Description
Book SynopsisA 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 leave
Trade Review
'Sociologists! Read this book! It is a major contribution to sociological theorising, and rams home the point that you ignore translation matters at your peril.
Translation Studies scholars! Read this book! Bielsa pushes the ‘sociological turn’ in Translation Studies further, deeper, and better than anyone else has yet managed.
Everyone else! Read this book! It is a brilliantly incisive intervention into many of the pressing and inter-related cultural, linguistic, and political matters of our time.'
David Inglis, University of Helsinki, Finland
'This book makes a significant contribution to the sociology of translation. It shows how translation is interwoven into the very fabric of social life and is central to many major questions in modern social and political thought.'
Gerard Delanty, Sussex University, UK
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
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
