A Translational Sociology provides an interdisciplinary investigation of the key role of translation in society. There is a growing recognition of translation’s intervention in the intellectual history of sociology, in the international reception of social theory, and in approaches to the global literary and academic fields. This book brings attention to aspects of translation that have remained more elusive to sociological interpretation and analysis, investigating translation’s ubiquitous presence in the everyday lives of ordinary people in increasingly multilingual societies and its key intervention in mediating politics within and beyond the nation.
In order to challenge a reductive view of translation as a relatively straightforward process of word substitution that is still prevalent in the social sciences, this book proposes and develops a broader definition of translation as a social relation across linguistic difference, a process of transformation that leaves neither its agent nor its object unchanged. The book offers elaborations of the social, cultural and political implications of such an approach, as a broad focus on these various perspectives and their interrelations is needed for a fuller understanding of translation’s significance in the contemporary world.
This is key reading for advanced students and researchers of translation studies, social theory, cultural sociology and political sociology.
Author(s): Esperança Bielsa
Series: Translation, Politics and Society
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 186
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Notes
References
Part I: Translation and society
1. Translation and identity
Introduction
The discursive explosion of identity
Critical issues and debates
Essentialism
Positioning
Recognition
Identity and translation in the age of strangeness
An example
Notes
References
2. Translation and transformation
Introduction
Two sociological approaches to metamorphosis
Metamorphosis and/of knowledge beyond disciplinary boundaries
Translation and metamorphosis: a universal practice of the concrete
Notes
References
3. For a translational sociology
Introduction
Translation questions simplistic views of cultural homogenisation
Translation avoids idealism by focusing on the materiality of language
Translation is ordinary
Translation underpins the production and circulation of sociological knowledge
Conclusion
Notes
References
Part II: Translation and politics
4. Politics of translation
Note
References
5. Translating democracy
Introduction
The language of democracy
The monolingual vision: a critique
Cosmopolitanism, linguistic hospitality and translation
Conclusion
Notes
References
6. The translator as producer
Introduction
Moving authors and readers, home and abroad
Interdisciplinary approaches to translation as transformation
Politicising translation
Assimilatory and reflexive translation: an outline
Conclusion
Notes
References
Part III: Translation and experience
7. Translation and modernity: Benjamin's Baudelaire
Introduction
Translating Baudelaire: articulating the task of translation
Interpreting Baudelaire: the experience of modernity
Recovering a philological attitude
Notes
References
8. Translating strangers
Introduction
Strangers in the midst of generalised strangeness
The significance of the cosmopolitan stranger
The interpreting stranger: Cesar Millan
The stranger as ventriloquist: Tania Head
Conclusion
Notes
References
9. Homecoming: an auto-analysis
Homecoming as an unfinished project
On becoming a cultural sociologist in Glasgow
The end of homecoming
Notes
References
Conclusion: translation and reflexivity
References
General bibliography
Index
