Feminist Literary Translation and the Language Work of Alternative History Fiction

Description

This project examines an important yet critically overlooked aspect of global English literary scholarship: the role of literary translation, and the forms of linguistic, national, and gendered prejudice that underpin it, in shaping the canonical contours of what we call “world literature.” Long regarded with either suspicion or derision, translation is, increasingly, celebrated on the world stage: the Man Booker’s decision to award their International Booker Prize to both author and translator in 2016 solidified this shift in perception, signalling a long overdue recognition of translation as a distinct—and equally important—form of literary production. In the wake of this watershed decision, other major awards have followed suit, and prizes and anthologies devoted to English literary translation have proliferated (Alter).This growth in interest in translated fiction has had the effect of exposing the many inequities that have long plagued the field of English literary translation. These include disparities in the range of source languages represented (mostly European romance languages, at the expense of Asian and African languages); gender disparities, in terms of authors translated (overwhelmingly male); racial disparities, both in terms of translator and author (overwhelmingly white) (Venuti 2019; Patel & Youssef 2022). Historically, world literature has been positioned as a corrective to these blind spots, the idea being that by reading beyond national, cultural, and linguistic borders, literature in the English language becomes more diversified and inclusive. But while world literature has done admirable work in terms of diversifying the canon, the seamless assimilation of translated fiction into “world literature”— which requires leaving translation politics largely unquestioned—has only worked to reinforce the aforementioned inequities, not lessen them.In my project, I address these critical blind spots by arguing for the import of feminist translation studies approaches to the study of world literatures in English. I do this by examining a growing body of literature that I call “alternative history fiction”: fiction that demonstrates, through its particular formal and generic experimentation, how history writing and literary translation are parallel practices that require the writer make value judgments around what to preserve, highlight, and omit from the record. Looking at a range of translational strategies and practices in works by R.F. Kuang, Theresa Cha, M. NourbeSe Philip, Trish Salah, Marie-Célie Agnant, Naomi Fontaine, and Xu Xi, I argue that these alternative history fictions help to illuminate the biases that shape the world literature canon whilst also calling attention to subjects and stories deemed unfavourable to nationalist accounts of world history. I also show, through careful engagement with the diverse feminist politics of these writings, how a feminist approach to literary translation can work to rectify and redress these biases, while carving out opportunities for international and multilingual collaboration.