ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author shows that how Antonio Francesco Gramsci – while relying on his predecessors, whom he names the ‘founders of the philosophy of praxis’ – theorizes on translation in a peculiar and innovative way that goes beyond the traditional idea of translation as a mere process of transfer between languages. The elements that enter the translation process are activities – that is praxis – or elements that tend to be such, languages included. A wide recognition and awareness of translatability’s centrality to Gramsci’s thought, globally considered, and to Marxism, is also lacking, even though something is changing and some progress has been made. One of the main reasons that the elaboration of translatability is of the highest importance to Marxism is that, first of all, it represents a theory of praxis, namely, of how political and historical action works. Second, translatability is the theory of the necessity that theory becomes practice.
