The Task of the Climate Translator

Climate translations or stories must move between different registers to imaginatively engage with and express life in the Anthropocene. They must give visible form to the diverse climate imaginaries that proliferate in the world. These stories, however, remain unexamined. Following Walter Benjamin, translation is here conceptualised as a movement across domains wherein the translated version need not literally adhere to the original, but should rather aim to carry its echo. An instance of the form potential climate translations might assume is provided through an ethnographic account of human–animal relations in the Indian Himalaya. It compares and contrasts mainstream scientific accounts of animal endangerment/extinction and conflict to embedded but distinct Himalayan stories of multispecies relationality. These seemingly different accounts share a recognisably similar consciousness of human impact, inter-species entanglements, and climatic change.