Politics of translation: A cosmopolitan approach. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bielsa, Esperança; Aguilera, Antonio
• Is Part Of: European journal of cultural and political sociology. Volume 4:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 7
• Page End: 24
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: Cosmopolitanism -- hospitality -- politics of translation; Political sociology -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals; 306.2
• DOI: 10.1080/23254823.2016.1272428
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2325-4823

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Translation has gained a central importance in recent accounts of cosmopolitanism that emphasise global interdependence and the interaction between different cultures and traditions. In this context, it becomes necessary to formulate a politics of translation that questions some idealist assumptions about translation that are present in the sociological literature, specifies translation as a fundamentally ethnocentric act, and formulates relevant strategies to confront this inherent ethnocentrism in order to open up translation to the difference of the other. This implies a broad conception of translation primarily as a social relation with foreignness, rather than merely as the transfer of meaning from one language into another. In this light, a politics of translation based on linguistic hospitality is seen as a more realistic alternative than Derrida's notion of absolute hospitality, while also responding to problems related to the difficulty of understanding, which are minimised in a Habermasian notion of tolerance. It also connects with a philosophy that relates language to its anthropological and material roots, thus presenting linguistic hospitality as a space where a human potential based on flexibility and adaptability can flourish.