Translation and religious encounters: The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture

In this chapter we discuss how various religious encounters, which take place in and through language, can be meaningfully examined in connection to and in terms of translation. We emphasise at the outset that the categories of religion and culture are contentious at many levels and this is true regardless of the language one may be discussing them in. As we start unpacking the entangled relationship between religions, cultures and translation, we wish to draw attention to the term ‘encounter’ in our title. The dual sense of this term offers us two different but complementary frameworks in which to analyse the complex relationship between religion, culture and translation: encounter can mean a chance meeting but it can also refer to facing, confronting or even battling with another. The happenstance of the first may or may not lead to the aggression of the second. The degree to which religions travel across and interact with cultures depends on the type or intensity of the encounter. It seems apposite in this context to view points as well as sites of religious encounter as involving translation of one kind or another and to a lesser or greater degree.