Archipelagic Translation: Mobility amid Every Language in the World

Abstract

When most English speakers hear the verb to translate, we think of the task of "convert [ing] from one language to another." Unsurprisingly, this is the Oxford English Dictionary's first definition for the term, and the OED further expounds on this initial definition: "To convert or render (a word, a work, an author, a language, etc.) into another language; to express or convey the meaning of (a word or text) using equivalent words in a different language." This all feels like common sense. But scroll down in the OED's discussion, and another definition, less prominent than the first, presents itself: "to convey or move (a person or thing) from one place to another; to transfer or transport (a person or thing); to exile or deport (a person or people)." 1 Within a special forum dedicated to theorizing mobility, juxtaposing these two definitions of the English verb to translate is a reminder that the notion of translation has traditionally hinged on mobility, on movement or the idea of movement from one place to another. That which is moving, or that which is being moved, may be a person, thing, sentence, or poem. And the sites from which and to which it is being moved may be material places or language traditions. Translation's imbrication with mobility comes as no surprise to German speakers, who speak a language in which the standard translational equivalent for the verb to translate is übersetzen, which might be paraphrased in English as an act of taking something and moving or setting it into a new place. 2 Translation is movement, and when we talk about translation from one language to another, we are also talking about movement.Although the overtly and self-consciously kinetic definition of translation is to a large degree overlooked in everyday speech, language translation as movement from one place to another is a founding structural metaphor among translators and scholars who have thought about translation. We see this in many places. For instance, in the introduction to their Oxford University Press anthology, Translation-Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader (2006), editors Daniel Weissbort and Astradur Eysteinsson