Borders and Borderlands

Abstract

The study of literature — or more specifically, literatures — is widely practised and accepted as an academic discipline in schools and universities across the globe. Translation as an academic discipline has a much shorter history and has struggled to gain acceptance in some scholarly circles.¹ As Kuhiwczak aptly remarked just a decade or so ago: the ‘activity which has such old and noble origins has only recently been established as an academic field in a conscious way’, concluding that ‘its position is by no means universally acknowledged’ (2003: 112). In making a case for translation, or at least literary translation, to be treated as a ‘serious enterprise, not inherently less important than creative writing or literary criticism’ (2003: 122), Kuhiwczak indirectly draws our attention to the even less established academic status of ‘non-literary’ translation. If literary translation, with its strong associations with prestigious texts of the creative imagination has suffered from what he calls a ‘troubled identity’, how much more so is the identity of non-literary translation ‘troubled’, especially as its binary opposite has itself had its academic problems? Being defined negatively is one thing; being defined negatively in relation to a less than universally accepted academic discipline is another.