The Ascension of the Translator in the Age of Digital Globalization

A contested notion, the figure of the translator—like that of the author—is (and has always been), I would argue, a travelling  concept.  It  is,  however,  a powerful force, perpetually wielding a certain  enchanting lure  over those involved   in the field of literary culture and academic studies. Nevertheless, the translator still currently lacks the appropriate symbolic capital. In the wake of poststructuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial theories, my paper  examines  contemporary translation by mapping the network of interacting structures and  transformations that underpin ongoing literary phenomena. The said conceptual frameworks start to fade with the expansion of planetary studies and relational aesthetics, and the birth of post-internet communication technologies. Globalization and digitization,  as well as world and systemic approaches to literary studies, have decisively altered the structure of the field, establishing a 21st-century translational symptomatology. The importance of translators and the ways in which they work and transport  works across international landscapes have, indeed, recently come to the fore.  Nevertheless, the question of how the translator should be redefined in our late global society remains deeply contested. Defined either as a media construct or as a set of textual images, the translator still seems to inhabit the realm of authorial presence and/or absence. No work has hitherto examined the question of the translator in ecological terms, even if ecology and literature have, indeed, been associated in many ways. By exploring the diversity of translation theories and practices, my paper will reveal the mechanisms through which our current literary system works, showing that—in a post-critical age—‘the ascension of the translator’ constitutes an unfolding site of controversy and dissent.

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