Translation in Society - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2023

Since the cultural and social turn, translation studies has been interested in the role translation practices play in the construction of the socio-cultural world. In particular, it has been concerned with the effects translation practices have on the formation of all kinds of groups, communities or identities: national cultures, genders, social/political movements, and linguistic minorities, for example, have been examined in different ways as to their translational constructedness. In this introductory article, the authors propose to bring these various research endeavours together under one conceptual umbrella by adopting the notion of ‘collectivities.’ The notion serves as a cover term encompassing different shapes, durations, and sizes of collectivities and as a heuristic device within a coherent framework. The analytical value of such a framework, it is argued, consists in integrating existing and future research by relating individual approaches to each other and comparing them.

Intellectual cooperation and cultural diplomacy are generally addressed by historians of international relations and by scholars working in global history. In this contribution, I approach them from a cultural but socially oriented perspective. I examine the history of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) with a focus on the translation activities it promoted and the functions the latter fulfilled in society. To this end, I first present the main activities that configured the IIIC’s translation policy. Then I delve into the political dimensions of intellectual cooperation, many of which shaped the translation projects developed by this institution in turn. Finally, I focus on a specific translation project, namely, the Ibero-American Collection. Its editorial history is reconstructed to show the ways this collection fulfilled functions that surpassed its foundational purpose, including unplanned functions related to Latin American regional cooperation and to the promotion of a Latin American regional identity.

Translation and Interpreting Studies research has traditionally drawn on progress models to describe professionalisation processes. In this paper, I will argue that an alternative approach based on two processual concepts, namely Anselm Strauss’s ‘social worlds’ (1978) and Thomas Gieryn’s ‘boundary work’ (1983) might offer new insights. Social worlds are interrelated agglomerations of agents who participate in certain activities and develop shared commitments and ideologies. Boundary work refers to the construction and maintenance of similarities and differences for inclusion in and exclusion from a group. To demonstrate the application of this theoretical-methodological framework, I will map the social worlds involved in the organisation of sign language interpreting in Austria at three crucial stages. I will discuss how the interrelations between the social worlds have influenced institutionalisation and professionalisation and how these in turn have shaped the social world of the sign language interpreters as well as the social world of deaf people.

This contribution analyses the role played by translation in the emergence of the Italian transfeminist collective Onna Pas. The collective was born in 2019 after a series of workshops centred on the reading and translation of Wittig’s and Zeig’s work (1975). This contribution examines the formation of Onna Pas using the concept of affective performativity. Drawing on sociological theories of affect (Gregg and Seighworth 2010; Ahmed 2004) applied to translation (Koskinen 2020), according to which affect is a force arising in the “in-betweenness” of encounters (Gregg and Seigworth 2010, 2), I understand translation as both an affective practice that brings about “intense” joyful and playful encounters, and as a performative one capable of producing other translations, performances, objects, collectivities and alliances. I particularly explore the unpredictable outcome of translational encounters, contrary to studies of translation and activism (Baker 2013), which tend to stress the notion of conscious positionalities.

Social, professional and political imaginaries are increasingly produced, contested and negotiated in and across online platforms. Adopting a socio-narrative perspective, this paper explores the ways in which collectivities of interpreters use communication technologies in the construction of, and competition over, their organizational identity, practice and space. It focuses on Babels, which organized activist interpreting in social forums, and AIIC, the international association of conference interpreters, and their use of babels.org and aiic.net. It analyzes the narrative ‘position’ of these collectivities through the prism of their Web 2.0 homepage design, and individual members’ enactment of, or departure from, these positions (narrative ‘locations’) in the context of an inter-website and interorganizational conflict. The study shows that the participatory web mediates and shapes how collectivities publicly project, enact and contest competing imaginaries of the profession, of the interpreting community, and of society at large.

On the basis of a critical approach to the concept of ‘social exclusion,’ this contribution explores the intersections between translation theory and social theory by offering a conceptual framework to study the impact of translation and interpreting in exclusion and inclusion processes. It examines the case of a migrants’ translation rights movement that took place in Lavapiés (Madrid, Spain) during the Covid-19 pandemic that sought to provide – and demand – medical interpreting in healthcare centers and other public areas. The article gives some insights into the complexities of the role of translation and interpreting as an inclusive practice in the context of a pandemic.