Translation Studies and the Common Cause

This position paper argues that the interaction between translation studies, comparative literature and modern languages has not been as productive as imagined by the ‘cultural turn’ in translation studies in the 1990s. It is argued that the vocational orientation of translation studies education and the continuing presence of national literary ecologies have limited collaborative developments. The notion of ‘untranslatability’ has not always been productive of a more open exchange and a case is made for an ecological notion of difference and the concept of ‘fecundity’ as a means to move towards the common cause of a terra centric paradigm in modern languages, comparative literature and translation studies.