The Events and Non-Events of Translation

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to gain critical and theoretical purchase on the notion of an “event” as it may or may not relevantly apply to the practices of translation. The essay allows itself to be quizzical as regards the possibility that translation can be called an event at all, but it also inspects the ways in which, nonetheless, it is meaningful – and indeed useful – to consider the event­hood, or eventuality of translation. In that regard, I suggest that Trans­la­tion Studies can avail itself of philosophical accounts of the “event,” and more­over relate translation to the ways in which reading has been called an event. This essay concludes on a set of observations concerning how one might widen the scope beyond considerations concerning the event of trans­la­tion restricted to texts and consider other, multi-medial events of trans­la­tion.