Let me level with you: Brokerage work in the translation of management concepts

Abstract

Translation studies increasingly foreground the significance of local actors as agentic translators. Drawing on a brokerage work perspective, this article seeks to advance our understanding of managerial agents as translators by examining how and why these may vary in their role as intermediary or ‘strategic third’, and how these roles are associated with different patterns of translation. Examining qualitative data from a study of individuals tasked with implementing Lean in hospital contexts, we identify three brokerage modes of translation these actors may engage in (stretching, shielding and synthesizing), their main conditions, and the specific translation tactics they use within these modes (positioning, labeling and channeling). Our study extends our understanding of micro-level translation and reveals that purposeful ‘misalignment’ may be a significant and under-theorized part of the translation process.