Negotiations and Conflict in the Implementation of a Waste Pickers’ Cooperative: A Sociology of Translation Approach

The complexity of converting political options into socially, economically, and environmentally acceptable strategies places collectors of recyclable material and the challenges they experience on the agendas of research in science, technology, and society. This article aims to investigate the negotiations and conflicts that permeated the implementation of a waste pickers’ cooperative and its integration into the municipal solid waste management system. Considering the complexity of the theme, the methodological approach adopted was grounded theory. This method encourages the expansion of knowledge in an area through the connection of theoretical concepts and significant aspects of the actors’ experiences. The techniques applied for data collection included semi-structured interviews, participant observation, document analysis, and informal interviews. The results are based on narratives analyzed from concepts derived from the Sociology of Translation. It was possible to observe the efforts undertaken by multiple actors, sometimes in the construction and other times in the destabilization of a support network for the establishment of a cooperative. The network suffered dissidents and was destabilized by the habits of the original network and by unexpected events, which made the results achieved opposite to desired ones. In the end, the network was not stabilized, and municipal solid waste management was unchanged.

“My language has an immense potential”

This article sets out to chart the success of the Dutch novelist, poet and travel writer Cees Nooteboom, who has achieved literary fame in several countries of the world while recognition in his home country lagged behind. To analyse the reasons for the conflicting images attributed to this cosmopolitan author, I will look behind the curtains of the transnational production and reception of his writings, investigating his success in five central or semi-central languages (Heilbron 2010). The study of how this writer has succeeded in transcending the peripheral position of the Dutch language in the world literary system will be carried out by combining the sociology of translation with reception studies and imagological considerations. Nooteboom appears to be a peculiar case of image building: he is internationally represented as a Dutch and a European writer, but his lack of Dutchness appears to have hindered his recognition in the Netherlands.

‘This Is What We Share’

This chapter focuses on the joint guests of honour at the 2016 Frankfurt Book Fair, Flanders and the Netherlands – a rare case of two government organisations representing separate national groupings (Flanders and the Netherlands) coming together to present the literature of a single language (Dutch) on the international stage. It recounts how the two delegations’ shared status as guests of honour for 2016 came about through a collaboration between the Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Flemish Literature Fund (now known as Flanders Literature) and analyses the branding decisions made by the 2016 organizers. Conceptually, the chapter engages with perspectives from field theory and the sociology of translation to elaborate branding as a form of position-taking and guest of honour presentations as important mechanisms of transnational capital conversion.

TRANSLATION AND MANIPULATION

The article investigates the Ukrainian-German literary translation of the 1950s from the viewpoint of the sociology of translation (P. Bourdieu, S. Bassnett, N. Bachleitner) and the theory of rewriting and manipulation by A. Lefevere. Therefore, the emphasis is placed on the factors affecting approaches to translation, particularly ideology, patronage, poetics. Translation as rewriting is analysed based on short stories from the anthology “Aus dem Buch des Lebens. Ukrainische und estnische Novellen”, published in the GDR in 1951. Rewriting strategies are classified into two groups: a) strategies used in paratexts (foreword, comments, explanatory notes, information about the author, history of the Ukrainian culture and literature); b) strategies used by a translator in the main text: 1) simplification, 2) neutralization of regional and national flavour, 3) substitution of the Ukrainian flavour with the Russian one (russification of the work). As a result of the analysis, it can be concluded that the most frequent translation transformation encountered in the text is replacement of realia words, dialecticisms and colloquialisms with neutral lexemes (often hyperonyms), which is defined as neutralization strategy. It correlates with the simplification strategy, based on the omission of sentences and paragraphs, which are not desirable for translation, particularly textual elements with religious themes and Ukrainian realia. Substitution of the Ukrainian national flavour with the Russian one is mostly represented with the rendering of onyms (anthroponyms and toponyms) according to the norms of Russian phonetics, which marked the Ukrainian literature as part of the Russian cultural space. This kind of rewriting had the effect of German-speaking readers forming a corresponding impression of the Ukrainian culture.

For a translational sociology: Illuminating translation in society, theory and research

This article argues for a non-reductive approach to translation as a basic social process that shapes both the world that sociologists study and the sociological endeavour itself. It starts by referring to accounts from the sociology of translation and translation studies, which have problematized simplistic views of processes of cultural globalization. From this point of view, translation can offer an approach to contemporary interconnectedness that escapes from both methodological nationalism and what can be designated as the monolingual vision, providing substantive perspectives on the proliferation of contact zones or borderlands in a diversity of domains. The article centrally argues for a sociological perspective that examines not just the circulation of meaning but translation as a process of linguistic transformation that is necessarily embodied in words. Only if this more material aspect of translation is attended to can the nature of translation as an ordinary social process be fully grasped and its intervention in meaning-making activities explored. This has far-ranging implications for any reflexive account of the production of sociological works and interpretations.

Identification as translation: The art of choosing the right spokespersons at the securitized border

This article pursues a translational approach to the securitization of migration. It argues that sociotechnical processes of identification at the border can be conceived of as translations into legible identities of individuals who are unknown to authorities. The article contributes to the materiality debate on securitization across Critical Security Studies (CSS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS) by answering the call to conduct empirical explorations of security, and by revisiting the potential of the early sociology of translation (i.e. actor-network theory) to account for the identification of border crossers. Data collection was conducted at four identification facilities in the Hellenic Republic. Three sets of implications for the CSS-STS debate on the materiality of securitization are discussed. First, a translational approach can replace a representational understanding of identity with a performative apprehension of identification. Second, adopting a translational approach leads to acknowledge that the identification encounter is mediated by multiple, heterogeneous actors. It thus helps to open technological black boxes and reveal the key role of material qualities, affordances and limitations of artefacts. Third, a translational approach to the securitization of migration can help advance the field of ‘alterity processing’ by appreciating the de facto re-arrangements of institutional orders elicited by techno-political alignments with global security regimes.

Między niepełnosprawnością a przekładem. Osoby niepełnosprawne jako twórcy i odbiorcy przekładu

This paper deals with the relations between the phenomena of disability and translation studies. Translation studies and disability studies are relatively new fields, which up until recently had little in common. However, for more than a dozen years now, scholars of translation have focused on research concerning access services for people with disabilities. These services include, among others, audio description, sign language interpretation and subtitles for the deaf and the hard of hearing. However, there is not too much research concerning people with disabilities as creators, and not recipients, of translation. There is also a lack of translation scholars with disabilities. The interdisciplinary perspective of sociology of translation and disability studies may help to bridge this gap by providing a more inclusive approach to studies on translation.

Scientific Communication and Codification

In the sociology of scientific knowledge and the sociology of translation, heterogeneous networks have been studied in terms of practices and so-called actor-networks. However, scientific practices are intellectually structured by codes. Cognitive structures interact and co-construct the organization of scholars and discourses into research programs, specialties, and disciplines. The intellectual organization of the sciences adds to and feeds back on the configurations of authors and texts. The social, textual, and cognitive sub-dynamics select upon each other asymmetrically. Selections can further be selected for stabilization along trajectories and then also be globalized—symbolically generalized—into regimes of expectations.