Can a text become extinct? Are certain texts more vulnerable than others? Does translation ensure the survival of a text? Is natural selection the key to textual survival or are there other genetic processes at work? Can translation be understood and undertaken as a selective, regenerative interpretation of the original? What, then, is an ‘original’ text?

Welcome to Evolutionary Translation New Zealand.

This website offers a window into a multi-year research programme that seeks to interrogate these complex questions critically and creatively by theorising and applying a radically new concept of translation that is biological and genomic, creative and transformative, and responsive to time and place.

To test this concept, we selected works by James Joyce and Italo Calvino and commissioned translations from artists, writers, and filmmakers.

Through an analysis of the creative responses and in-depth interviews with their makers, we began to identify the evolutionary processes of selection, mutation, genetic drift, and migration.

E X P L O R E

Projects

Joyce’s Giacomo Joyce

2024

Calvino’s Invisible Cities

2024

Bookplate Competition

2024