El viatge: una metàfora de la traducció

Abstract

At the end of the 1980s, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War led to the softening of the strong international borders between East and West. At that moment, the development and popularization of transportation technologies facilitated the transnational movement and, in turn, stimulated the interest of many intellectuals in translation studies. Discussions of translation issues led to, among other things, a revision of earlier translation metaphors and to the generation of new images that could depict the translator and his work. One of the figures theorized is that of the traveller, who was compared with the translator due to the manner in which he straddles two or more cultures.

The present study’s goal is to analyse the characteristics and practices of the traveller-translator. To do so, the study looks at the literature published on translation studies during the last two decades and analyses a specific case, namely the life and work of the artist Antoni Muntadas (Barcelona 1942), who since the 1970s has researched issues of intercultural translation through art, travel and tools applied in postcolonial anthropology.

Keywords: translation, post-colonialism, anthropology, contemporary art, travel