The translator's intertextual baggage

Starting from the notion of a wide texture of intertextual references between translations outlined in recent theories, the aim of the article is to underline critically the role of the translator as a mediator/interpreter between different linguistic and cultural worlds.

Starting from the notion of a wide texture of intertextual references between translations outlined in recent theories, the aim of this article is to underline critically the role of the translator as a mediator/interpreter between different linguistic and cultural worlds. The title highlights how the translator possesses his/her own intertextual literary, linguistic and cultural "baggage" due to his/her "location" and identity politics, a "baggage" that permeates his/her act of translation and "rewriting" of the source text into the target text. Referring to the many metaphors utilised through centuries in describing the translator and the act of translation from one culture to another, my essay takes as a "metaphorical" starting point the representation of the translator as a traveller in a new and unknown literary world; a curious traveller who follows many hints and finds new routes in an unexplored map which he/she necessarily reads through his/her own cultural lens. This reading,...