Born translated memories: Transcultural memorial forms, domestication and foreignisation

Abstract

This article offers translation as a new model for conceptualising the transnational travel of memories that operates through transcultural memorial forms. It draws on translation studies, world literature studies and receptions studies to describe the domesticating and foreignising effects of memories that are ‘born translated’ and the ways they are received. The second part of the article discusses Sofi Oksanen’s novel Purge as a translation of memories of Soviet state terror through the transcultural memorial form of war rape and its foreignising effects in the local context of remembering of these events.