A New Materialist Theory of Translation by Matt Valler

This book proposes a New Materialist theory of translation, redefining translation as a negotiation of agency to address the urgent challenges of co-existence in the Anthropocene.

In the face of increased migration, runaway climate change, and accelerating AI it takes an innovative transdisciplinary approach, moving beyond language and semiotics to explore relations of co-existence among humans, other species, machines, and other more-than-human beings whose identities are harder to define. By integrating developments in Translation Studies with insights from geography, philosophy, the sciences, and narrative theory, the book conceptualises ‘translationality’ as a material relation of energy, movement, and experience, entangled with the phenomenon of place. Translationality is thought of as the process by which worlds narrate and change themselves, and to translate is to participate in this process. An autoethnographic account of Truro, UK—a contested center-periphery site—provides a rich context for developing theory through translational practice. In situating translation within New Materialism, the book offers a philosophical and political framework for approaching co-existence and its ongoing negotiation.

This book will appeal to scholars in translation studies, human geography, philosophy, and cultural studies.