A Translational Sociology

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.

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.

Autorentext

Esperança Bielsa is an Associate Professor and ICREA Academia Fellow at the Department of Sociology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her most recent books are The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media (ed. 2022) and The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization (with D. Kapsaskis, eds. 2021).

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. Translation and society

Chapter 1. Translation and identity

Chapter 2. Translation and transformation

Chapter 3. For a translational sociology

Part II. Translation and politics

Chapter 4. Politics of translation

Chapter 5. Translating democracy

Chapter 6. The translator as producer

Part III. Translation and experience

Chapter 7. Translation and modernity: Benjamin's Baudelaire

Chapter 8. Translating strangers

Chapter 9. Homecoming: an auto-analysis

Conclusion: translation and reflexivity

General bibliography

Index