This article pursues two main lines of inquiry: How might postcolonial theory, feminist and postcolonial translation studies sharpen our critical understandings of the micro- and geopolitics of English language learning? What kinds of pedagogical practice might such new developments ground in order to foster our learners' critical ways of knowing and being? From a survey of postcolonial perspectives on TESOL, I introduce several key concepts from postcolonial translation studies: the principles of time and progress in discourses of coloniality/modernity; resistant practices of cultural translation and double translation. These concepts allow me to trace the identity- and knowledge-based stakes and negotiations by high school immigrant English language learners within unique spaces created by the transformative pedagogy of a Freirean-style antiracism leadership camp in Toronto, Canada. I conclude by drawing out the implications of this analysis for a pedagogy of critical translational awareness. (Contains 28 notes.)