‘To speak a language, is to take on a world, a culture’. Frantz Fanon through this definition highlights, that language cannot be isolated from the ‘world’ or ‘culture’ within which it is embedded.  If we take this definition and apply it to the field of Translation and Translation Studies, it suggests that while seeking to ‘transport’ texts from one culture to another, the translator cannot merely search for equivalent words in the target language to render the correct meaning of the ‘source’ text. Rather, the translator must attend to the context (i.e. a world, a culture) from which these words arise and which, they necessarily, evoke and express.

But how does power come into play here? With the cultural turn in Translation Studies by the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, the impact of translations on cultures became obvious: Translation had been a major shaping force in the development of world culture. This perspective on translation simultaneously allowed for a stronger emphasis on ideology, politics, ethics, and hegemony. As questions of power are closely connected to these topics, the key topic that has provided for the new directions that translation studies have taken since the cultural turn is power.

A translator, in this sense, being a citizen of a country, having a particular set of beliefs, grows up in a culture which is appropriated by the society. He/she are exposed to some specific sets of norms and conventions that form the basis of his or her understanding of the world. These, might, at a certain given time, have an impact on the way he/she reads a text, understands it, and finally, based on his understanding, choose a discursive strategy to translate the text. It is exactly at this point that a translation might entail a degree of violence to the source text in terms of exercise of power. Then in this context, the meaning of power is varying from its original simplistic general meaning. Here, power is intimately related to knowledge, information, and especially to the manner in which that information is conveyed and the way of articulating the elements of the source text into the target text.

One of the most visible consequences of exercise of power in the field of translation and literature is canonization of translated texts (i.e. what and who gets translated). Only certain voice, certain views, certain texts are chosen, valorizing only certain translations, only certain interpretation of the source text. The source text is thus, only a representation of the readers and not the apt representation of the source culture. Fearing this canonization, the translator may, hence, choose the discourse of familiarization, thus depriving the source culture of its uniqueness and further devaluing its position in the world of literary frame.

However, a translator has the ‘power’, the ability, to break the stereotypes of source text within the target culture through his translation strategy. He/she, by consciously breaking the norms and conventions of the target culture or by foreignization of the text, can disrupt their language and thus question the hegemony of their culture (a strategy prominent in the third world writers), break the stereotypes associated with a specific cultural society, and bring to light a different interpretation of the dominated societies.

In this context power relations are not only intra-societal but also inter societal. And one of the most evident expression of hierarchies is/was the oppression if women which was legitimized further by different literary texts. Since, time immemorial, women have been subjected to oppression in and through the field of literature. However, translation of texts by feminists, not only highlighted such hierarchies within in the society but it sensitized other feminists and writers, outside their own societies, of these existing power structure (one most ardent proponents of feminism and also feminist translators were from Canada). It further questioned the hegemony by breaking the stereotypes in the translated work and through completely different interpretation of the text by bringing in their views and ideologies (through neologisms, puns, word play, etc.).

According to the above mentioned arguments, the role of the translator is thus closely connected to the issue of power as the translator or interpreter often functions between two cultures, representing both the culture in power and the culture seeking empowerment. However, this position can be seen as strength rather than a constraint, as translators always have the possibility to influence the text as well as the context. Furthermore, they can be the authority who manipulates the culture, politics, literature, and their acceptance (or lack thereof) in the target culture. Thereby, translators have the possibility to actively participate in the construction of knowledge across different languages and cultures. The role of translation is therefore not a mere reproduction of a source text into a target text, but a creative act that demands complex decision-making from the translator. In this way, translators, as much as creative writers and politicians, participate in the powerful acts that create knowledge and shape culture.
                                                                                   
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