Modes of Circulation: Translation Projects and the Changing Position of Imperial Centers

Translation projects often come to us, as both readers and translators, through the small press–a series of personal exchanges, books and broadsides passed in and out of communities through editors, friends, and colleagues. These networks have long circumvented publishing’s imperial centers, nurtured alternative paths of production, and ushered in a future wherein “[t]he larger English becomes, the less it retains what previously constituted its Englishness.” (Jieun Kiar) These four translators, each writing from different locales in the west, will discuss the role of the small press and handmade book object in the work of translation now and account for how they each participate in an ever-increasing translingual world.