Translating Knowledges: Within and Beyond Asia

Although the flow of knowledge from and within Asia has a long history and continues to gain momentum, more attention has been paid to how western knowledge travels to Asia. Furthermore, the scholarship around knowledge transfer tends to focus on its historical and cultural patterns, leaving the role of translation largely unexplored. Thus, the essays in this issue aim to explore the less studied reverse direction of knowledge flow from East Asia to Anglophone cultures and within Asia. Focusing on the mediating role translation plays in this process, the authors contributing to this special issue explore a number of relevant issues across a range of cultural contexts through a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. Together, they demonstrate that a translator plays an active and agentive role in confronting and transplanting imported knowledge into local environments and is a key mediator in the exchange, de/reconstruction, and (re)production of knowledge.