Articles

Prohibiting Translations: Nils-Aslak Valkeapää and the Question of Text-, Process-, and Agent-driven Untranslatability

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Abstract

This essay intervenes in recent World Literature debates about untranslatability by considering a case in which one Nordic indigenous poet, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, issued an explicit interdiction on the translation of one of his poems. Domokos considers what the ethical, pragmatic, political, and literary-critical effects of such an interdiction may be—both for its indigenous community of production and for non-Sámi readers, who must encounter this single poem on a different level of interpretability than that of close reading and its critical literacies. Domokos further explores how this case may assist World Literature theorists in further specifying the widely-traded value / vice of poetic untranslatability in a way that would acknowledge the varying stages and agents of translation practice. 

Keywords: untranslatability, literary diversity

How to Cite:

Domokos, J., (2016) “Prohibiting Translations: Nils-Aslak Valkeapää and the Question of Text-, Process-, and Agent-driven Untranslatability”, Critical Multilingualism Studies 4(1), 44–56.