Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action

Mona Baker

Centre for Translation & Intercultural Studies

University of Manchester

Global Movements of Collective Action

• Melucci, Alberto (1996) Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Tarrow, Sidney (2006) The New Transnational Activism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Maeckelbergh, Marianne (2011) ‘Doing is believing: Prefiguration as strategic practice in the alterglobalization movement’, Social Movement Studies 10(1): 1–20.

Issues to Consider

• Motivation

• Positioning in relation to professional community

• Principles and functioning: positioning in relation to global movements of collective action

• Engagement in prefigurative politics

Two Types of Community(based on type of material and

venue of dissemination)

• Selection, translation and dissemination of written text:

– Traduttori per la Pace /Translators for Peace (founded 1999, Italy)

– Translators United for Peace (founded 2003, Japan)

– Tlaxcala (founded 2005/2006)

– Translator Brigades (founded September 2011)

• Working in community and/or collective forums: mostly oral interpreting:

– ECOS (traductores e intérpretes por la solidaridad, founded in 1998, Granada)

– Babels (founded 2002, linked to WSF, 9000+ interpreters/translators on database)

What they have in common

• Self identification as translators/interpreters

– Translators for Peace; Translators United for Peace; Translator Brigades

– ECOS: traductores e intérpretes por la solidaridad; Tlaxcala: The International Network of Translators for Linguistic Diversity

– Babels is ‘an international network of volunteer interpreters and translators’

• Reliance on internet – with most being totally virtual communities (heavily embedded in digital culture)

• Transnational and trans-professional profile (to varying degrees)

Identification with Professional Community

Embeddedness within Global Movement Culture

• No single issue politics; growing commitment to affirming globality, i.e. ‘‘raising issues that do not concern specific social groups only but, more generally, the system as such” (Melucci 1996:308)

• Commitment to horizontal, non-representational modes of practice

• Commitment to prefiguration

• Constitute a form of altruistic action (Melucci 1996)

Early ECOS Site (c. 2004/2005)

ECOS on Facebook (October 2011)

Range of Themes on Earlier Tlaxcala Site

Range of Themes on Tlaxcala ’s Homepage (March 2013)

Commitment to Horizontal, Non-Representational Modes of

Practice

Translator Brigades (March 2013)

Prefiguration & Language Politics

Tlaxcala Manifesto (March 2013)

• The translators of Tlaxcala believe in otherness, in the goodness of approaching others’ points of view, and for that reason they take the stand of de-imperializing the English language by publishing in all possible languages (including English) the voices of writers, thinkers, cartoonists and activists who nowadays write their original texts in languages that the domineering empire’s influence do [sic] not allow to be heard. As well, the translators of Tlaxcala will provide an opportunity for non-English speakers to be exposed to ideas from English language writers who now are on the fringe, or who were only published in really small, hard to find places.

• The English language in its position as an apparatus of institutional knowledge functions as a global power structure that presents the world’s languages and cultures in its image and likeness without bothering to seek the permission of the world it purports to represent. The translators of Tlaxcala are convinced that the masters of discourse can be defeated and hope to blur such an apparatus in the faith that the world can become both multipolar and multilingual, as diverse as life itself.

Tlaxcala Manifesto (March 2013)cont.

• The English language in its position as an

apparatus of institutional knowledge functions as a

global power structure that presents the world’s

languages and cultures in its image and likeness

without bothering to seek the permission of the

world it purports to represent. The translators of

Tlaxcala are convinced that the masters of

discourse can be defeated and hope to blur such

an apparatus in the faith that the world can become

both multipolar and multilingual, as diverse as life

itself.

Prefiguration: Range and Order of Languages

Tlaxcala Who We Are (March 2013)

Prefiguration: Range and Order of Languages

Prefiguration: Range & Order of Languages

List of Babels Site Languages accessible through baBeLOG

Prefiguration: Range and Order of Languages

Prefiguration: Shuffling of Languages

Babels Homepage (23 October 2011)

Babels Google Search (March 2013)

Prefiguration: Shuffling of Languages

Tlaxcala’s Homepage (March 2013)

Prefiguration: Mixing of Languages in Internal Communication

Prefiguration: Mixing of Languages in Internal Communication

Prefiguration: Modes of Organisation

Babels’ Protocols (March 2013)

Strategic Value of Prefiguration

• Contemporary movements maintain a degree of

separation from the dominant cultural codes through

the constitution and operation of organizational

forms which prefigure the goals they pursue, and

through their activity of visibly signalling the societal

problems addressed by it. […] The greater the

emphasis on challenge and the more prominent

such prefiguration, the lesser the risk that

organizational forms will be assimilated or co-opted.

(Melucci 1996:328-329)

Positioning within Global Movements

Altruistic Action

• … directed against the processes by which dominant cultural codes are formed ... By its sheer existence, such action challenges power, upsets its logic, and constructs alternative meanings. ... [it] indicates that the encounter with the ‘other’ is not reducible to the instrumental logic.

(Melucci 1996:169)

Altruistic Action

• … in order for action to count as altruistic action, its gratuitousness must concern the relation that ties the actors involved together in the collective action. The distinctive feature of altruistic action is that economic benefits do not constitute the basis of the relationship among those involved, nor between them and the recipients in the performed action.

(Melucci 1996:167)

Babels Charter: Explicit Political Character

Babels is:

• A network of interpreters and translators

• A player in the ‘anti-capitalist’ debate

Cf. Tlaxcala Manifesto (anti-militarist)

Liminal Position

I am firmly opposed to any intervention by Babels beyond the ESF and the WSF … There is a big risk, after all, of unfair competition with professional interpreters. When all associations become aware that there is a big pool of volunteer interpreters, they won’t be willing to budget for interpreting, even if they have the funds to do so. It is too easy to counter this argument on the grounds that professional interpreters are guided by their own financial interests and that there is something automatically gratifying in providing free interpreting. It is not the role of a network that is supposed to be aware of social problems to destroy the market.

(Sarah, Babels Forum, 28 March 2004; translated from French by Julie Boéri; in Boéri 2009:79)

).

• Not a form of identity politics

• Not single-issue movements

• Transnational in aims and membership

• Trans-professional and ‘amateur’ in character (in Said’s sense)

• Exercise innovative modes of prefiguration

• At least some are variants of altruistic action (as defined by Melucci 1996)

• Major contribution is linguistic diversity

• Occupy liminal position between activist and professional communities (leading to strained relationship with the latter in particular)

Summary – Features of Activist Movements within

T&I