Research in translation: an invitation to converse about the languages and locations of research

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to introduce Research in translation as a new section of the journal. Its goals are to expand and diversify the flow of ideas in the sociology of education, to make available perspectives and notions from other research traditions to readers from diverse parts of the world, and to enrich the conversations about how these movements transform the ways in which social knowledge about education is produced. This introduction underlines that research is always produced in and as translation between different sets of practices and registers; it also wants to visibilize the craft of translation and its effects in the production of knowledge in an increasingly internationalized, plurilingual academia.

KEYWORDS:

• Research
• translation
• linguistic barriers
• geopolitics of knowledge
• internationalization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Of course, languages are never monolingual; they always carry traces and signs of foreign ones. Yet Anderson-Levitt’s argument remains important, as it speaks of the dismissal of connecting/understanding different linguistic systems.

2. The figures refer to literary, non-fiction and academic books. In that time there has been, unsurprisingly, a sharp decline in the translation of Russian books, but also of French and German books. The translations from Spanish to other languages are slowly growing their share from 1.69% in 1980–1990 to 2.64% in 2000–2010, but they are still a minor figure (Sapiro, 2016, p. 85).

3. As Chakrabarty says, ‘the margins are as plural and diverse as the centers’ (2000, p. 17), something that terms such as ‘the Global South’ do not sufficiently acknowledge.

4. It remains to be seen what will happen with this love of language and the acknowledgement of untranslatability and silences in the era of Google Translator. Will the translation algorithms, which produce -more times than not- ludicrous texts, create a new language? What will be the ‘in-between’ of languages for automated translators? Which common language will emerge?

5. Gisèle Sapiro discusses the specific conditions and obstacles for the translation of academic texts, among which she studies the policies and economic interests of major publishing houses. Overall, the industry sees academic publishing as a vulnerable economic sector as it is not too profitable, and translations involve a higher cost, making it even more vulnerable. Official aides such as the one given by the French government are many times the main driver for translations in the humanities and social sciences (Sapiro, 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Inés Dussel

Inés Dussel, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison. Senior Researcher at the Department of Educational Research, CINVESTAV, Mexico. Before that, Inés acted as the Director of the Education Area, Latin American School for the Social Sciences (Argentina), from 2001 to 2008. She has published extensively on issues related to the historical production of schooling and pedagogy, particularly on its material and visual cultures, and is currently doing research on the intersections between schools and digital visual culture. She is the Research in Translation editor for ISSE.