As global subjectivity becomes increasingly defined by the communication across languages and cultures, the universe emerging between interacting economies seems more and more influenced by the processes of translation. The strong need for expertise in 'foreign' languages is not only essential for purposes of mutual intelligibility between different 'national' languages and cultures, but also for the larger processes of cross-cultural hybridization that produce new and different types of identity. Translation therefore denotes not only the art and craft of the 'literary' or 'technical' translator, but also a larger cultural formation that emerges through the global flow of exiles, emigrants and refugees. The interaction between two or more 'national' traditions is affected by the processes of translation whose articulation requires not only a constantly shifting theoretical endeavor, but also the combination of empirical research and intellectual practice committed to the non-hierarchical study of global cultures. Multiple types of translational identities are produced as a "practice of everyday life" for those groups and individuals who find themselves in the ranks of exiles, emigrants and refugees.
The concept of cultural translation is meant to both describe an emergent field of academic study as well as a performative theory of everyday life for the global community. Cultural roots of different nations are often narrated through the agonistic vision of "one's own" specific story of collective glory and its past, present and future adversaries. But, the diasporic displacements which result from ethnic conflicts and economic pressures of the globalizing universe question the very notion of the nation as a stable narrative. What happens with these 'national stories' when they are deterritorialized through global migrations? How do relationships between cultures of birth and exile affect the core definitions of the "native"? What is the effect of these changes on gender formations? How do these new, hybrid forms of cultural interaction 'translate' and domesticate particular political practices? For example, does the phrase 'human rights' mean the same thing in Mandarin, English or Russian?
The scholars awarded the degree of "Ph. D" rarely stop to rethink the nature of philosophy which they inherit as a field of study. It is especially troubling that North American humanities live under the techno-positivist threat without fundamentally re-evaluating not only the mission (i.e. the unspoken vow to spread humanist knowledge and expertise), but also the direction of research. The struggle between theory and cultural studies in the humanities departments seems to be a symptom of yet another false binary. According to Derrida, "the origin of philosophy is translation or the thesis of translatability" (The Ear of the Other, 120).
The narratives which are bound to the linguistic barrier of one's "native" language are constantly being modified by the emergence of this new translational identity. The term "identity" does not adequately grasp the intricacies of this new articulation. Identity as a term implies "sameness with oneself," a state rarely lived by those immersed in diasporic complexities. The use of 'national' is never absolute and self-identical, but always ex-centric and permeated by translation into the 'other' code, where all absolute definitions of 'identity' are suspended. Between the memory of 'homeland' and the new, diasporic actuality, at least two languages are involved in criss-crossing the bodies of those who leave behind an imaginary homeland. The primary and determining effect of static concepts (identity, nation, canon) is replaced by the dynamic account of processes dependent upon the culture and language in which they are embedded.
The thesis of translatability does not refer only to the most obvious linguistic difference between "foreign" languages, but reaches for the boundaries between speech and writing, as well as between any other form of mediated experience. Every semiotic practice (i.e. the use of signs to perform what is known) is predicated on the ability to translate "notions" into "research".
The process of cultural translation is often captured in its "artistic" articulations in the imaginative practice of literature, cinema, performance art and other forms of verbal and visual cultural production. The task of the Cultural Translation Project is to bring together prominent international creative personalities who negotiate these multiple identities in their work, and introduce them to students and scholars at the UW-Madison. The aim of the project is to foster research and practice of cultural translation, produce relevant scholarship and engage students in "hands-on" pedagogic experience.