Translation adds another layer to linguistic hybridity in that it moves beyond the simple model in which linguistic hybridity employs a diversity of discourses and/or languages. Even though in one sense every translation is a hybrid work, hybridity is not equally significant at all stages of the translation process or in all the models used to map them. George Steiner's model of translation hermeneutics is a useful starting point for assessment of the extent to which the hybridity of a translation moves it beyond being the product of an aggressive relationship between 'different' discourses, languages and contexts. Steiner identifies four stages in the translation process. The first is the initiative to trust the source text-a trust that there is something there of value to be understood, communicated, and interrogated. The second stage is one of aggression-that taking this valuable aspect is invasive and extractive. The translation brings something 'home'. So the question of the translator's 'home' as well as that of the imagined audience or readers becomes crucial. The third stage is one of incorporation--meaning and form are 'imported' to the receiving or target text. Here the nuances of placement, domestication, and subsequent development are important. However, the 'imported' text and its characteristics continue to have a vibrancy of their own, so the fourth stage is one of dialectical reciprocity. Steiner argues that this final act is one of examination and restitution. Something is lost, something gained, and understanding of this is part of the process. He asserts that 'the books must balance', formally and morally. I think that the dialogic aspect of translation awareness is underscored in hybrid works and merits further investigation. There is a reciprocal process of trust in the conjoining of cultures and forms, a migration and subsequent interaction in crossing and redefining borders and in filling the empty spaces between cultures, an incorporation of the culture of the target language into future perceptions of the source and the source context and vice versa. Both are changed through the persuasive intervention of the translation. I have used the word 'interaction' rather than 'aggression' to describe the second phase of Steiner's process and one strand of my discussion will suggest that the convergence involved in the exchanges and reciprocities of the translation processes associated with hybridity actually challenges the metaphor of violence that is explicit in Steiner's model. Dialectical reciprocity involves more than a balance sheet of 'loss' and 'gain'. It actually changes conceptions of the source text and language and of the target context and language by creating a 'text' that is part of a new network of relationships between both.

Examples of linguistic hybridity in the translation of classical texts can be found in a variety of contexts. One of current importance is the cross-cultural classics developing in the new South Africa. For example, in 2000 Richard Whitaker began translating the Iliad into Southern African English. The reason for his enterprise was that he thought that the various Anglo-American English translations he had used in teaching the Iliad for twenty-five years were, in language and outlook, increasingly remote from the speech and experience of South African speakers of English (whether first- or second-language English speakers). He also considered that the Iliad in a distinctively Southern African translation could 'speak' to his country at a particular moment in its history.

Southern African English is itself a hybrid language, as is the culture which gives rise to it. In addition to being shaped by particular historical and geographical circumstances, this form of English also includes vocabulary from the region's many languages (eleven are officially recognized in the new South African constitution) and elements have come from Bushman and Khoikhoi, Zulu, Xhosa, and other African languages as well as from Afrikaans. (English is the most widely known second language in South Africa.)

Whitaker has pointed out that while mingling and hybridizing of all these languages has always happened at the vernacular level it is now also occurring in 'official' and 'public' media--in writing, drama, and TV programmes. This may be in part a reaction against the apartheid policies of separation and isolation; it is also part of the process of creating a new South African identity which is both inclusive of difference and also recognizes that poetry and drama can express convergences of past experience and construct them in the present. Interestingly, Whitaker has found that in a number of cases local words are able to give a more succinct and precise equivalent to a Homeric term than can a Standard English equivalent. He cites as examples the term lobola, a Zulu and Xhosa word for bride gift and the Southern African English inyanga, a traditional healer or diviner specializing in herbalism, which he regards as a better equivalent than doctor or physician for the Homeric ieter or ietros. Perhaps most important of all, Whitaker's approach counteracts what he describes as 'a tendency towards inflation' in which standard English translations have made Homeric titles, institutions, and objects grander than the Greek would suggest. Thus his rendering of the Homeric word basileus as 'chief' rather than 'king' not only removes the accretions of power and British imperialism associated with monarchy but also resonates with the Southern African institution of traditional chiefdom. It thus offers restitution to both source and target languages and cultures.