Translation and religion: Issues of materiality

Abstract

This article argues that the study of religious translation can greatly benefit from a material turn, that attention needs to be paid to the carriers and forms of religious translations, and that such an approach can ultimately add different understandings of the translation process and alternative readings of religious texts. Drawing on theories of material culture, it proposes engagement with the material structures, practices and spaces that accompany translations. The article explores the modalities of engagement with the religious translation and the values and meanings that are associated with the object. It suggests a consideration not merely of the translated object, but also its related entanglements and sensory engagements, situating the text within its associated practices, assemblages and networks. It furthermore proposes an empirical engagement with the object and an exploration of the variations in form which exist in the possible afterlives of texts.