TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY IVONNE SANTOYO-OROZCO
Among the effects of western hegemony is the hierarchization of tongues that designates some as languages and others merely as dialects. While seemingly unrelated, a world divided into nation-states directly affects not only the political status of tongues but especially the living conditions of their speakers. However, this parcelization of the world into an order of approximately 200 states—according to the United Nations— is not obvious at all. These political entities and their ferocious control of their borders did not exist during most of human history. Modern states fundamentally rely on the development of nationalist practices that create the illusion of a common past, a shared identity, and the need for a single language. And yet, the existence of linguistic diversity will continue to refuse, by negating in multiple languages, the paralyzing discourse of any form of nationalism.
If we consider that there are about seven thousand languages worldwide and only around 200 States, it becomes evident that very few states, if any, are homogenous. Still, communities that embrace non-official languages remain under State control. In most cases, but more consistently throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, many governments implemented linguistic policies that concretely rejected languages that did not endorse the nation-state. For this reason, languages beyond national official discourses will continue to contradict the spirit of official linguistic practices. These linguicide policies are responsible for the disappearance of linguistic diversity, and today, they continue to exert their influence at a pace unparalleled in history. Indigenous languages and any language that exists beyond nation-state frameworks are becoming tools of struggle against the ideology that orders world politics.
The exercise of translation is not a stranger to the political status of languages. This is the case for both languages translated from and those being translated to. Hegemonic languages rely on a vast array of dictionaries, a comprehensive body of resources, and many tools that assist the translation process. However, for those who translate from languages without a state, or even languages that resist their existence within orality altogether, translators have to develop different strategies and tools for the exercise of translation: translation unavoidably becomes a collective action, where your sources and dictionaries become the elders of your speech community. For example, the translation of an account of nature will necessitate the knowledge of a forest specialist, but an account of philosophy that of a specialist familiar with the tradition of thought. For you, translating these words, this is all the more evident.
Even the possibility of translation depends on the status of the languages involved: it is more likely to see translation between hegemonic languages than between languages without a state. How much would we enrich theories of translation and its practices if we could broaden the language spectrum from those that we translate from or to? What strategies could we deploy to translate languages with radically different grammar and linguistic practices? How much wealth in linguistic diversity could the world enjoy if not for the determined erasure by nation-states? Maybe these very questions are being answered just now as these words are being translated. ■
Yásnaya Elena A. Gil is a linguist, writer and translator. She is a member of COLMIX, a collective of the Mixe people that carries out research and dissemination activities on Mixe language, history, and culture. She has collaborated in various projects on the dissemination of linguistic diversity, documentation projects, and attention to languages at risk of disappearing. She is the author of the books Un nosotrxs sin estado and Ää. Manifestos sobre la diversidad lingüística.
Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco is an architectural historian and educator whose work is interested in Latin American histories of housing rights and social movements against private property.