ABSTRACT
Translation’s democratizing potential has been studied by students of comparative literature, social movements, and transnational democracy, but it has received less attention in political theories of democracy. This chapter provides a sociological critique of democratic theories to explore how structural inequality creates conflict and ‘positional’ misunderstandings within culturally diverse settings for democratic dialogue and deliberation in globalized multilingual societies. Translators’ critical capacity to convey democratic messages and oppositional political meanings across linguistic and cultural boundaries as ‘engaged translators’ is of relevance for all local contexts and situations characterized by inequality. Based on an interdisciplinary perspective of translation in the literature, the chapter reviews existing political science theories of democracy, dialogue and deliberation. In research on social movements and protest, scholars have demonstrated the democratizing impact of collectives of ‘activist’ interpreters or translators who take part in grassroots, consensus-based democracy or deliberation in transnational public spaces created by social movements.
