Eco-Translationscapes Reimagined: Antipodean and Southeast Asian Crosscurrents

This lecture engages two currents in contemporary translation studies—ecotranslation and the spatial reconfiguration of translation, exemplified by concepts such as “translationscape” and “antipodean translation”—to explore how the distinctive geography of Southeast Asia informs a non-linear, relational approach to translation. The region’s stark contrasts—a "solid" mainland juxtaposed with "fragmented" archipelagos—mirror a translational terrain shaped by disjointed, semantically delayed alignments. Named before its nations formed a political bloc, Southeast Asia embodies the temporal and spatial disjunctures of translation itself.
 
In this context, translation resists reduction to unidirectional transfer or containment, which replicates what Michael Cronin terms “the linear logic of extractivism”—a logic that reinforces asymmetrical dominance across borders. This logic persists in imposed linguistic hierarchies, such as the central Thai dialect’s regulatory force on perceptions of the foreign.
 
Against this backdrop, the lecture rethinks translation through Rafael’s notion of “translationscapes” and the idea of traversal rather than transfer. Translation here becomes an act of navigating unstable, often disorienting terrain—whether through antipodal crossings or archipelagic flows—that unsettles conventional hierarchies. I develop the concept of “antipodean translation” as a mode of engaging irreducible difference, where connection emerges not from adjacency but through performative dislocation—warping, bypassing, and reimagining space.
 
While Southeast Asia has long been viewed as peripheral to the circuits of world literature, often positioned as a recipient rather than a producer of translated texts, I examine how Thai literary translation complicates this view. Through cases involving dialect, cinematic tropes, and invented languages, I argue that “antipodean translation” offers an alternative model—one that resists extractivist linearity and foregrounds an ecological, pluralistic politics of language.
 
About the Speaker
 
Phrae Chittiphalangsri is an Associate Professor at the Chalermprakiat Center for Translation and Interpretation (CCTI), Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, where she also serves as chair of the MA program. She was co-editor of New Voices in Translation Studies (2008–2012) and currently sits on the journal’s advisory board. In 2015, she was elected to the executive council of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) and has served as co-vice president since 2021. Her research focuses on Thai translation history, Orientalism, and postcolonialism, with articles published in leading international journals such as Translation Studies, Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, Target and The Translator. She has also contributed entries on Orientalism to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies and on Thai translation traditions to A World Atlas of Translation (2019). Most recently, she co-edited Of Peninsulas and Archipelagos: The Landscape of Translation in Southeast Asia (2024) with Vicente Rafael. Her current projects explore Thai postcolonial literature and Thai Anglophone fiction. She is also the principal editor of the forthcoming three-volume Anthology of Modern Thai Literature, funded by Thailand's Ministry of Higher Education. In addition to her academic work, she is an active literary translator working with English, French, and Thai.

This event is sponsored by Southeast Asian Seminar Series at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
 
This event is co-sponsored by the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy