Bureau Zee

Lost in Translation, found in translation – translation as mediator on the boundary between languages and systems-in-the-mind

Nietzsche described translation as a form of conquest – this description was one of several feelings evoked for the authors during an international group relations conference. The conference had two official languages. This is not unlike many situations in today’s organizational life, where people collaborate in languages that are not their mother tongue. In this context, the boundary between two or more languages can be conceived of as a space in which meaning can get gained or lost, and where translation, or the translator, becomes the mediator of that boundary-space. What system-in-the-mind gets created either side of the boundary, can influence and in turn is influenced by perceptions of the role of the translator – as conqueror, lover, hero, traitor. In the conference experience sometimes translation was requested or volunteered, whereas on other occasions meaning was seen to be grasped without translation. This suggests that meaning can transcend the language boundary without mediation of translation, and that the role of translator/translation is perhaps influenced by the systems psychodynamics as much as by linguistic needs, especially as one explores what other than linguistic meaning gets exchanged across the boundary.

Paper for OPUS Conference, November 2006, co-authored with Phil Swann