ABSTRACT
Slow translation refers to translation practices that allow reflexivity and debate by people who translate, publish, read, comment on, or republish translations. Slow collaborative activist translation (SCAT) is an example of slow translation that occurs in the midst of social movements, challenging governments and societies from north to south. SCAT takes place mostly in the virtual world of Web 2.0 where consumers are also producers of content, creating influential sociodigital networks (Bissière et al. 2015). How could such kinds of translation be approached? What methodological framework is best? Possible answers to these questions will be examined.
As the epistemological vision of complexity theory is central here to analyze relevant SCAT properties as reticularity, recursiveness, and dialogism, a transdisciplinary analysis is necessary. Inspired by the open methods of the social network analysis, including the concept of “sociogram” (Mercklé 2004; Hanneman and Riddle 2005), I graphically show the social network of selected translations, done and published by translating the printemps érable, a Canadian SCAT initiative related to the Quebec student movement (2012). The resulting translation-centred sociograms will include not only the traditional binary relations author-original text/translator-translated text, but also the interactions triggered by published and republished translations, namely readers’ recommendations and republications and most importantly their commentaries or modifications to the original translation.
This first transdisciplinary effort should allow a theoretical and pragmatic rebinding, in simple terms a process of distinction and conjunction of the emergent properties of new phenomena (Bolle de Bal 1996; 2008), which constitutes a main methodological proposition by these two complexity thinkers. Analyzing the dynamic and multidimensional network of texts and people weaved by the Canadian initiative, through the lens of the aforementioned sociological theories, should contribute to a better understanding of SCAT as a new and complex translational phenomenon. In addition, it enables us to consider other possible rebindings with pertinent social sciences disciplines which have been applying complexity thinking in their respective fields of research.
