As part of my thesis on cultural displacement and interaction in Australian immigration literature, I intend here to focus on the translation of a past elsewhere as it figures in Eva Sallis’ Hiam. I will discuss how the migration writers translate a source culture to an English-speaking target audience. While translators are usually seen as cultural mediators, I see that position taken by migration writers who translate worlds as well as words.

My aim is to discuss how discursive translation takes place in this migratory text. What different discursive strategies are being employed? I want to focus on story-telling as one way for migration writers to translate a linguistic / discursive / cultural Other. The stories, which are filtered through a cultural heritage discourse, are not only told in order to ‘educate’ the listener/reader in another culture, but are also attempts at preserving the memory of a past elsewhere.