Source — Literariness.org, "Postcolonial Translation Theory"
- Title: Postcolonial Translation Theory
- Author: Nasrullah Mambrol
- Publication: literariness.org
- URL: https://literariness.org/2018/01/11/postcolonial-translation-theory/
- Date: 2018-01-11
- Type: secondary — a literature/theory reference blog; neutral-to-expository stance, cites named primary sources with page-style citations (e.g. "Niranjana 1992: 2") rather than presenting unsourced synthesis.
- Accessed: 2026-08-30
Extract
- Sherry Simon situates the field's move as extending cultural studies into translation by locating "linguistic transfer within the multiple 'post' realities of today: poststructuralism, postcolonialism and postmodernism" (cited as Simon 1996: 136) — explicitly connecting the feminist and postcolonial extensions as parallel moves out of the same cultural turn.
- Gayatri Spivak: warns against "translatese" — a flattened prose style that homogenizes diverse voices when "Third World" literature is translated into English; argues that Western feminists should learn the original languages of the texts they engage with rather than relying on translation into English, "the language of power."
- Tejaswini Niranjana: frames translation as a colonial-discourse tool operating alongside education and theology; quoted as arguing "translation as a practice shapes...the asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism" (cited as Niranjana 1992: 2). Criticizes Western translation studies for ignoring these power imbalances and calls for "interventionist" translation approaches that resist colonial assimilation rather than reproduce it.
- Bassnett and Trivedi (cited as 1999, i.e. their edited volume Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice): describe English as "the one master-language of our postcolonial world" and position translation as the "battleground" of postcolonial struggle, linked to migrancy, hybridity, and "locational disrupture."
- Homi Bhabha: theorizes "ambivalent cultural hybridity," under which colonized discourse can subvert colonial authority — reframing the translator's role from neutral mediator to active participant in a contested cultural overlap.
Gaps in this source (flagged, not filled here)
- This is a secondary summary; none of its Simon/Niranjana/Bassnett-Trivedi/Bhabha quotations have been checked by this project against the cited primary texts themselves.
- Bhabha's role is named here as a postcolonial-hybridity theorist relevant to translation, but he is not himself a translation-studies figure in the way Niranjana, Spivak, Bassnett, and Trivedi are — treat his inclusion as this source's own framing, not confirmed elsewhere.