Found in Translation

This chapter discusses the later life trajectories of the tour guides up until 2013 and their ongoing struggles with work, freedom, and subjectivity as they continue or end their work translating nature for Japanese tourists. The guides maintain an ambivalent relationship with these ideas as immaterial workers in neo/liberal capitalism. Their translations of nature demonstrate the concept’s elusiveness, its entanglement with ideas of freedom and liberation, and its significance for what it means to be human in a globalizing world. Acknowledging the urgency of contemporary concerns about the environment, this book demonstrates that any endeavor to deal with global and environmental issues must contend with the cultural politics of translations of nature and the possibilities for subjectivity and agency they reveal. It is integral to be attentive to the “gap” and the trace of indeterminacy in translation to understand the quotidian politics in interactions among people with different cultural backgrounds.