According to a narrative theory approach to translation and interpreting studies, translators and interpreters play a very significant role in the circulation of public narratives. Translators and interpreters have the power to export public narratives from within their own societies and can import and articulate the public narratives of groups outside of their own culture.
They can also challenge dominant public narratives by giving a voice to lesser known narrative versions, due to their privileged position of having access to more narratives than those articulated in their mother tongue.
As Baker (2006:38) puts it, ‘Whether the motivation is commercial or ideological, translators and interpreters play a decisive role in both articulating and contesting the full range of public narratives circulating within and around any society at any moment in time.’
We will see a fuller exploration of this power of translators to either promote or subvert dominant narratives in chapters 8 and 9.