Translation: Ethics, Ideology, Action (A look at what has been partially said)
Translation: Ethics, Ideology, Action (A look at what has been partially said)

Summary/Abstract: The writings in this paper on "Translation as Resistance" examine key translations and translation movements from various parts of the world that were instrumental in changing their societies. They participated in ideological dialogue and even struggle in their respective contexts. In "The Resistant Political Translations of Monteiro Lobato", John Milton shows how the translations of Jose Bento Monteiro Lobato promoted the modernization of Brazil and resisted the policies of the Getulio Vargas dictatorship in the 1930s and 1940s. Beginning at the same period and continuing into the second half of the twentieth century, translation of Western literary classics into Russian was used as a counter discourse to some of the most culturally repressive policies of the Soviet Union, as Brian James Baer demonstrates in "Literary Translation and the Construction of a Soviet Intelligentsia". By contrast, Nitsa Ben-Ari illustrates in "Suppression of the Erotic: Puritan Translations in Israel 1930-1980" how a variety of translation types, ranging from pornography to medical manuals, insured that the erotic would have a vocabulary and be validated in Israeli culture, countering the puritanical ethos of dominant Israeli cultural nationalism as the state of Israel was taking shape. Finally, in "Translation and Activism: Emerging Patterns of Narrative Community", Mona Baker discusses contemporary associations of translators who translate documents silenced by Western news sources and who interpret for non-profit voluntary associations that oppose dominant multinational, globalizing, and military interests, so as to further a more balanced exchange of ideas in the world at large; Baker offers as well a theoretical framework for understanding all such activist translation movements.

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