Translating for Language Justice, across the Disciplines

Abstract

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.