Eco-translation

The literary translator and translation theorist Clive Scott prefers the term &s;eco-translation&s; and uses it to describe the translator&s;s psycho-physiological involvement with the text to be translated. Food translation also suggests a relationship between the local and the non-local that obviates the dangers of an essentialist localism in political argument where cultural specificity is invoked as the rationale for ethnic exclusion. Eco-translation as a relatively new area of enquiry in translation studies is in need of further elaboration. The potential for research is immense both in terms of developing new, ecologically sensitive methodologies and in exploring the more radical propositions around transversal subjectivity and translation relationships between different signifying systems. The ecology of attention does not only pertain to what literature gets seen or read but also to what gets seen or read in the literature itself. In particular, there are embedded forms of translation which relate to ecological concerns the local or the specific.