This issue of Pages is dedicated to the challenges of translation. There is clearly no such thing as a perfect substitute in translation. There are instead, displacements and interpretations, which remain nevertheless within the limits of the text. But beyond this, translations can, in their more radical and excessive instances, release a surplus in order to supplement what is left out from the text(s). In this issue, we have put together articles and argumentations that address some of the specifics of this surplus.
As it is the costume with Pages, in this issue there is on the one hand, the focus on the Iranian context, with its current discussions and concerns about the historical and political implications of translation. The Iranian experience tells us about the potentialities of translation in engendering, however precarious, an emancipatory space of practice. On the other hand, there are readings of practices of ‘translation’ that exactly due to their operation within the excess of translation, retain an extra-geographical and cultural disposition, which make them both vulnerable and yet critical instances of translation.