POSTCOLONIAL TRANSLATION THEORY FOR LEVERAGING TRANSLATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Author:Dr. Victor Terfa Atsaam

Date: 20/02/2026

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Postcolonial translation theory examines crucial interconnections between postcolonial theory and translation studies. With international languages such as English, French, Spanish and Arabic spoken increasingly across the world, more people become multilingual thereby making translation an important enterprise. Postcolonialism is generally used to cover studies of the history of the former colonies, studies of powerful European empires, resistance to the colonialist powers and, more broadly, studies of the effect of the unbalance of power relations between colonised and coloniser. Notable in postcolonial studies is the Indian critic and translator Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who elaborates her concerns about the ideological consequence of the translation of Third World Literature into English and the distortion this entails. Spivak speaks against Western population who expects writings from outside Europe to be translated into the languages of power: English, French, Spanish, etc. Such translation, according to Spivak, eliminates the identity of politically less powerful individuals and cultures. Essentially, Spivak’s translation strategy demands that the translator closely understands the language and situation of the original. Based on the Spivak’s translation strategy, this paper seeks to demonstrate to what extent postcolonialism can leverage translation in the 21st century literary context. The paper concludes that the link between colonisation and translation plays an important role in disseminating an ideologically motivated image of colonised people, which bring leverage in the 21st century.

Keywords: : postcolonial theory, postcolonial translation theory, colonisation, leverage, 21st century.