ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore the literary translator as an agent operating in a time- and culture-bound space. The agency of the translator has been an object of translation research since the cultural turn that took place in the 1990s and the revelation that translation is the work of individuals or collectives who often act with a certain cultural agenda. Research that specifically focuses on the person of the translator (from a sociological or cognitive perspective) has been conceptualised as “translator studies” by Chesterman (2009). Chesterman defines the scope of translator studies as research conducted on the activities and attitudes of agents involved in translation and their interaction with their (social or technical) environment, or their history and influence (2009, 20). Needless to say, such a broad scope requires a variety of analytical approaches and the translator’s agency continues to be explored from various perspectives; some researchers have focused on patterns of translatorial behaviour focusing on the socio-cultural constraints that shape this behaviour, while some others have foregrounded the individual creative power of translators and their potentially subversive strategies.
