Transgressing Translation/Translating Transgression: The Lili Elbe Digital Archive and the Modalities of Translation

Abstract

This essay addresses a work that might fruitfully be approached as an international (auto)biography, the life narrative of Lili Elbe (published 1931), a major work in the history of gender variance. Using the versions of the narrative in a range of languages in the recently constructed, free-to-view Lili Elbe Digital Archive, this essay considers the many modalities of translation and transgression which comprise any effort to transition across linguistic, cultural, corporeal, epistemic, and generic boundaries. A concern with how bodies of knowledge as well as corporeal bodies are codified and circulated is fundamental not just to Translation Studies but to transgender studies and to the digital humanities as well, making these fields integral to any theoretical understanding of translation as such. It is argued not just that transgender should be understood as a mode of translation, but that translating transgender across languages, historical eras, and media provides an exemplary instance of, and a model for, the broader field of Translation Studies.