If a text is deeply rooted and is a product of political, cultural, social and economic conditions, knowledge of such history becomes important before approaching the text/to approach the text. For the translator, this knowledge becomes not just a means to access the text but also a responsibility to convey the writer and the text to the extent possible to the readers of the translation. Thus, problems of translation, translation as writer-translator negotiation and translation as research activity become interconnected and interdependent.

To start with, it was a challenge to translate the titles Wandering Girl and Karobran. Because, wandering girl can be a girl from the wandering mission as well as a girl who is wandering. The protagonist is both. Glenyse is a stolen child and is brought up in a German mission called Wandering mission. We see her journey from one place to another in this autobiography. She is taken to the mission as a child and as a girl she is taken away as a domestic servant in a white household. From there she escapes and ultimately reaches her destination of leading an independent life. It is difficult to decide in which meaning the writer used the title. It is also difficult to choose a title which can convey both the meanings. At the same time, it is injustice to the writer and to the text to leave out that title. This difficulty of translating the pun on the word "wandering" is a challenge that the book throws at the translator at the very first instance. Regarding the second text, Karobran is a northern New South Wales Aboriginal word which means living together or togetherness. But it is not co-existence for co-existence on equality basis is not possible between the oppressed and the oppressor. Is it a desire to live together with her family, with her people and with whites? Is it ironically used to depict the situation of not living together? The protagonist loses her mother as a child and is separated from her brother and father. The main theme of the text is Isabelle's search for her father and her brother. It never materializes because she comes to know that her father has passed away and her brother has moved away to a far off place. How to convey all this in the title is the biggest question before the translator. No doubt the title looks a hurdle in translating the text in the beginning, but it also enables the translator to revise her awareness of parallel movements and literatures to search for a similar word in a similar context.

It is not just the words but the tone that also poses questions to the translator in these two texts. In Karobran, there is a deliberate attempt to justify well-intentioned whites. So after every incident and statement criticizing the whites comes an incident or statement defending whites, some good whites. Whether the writer intended to do so or the posthumously published autobiographical novel had to take in the white editor's interference is out of the scope of this discussion, no doubt. But, selection of the tone of the writer that has to be represented becomes a debatable question for the translator. There is no deliberate attempt to justify the whites in Wandering Girl as it is in Karobran. In this background, when the writer says, " Through the misguided minds of earnest white people we were taken away from our natural parents. This affected all of us. We lost our identity through being put into missions, forced to abide by the European way." (Ward, 1), does the literal meaning of the word "earnest" really fit in there? Does it work in harmony with the text as a whole? Does the tone of the original play the decisive role in translation? If that is so, how to decide what is the tone the writer intended to use and what is the tone used and what is the tone that the translator wants to represent in the translation to the readers of the target language?