Translation and prefiguration: consolidating a conceptual encounter

Buts, Jan

doi:10.1080/0907676x.2019.1682626

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 20 publications

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“…Taviano (2016) attempts to explain a wide range of verbal and non-verbal strategies adopted by activist hip hop artists in Sudan as prefigurative modes of translation. The most extended, critical discussion of the semiotic and textual realization of prefigurative strategies to date, however, is provided in Buts (2019aButs ( , 2019b. Key to both definitions-organizational and semiotic-is an emphasis on experimentation as a cornerstone of prefigurative politics.…”

Section: Prefiguration: Organizational and Semioticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translation and solidarity in the century with no future: prefiguration vs. aspirational translation

Baker

2020

Palgrave Commun

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The future and how we envision and anticipate it has been the subject of scholarly attention for some time, especially from political theorists, scholars of human geography, and anthropologists. This article draws on some of this literature, but particularly the work of Franco 'Bifo' Berardi, the Italian Marxist theorist and activist, to explore the implications of two activist strategies that have recently received some attention from translation scholars: prefiguration and aspirational translation. It reflects on the different orientations to the future implied in these two strategies and suggests that their relative appeal is impacted by the rise of semiocapitalism in what Berardi refers to as 'the century with no future', and by varying experiences of activists located in different regions of the world. The work of translation and how translators orient themselves to the future, it is argued, can play an important role in arresting if not reversing the ongoing erosion of those possibilities still inscribed in the present despite semiocapitalism's growing control over every area of human life.

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Section: Prefiguration: Organizational and Semioticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translation and solidarity in the century with no future: prefiguration vs. aspirational translation

Baker

2020

Palgrave Commun

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Buts

2021

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This article argues that researchers in Translation Studies may proactively aim to understand the consequences of an envisaged merger between targeted advertising and automated translation. Functional translation software is widely available online, and several platforms now perform instant translation, sometimes without asking the user whether this is required. Indeed, the user’s main language is known to various applications, which keep track of this information along with other settings and preferences. Data tracking is commonly used to produce targeted advertising: people receive commercial information about products they are likely to be interested in. If text can instantly be altered according to a user’s linguistic preferences, it can also be altered according to aesthetic, commercial, or political preferences. The article discusses theoretical and ideological aspects of the sociotechnical evolution towards the production and consumption of personalised content, highlighting the role translation may come to play.

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Decolonial social movements as translators: Converting prefigurative initiatives into political and legal change tools

Barros,

Rose

2023

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Social movement scholars have been discussing the limits of prefigurative initiatives, based on the present enactment of desired futures, in promoting supportive institutional structures. However, research has yet to explore fully how prefigurative means can be meaningfully converted into structural ends. Our paper explores the role of decolonial social movements, centered on challenging institutional legacies of colonialism, and their translating processes into filling this gap. Through our decolonial analysis of the International Monsanto Tribunal, we show how prefigurative translation—that is, process through which alternative organizing principles are converted into proposals of enabling policies and laws—connected prefiguring principles to structuring efforts by bridging alternative voices and negating Monsanto’s damaging actions. As a result of bringing together actors’ sharing similar struggles and horizons and deconstructing current problematic structures, they helped translating their principles and practices into political and legal change tools. Our research contributes to the nascent perspective of decolonial social movements as translators by exploring the process through which they help to defend and promote alternatives from a position with, against, and beyond entrenched hostile structures, often a product of colonial heritage. Furthermore, we propose the prefigurative translation role of negating actions as essential to creating “concrete utopias” anchored on real-world struggles and deconstructing problematic translations. Finally, our analysis suggests that, in this process, the presence of “translation arbiters” is important in recognizing, connecting and balancing alternative organizing principles that are traditionally hidden or devalued.

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Translation and prefiguration: consolidating a conceptual encounter

Cited by 3 publications

References 20 publications

Translation and solidarity in the century with no future: prefiguration vs. aspirational translation

Translation and solidarity in the century with no future: prefiguration vs. aspirational translation

Targeted individuals

Decolonial social movements as translators: Converting prefigurative initiatives into political and legal change tools

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