The moveable feast: translation, ecology and food

Abstract

Food production and translation have in common a long relationship with different forms of technology. As societies and economies in many parts of the world are faced with dramatic changes as a result of advances in computing power and software development, changes that are directly affecting translation itself, it is argued that responses to the technologisation of food production are instructive for the future direction of translation both as a profession and as a domain of research. More specifically, analysing dimensions to the practice of food translation points up the emergence of a political ecology of translation. These dimensions include translational productivity, the role of the local or place and the fractal properties of language in translation. This emergent ecology draws on key concepts from social anthropology such as ‘wayfaring’ and ‘meshwork’ to reconceptualise the potential agency of the translator in what is increasingly referred to as the Second Machine Age. A crucial component of this new ecology of translation is an attention to inter-species communication and how the translation paradigm is an inescapable part of human–animal relationships.

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