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Translating for Language Justice, across the Disciplines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2023

Karen Emmerich
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Abstract

This piece acknowledges the MLA's many initiatives in support of translation while also advocating for even greater visibility for translation as a mode of combatting language injustice in disciplines across the university. Translation offers opportunities for inclusiveness, information sharing, and collaborative knowledge production across linguistic, social, economic, and geographic divides. It also offers a form of hands-on apprenticeship in intellectual and scholarly rigor for undergraduate and graduate students alike. And by translating the texts of colleagues writing in other languages, scholars working in languages of the Global North can help further goals of language justice and access by facilitating exposure to and for other traditions of knowledge production. This piece proposes that, instead of treating translation as a threat to an individual's academic viability, we embrace translation as a means of increasing the vitality and equity of our intellectual communities.

Type
Essay
Information
PMLA , Volume 138 , Issue 3 , May 2023 , pp. 682 - 697
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America

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