Secularization, colonial benevolence, and Indigenous agency

Abstract Early theorizations about translation in the Philippines were largely a product of colonial rule. Although translation had been practiced long before this Southeast Asian archipelago became a colony, knowledges about it were first systematized by Catholic missionaries, who began arriving in the sixteenth century as part of Spain’s colonial project. These knowledges further evolved under US colonialism in response to the spread of English as a colonial language, the flourishing of literary traditions in Philippine languages, and the internationalization of the local literary scene. Translation knowledges are approached in this essay as tropes. They are analyzed alongside the notion of Indigeneity, revealing shifts in how the latter evolved over time and intersected with contemporaneous political doctrines such as secularization and benevolent assimilation.