Migration Literature in Translation

Mattea Cussel is Research Fellow at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She is author of ‘When Solidarity Is Possible Yet Fails’, in Translation Studies (2023), and the book chapters ‘Transnational and Global Approaches in Translation Studies’ in The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization (2020) and ‘Linguistic and Narrative Hospitality in the Translation of Daisy Hernández’s “Before Love, Memory” ’, in (In)Hospitable Encounters in Chicanx and Latinx Literature, Culture, and Thought (2025). She is currently coediting the second edition of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics (with Jonathan Evans and Fruela Fernández).

'This important study challenges the assumption of readers as homogeneous, nationally circumscribed individuals. The author skillfully integrates textual analysis with sociological perspectives on representation, border writing, race, migration and erasure, urging a reassessment of how diverse readers engage with translated texts, including their responses to translation decisions and awareness of hybrid languages.'Moira Inghilleri, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), USA'In this riveting, remarkably multifaceted study, Cussel sheds fresh light on the ways in which translated literary texts are read in different settings. Novel and ambitious comparative research allows her to question reading practices governed by ideas of "authenticity" or "identity" – we are, instead, encouraged to recognise reading as a situated and complex encounter.'Andrew Smith, University of Glasgow, UKSurvival for immigrants requires translation. Yet translation is about impostorship, meaning that immigrants only succeed through the abandonment and reinvention of the self. Cussel attempts to sort out this conundrum—as we move to a new land and acquire a new tongue, are we still one or many? Have we become false versions of who we were? Or perhaps clones ready for an equalizing future?—by analyzing a handful of Latino texts and inviting readers to a poll. The result is a monograph—gotcha!—that is itself a translation. Ilan Stavans, author of I Am Nobody.

• ContentsIntroductionSituating a special case of translationAn integrated translation critiqueTranslation, migration and identityPosition of researcherExplanation of termsOverviewPart 1Translations and textsChapter 1. Theories of migration literature and translationChapter 2. Literature and migrant points of viewChapter 3. Latinx transformations and movementsPart 2Translations and readersChapter 4. Interdisciplinary approaches to translation and receptionChapter 5. A reader study of Latinx translations Chapter 6. The reading culture of empathy Conclusion