Damage control : Australian literature as translation

Australian writing in English contains a fair amount of translation, and more that can be read as translation in a less literal sense: writing that transports forms and expressions from other languages and cultures into an Australian literary field. To connect those various communities, to enable them to converse, from one belonging/not-belonging to another, requires translation: historicised, politicised, languaged. If anything has been learned in the two centuries since Herder, it’s how tricky that process is. Australian literature, deciphered, transported, interpreted, can help. Reading Australian writing with attention to its translational pulse decentres and horizontalises, tumbles hierarchy, adds dimensional curve to the flat map of world literature.