Translation and transnational narratives of revolution: Constructing a critical history in the present

Abstract

Translation profoundly influenced the creation of a pan-European and transatlantic revolutionary movement at the end of the eighteenth century. Yet the role of translation in extending radical ideas of equality and democracy still remains largely hidden from view. This article draws on the AHRC-funded Radical Translations Project to recover the vitality of translation practices during this period. It argues that activist and militant translators of the revolutionary period turned to translation to construct new genealogies of what they hoped would be a new present and future. These genealogies were transnational in nature. They were also frequently expressed in the form of elaborate metanarratives by which translators sought to give meaning to a sequence of revolutionary events that were still unfolding. The article discusses the significance of these metanarratives for our understanding of how new genealogies come to be forged during a historical moment of great upheaval. It illuminates the role played by multiple, simultaneous chronologies in the transnational circulation of revolutionary concepts and modes of action, and concludes by showing how translation studies can offer the historian new methods for contextualizing the temporality of both national and transnational narratives of revolution.A synopsis of this article can be found here.