Cultural translation, universality and emancipation

Gabriel Dols,Caterina Calafat

doi:10.12807/ti.11222.2020.a08

Abstract

In a way, the history of Translation Studies, at least for the last decades, has been that of a continuous broadening of the field of study. If the 1990s witnessed the “cultural turn” famously heralded by Mary Snell-Hornby, more recently scholars have turned towards the role that translation plays in cultural dominance and cultural resistance, in what has been referred to as the power turn. At the same time, a converging movement could be observed from outside the field of Translation Studies: Some thinkers, in their quest for new intellectual paradigms to tackle the challenges faced by emancipatory projects, have veered towards translation as a way to overcome particularism and nationalism, while at the same time avoiding the risks of a monocultural universalism that is seen to lead inevitably to imperialism. Translation, by necessarily reaching out to the Other and creating hybridity, offers a unique chance to “square the circle” and find “equivalence in difference.” In this paper, we discuss the ideas about translation of four such thinkers, coming from very different backgrounds and traditions: Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Étienne Balibar, Judith Butler and Boaventura de Sousa Santos.

Highlights

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is a well-known figure, both as a writer and as a vocal advocate for the use of African languages in African countries and the nations of the Black Diaspora
Translation becomes “an act of patriotism” (2009, p. 128). This patriotism obviously rises above any particular nation. It is a quest for wholeness, the task of “remembering” the dismembered, that is to be achieved through a revitalized interpretation of Pan-Africanism
Impossible but necessary At the root of the movement towards translation we have witnessed in sociology, philosophy and political thought, we find the growing importance of culture and language in the field of politics, the aforementioned “linguistic turn.”

Summary

Introduction

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is a well-known figure, both as a writer and as a vocal advocate for the use of African languages (he does not include European tongues) in African countries and the nations of the Black Diaspora. Judith Butler, while reflecting on the possibility of a universalism that does not project an imperialist message, strikes a similar chord She disagrees that true universality can be expressed from outside a particular culture and language: “the very concept of universality compels an understanding of culture as a relation of exchange and a task of translation” We will pay special attention to the counter-hegemonic potential of translation as developed by our authors and to the concept of “constellation” advanced by Santos in his works Another chief concern will be to explore the divide between these two different concepts of translation (interlingual and “cultural”), trying to answer several pressing questions. Can these different notions be unified in such a way that the insights from these thinkers can be reconciled with mainstream translation theory? Do we run the risk of diluting the concept of translation to such an extent, in this constant conceptual broadening, that it ceases to have any solid foundation?

Why translation?

What translation?

Conclusions