Translation sits at the epicentre of the biotech era's exponential growth. The terms of reference of this discipline are becoming increasingly unstable as humans interface with machines, become melded with them, and ultimately become a networked entity alongside other networked entities. In this brave new world, the posthuman offers a critical perspective that allows us to liberate our thinking in new ways and points towards the possibility of a translation theory that actively engages with other disciplines as a response to disciplinary hegemony. This article looks at how technology has changed and is changing translation. It then explores the implications of transhumanism and the possibilities for a posthuman translation theory. Ultimately, the survival of translation studies will be contingent on the survival of translation itself and its ability to question its own subjective, posthuman self.

This article assumes a position that sees translation – the interlingual transposition of languages – and adaptation – the (sometimes) interlingual (and sometimes) intersemiotic textual practice as one process despite their separate histories, theories and fields of study. The notion of adaptation is invoked all too often by those commissioning translations as a pejorative, a slur on a (target) text’s authenticity and integrity while for the commissioners of adaptations, translation remains a moniker for either interlingual transposition or a metaphor for supposed one-to-one correspondences of words, scenes, ideas and themes. Jazz, like translation, remains a minority interest, something that operates on the fringes of its more mainstream twin (popular music/literature). But its true power lies in its ability to subvert, invert, move, adapt, but always move forward and change. In this sense, it provides a convenient and creative way to view translation – as a performance on a source, and more specifically a certain kind of performance – jazz. In seeing the relationship between the source and the target, the original text/s and its/their newly forged resultant whole, as essentially dialogic and responsive, adaptation and translation can be viewed as performances on their sources. Just as actors might seek to engage with a text, find a connection with it, and perform it in a personal way that reflects their creative response to that text, so too we can begin to see the work of translators and adaptors beyond the world and scope of theatre practice.

Culture and performance cross borders constantly, and not just the borders that define nations. In this new series, scholars of performance produce interactions between and among nations and cultures as well as genres, identities and imaginations.Inter-national in the largest sense, the books collected in the Studies in International Performance series display a range of historical, theoretical and critical approaches to the panoply of performances that make up the global surround. The series embraces 'Culture' which is institutional as well as improvised, underground or alternative, and treats 'Performance' as either intercultural or transnational as well as intracultural within nations.

No abstract

No abstract