Translation or Transcreation? Discourses, Texts and Visuals

Translation or Transcreation? Discourses, Texts and Visuals presents us with an apparent dilemma: is translation primarily a form of transfer or a form of creation? This dilemma harks back to a series of questions about the nature of creativity which are at the heart of Western philosophy and aesthetics: what distinguishes an original from a reproduction? What is original in every “translation” and what has already been translated in every “original”? While these questions have been theoretically debated in the past fifty years mainly in the contexts of French and American deconstruction, contemporary communication practices bring them back on the table with renewed urgency. The global flows of information and culture, the digitalisation of reading and writing, and the increasingly multimodal character of new media are radically transforming the very notion of “text” – let alone that of an “original text”. Against this background, the dilemma between translation as transfer and translation as creation challenges us not so much to find an answer, as to review the terms of the discussion. We are faced with the task to rethink translation in terms of (trans)creation, insofar as linguistic transfer is never pure repetition; conversely, we must rethink (trans)creation in terms of translation, insofar as the creative act is never entirely free.