The belief that the translation should be free of the original, which some would have you believe is no more than a necessary evil, is an obsession in some areas of translation studies. Here’s Theo D’haen in his article “Antique Lands, New Worlds? Comparative Literature, Intertextuality, Translation” taken from a special number of the Forum for Modern Language Studies (2007:2):

‘When it comes to labelling the re-writing relationship obtaining between postcolonial works of literature and their colonial predecessors, instead of speaking in terms of “influence”, which would imply a hierarchically construed historical relationship valorising the work in the “mother” culture over its postcolonial counterpart, we would do better to speak of what I will call “bound intertextuality”, something that is stricter than a mere referential use of intertextuality, yet looser than what we usually label a “translation”.’

Can something which comes later influence something which came earlier? Of course not. Can it “intertextually bind” an earlier text? Errrr…. yes, probably. Well at least, I would imagine so. What time’s the game at? I’m sorry, what exactly is “bound intertextuality” again? I’m not the only one on uncertain grounds with the language used here. In one sentence D’haen puts five words (or so-called “words”) in inverted commas: transgressive, translating, classics, rewritings and translations. On another page the following words you used to think you understood but were sadly mistaken about get the scare quotes treatment: describing, Others (four times, always capitalised), speak, over-write, his-story (sic), translation (twice), translationally, giving voice, autoethnography, re-writes, and poor old classic and even white.

In the same periodical there is an article by Eleonora Federici, “The Translator’s Intertextual Baggage,” whose abstract contains this sentence:

‘The translator becomes a cultural mediator who, dialoguing between cultures, carries on a transcultural interaction.’

Unfortunately, the verb dialogue is not vague enough to shield her from accusations that the sentence is circular.