Translation and Migration - Narratives of a Transition

This volume focuses on migration in its socio-linguistic and psychological dimensions, encompassing migration keys mainly associated with communication across linguistic and cross-cultural boundaries. In particular, migration is broadly understood and analysed as relating to the cross-over of language, translation, mediation/interaction activities and representations in a (multi)media framework. The authors’ contributions encompass themes of linguistic and psycho/socio-cultural representation, socio-cultural conflict, renegotiation of individuals and group identities, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic sensitivity. These issues are explored by scholars from renowned Italian universities whose contributions are meant to promote a cross-fertilization of ideas and theoretical approaches. The volume is divided into two Sections: Translation and Migrant Representations and Migration and Identity Issues. The first Section – Translation and Migrant Representation – focuses on translation and on various forms of migrant (media) representations. Globalization is demanding greater and greater attention to mediation processes and issues of transfer, in terms of ‘travelling concepts’ and the interactions that make up cultural encounters, and the circulation of representations. International migration flows seem to have subverted the functions of the borders of nation-states, whose aim seems no longer to be to safeguard their territories in time of war, but rather to protect them from mass invasion by migrants, who are perceived as «undeserving foreigners». The contributions in the second Section – Migration and Identity Issues – focus more specifically on studies of cultural and social identity, multiculturality, cultural hybridity, language acquisition, and identity in multilingual societies. Though multicultural societies seem to have become the norm today, identity in integration is a particularly relevant and thorny issue, as some contributions highlight from different perspectives. In our increasingly fragmented societies, where numerous cultures mix, the old national boundaries have collapsed, and major demographic movements have blurred the very notions of ‘identity’, ‘culture’ or ‘nation’. The national-romantic idea of an inner association between language and people/nation, and subsequently their national culture, the German muttersprachliche Kultur – now belongs to the past. The recognition of changes in communication patterns leads us to renegotiate the ‘linguistic nationism’ equation , which previously shaped identities around language identity and a rejection of separate languages and cultures. The more so because in our multilingual societies, where the status of the individual depends crucially upon his or her access to and proficiency in the language(s) of highest status within the national context. As Miller argues, «the important link between second language use and social identity must be seen in its relation to empowerment and the ongoing process of selfrealisation». As all the contributions in this volume show, migration flows have produced, and are still producing racial, and cultural hybridity, and our societies have consequently become «an abstract [yet palpable] concept compounded of ideas about the sovereignty of nation-states, the intensification of commerce, and strategies of cultural representation». It could thus be constructive to consider interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity as a translation problem, potentially enhancing our understanding of the contact zones arising in the transitions between disciplines. In particular, in this ever-increasing scenario of global displacements, rather than insisting on the accepted notion of translation as a bridge-building activity, we might consider a more general theory of political transaction, like the one postulated by Susan Bassnett: «Translation therefore has both a personal and a political dimension and needs to be seen as the primary tool in a twenty-first century vision of the world that seeks to encompass multiple forms of communication with the objective of avoiding catastrophic conflicts arising from a failure to read the sigs of other cultures». Paradoxically, the first aim of translation is to enhance differences rather than erase them: «Translation in a globalized world has the potential both to strengthen the localization of speech communities and to allow for the engagement with differences without which we are condemned to, at best, mutual indifference and, at worst, reciprocal hostility». In this perspective translation can also become a transformative act leading to a reciprocal change, as Bauman argues: «No act of translation leaves either of the partner intact. Both emerge from their encounter changed, different at the end of the act from what they were at its beginning» . In this sense, and once again, translation and migration metaphorically overlap, since every cross-cultural encounter with ‘translated’ people may/should have the same transformative power for all of us .