Meaning in the Vortex of Intervention and Translation with a Focus on International Diplomacy

Translation is a socially regulated act of communication. Therefore, it is a matter of making implicit meanings explicit across languages and socio-cultural systems. The relative interests and positions of the participants play a crucial part in contextualizing the production and reception of translation. How can the stakeholders involved in or benefitting from this process ever be sure of the content of the information they are exposed to? Are translators/interpreters subservient or impartial agents? There is reaserach that demonstrate acts of intervention in translation/interpreting in action. Are all acts of intervention innocent or are they ever used to manipulate meaning? Can they be justified? Apart from usual linguistic interventions made to provide an idiomatic translation through ‘shifts’, there are instances where translators intervene in a more conscious, conspicuous and purposeful way. Change is the focus of intervention in translation. Intervention as a translation phenomenon has many ways. It is also regarded as the re-contextualization of meaning. Those benefitting from translation are open to vulnerability, which is a kind of symbolic violence. How should the freedom of stakeholders be treated in translation? Ethics as a system of principles governing i

Keywords

Translation, Intervention, Identity, Power Relations, Ethics