their own work, presenting it as moving beyond postcolonialism. Decoloniality’s criticism of postcolonial translation scholarship fits this overall trend, yet on closer examination seems difficult to justify. In this talk, I interrogate Walter Mignolo and Freya Schiwy’s (2003) ready dismissal of Lydia Liu and Tejaswini Niranjana, exploring how Liu and Niranjana incorporate questions of power and directionality firmly into their theorizations of translation in a way that seems fully compatible with decoloniality. I also place Mignolo and Schiwy’s claims about the radical newness of decolonial translation practices under the spotlight, questioning their suggestion that the Zapatistas’ syncretic (‘decolonial’) translation approach marks a radical break with previous translation practice. This involves comparing it with the innovations of African and Indian authors, as highlighted in, inter alia, Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (Bassnett and Trivedi, 1999).

Bio: Kathryn Batchelor is professor of translation studies at UCL, United Kingdom. She is the author of  Translation and Paratexts (2018) and Decolonizing Translation (2009/2014), and has co-edited six volumes of essays, including Intimate Enemies: Translation in Francophone Contexts (2013, with Claire Bisdorff),  Translating Frantz Fanon across Continents and Languages (2017, with Sue-Ann Harding), and Translation, Trouvailles (2023, with Chantal Wright). Kathryn’s primary research interests lie in translation theory, postcolonial translation, translation history, and translation philosophy.