ABSTRACT
The introduction looks at the theoretical intersections between the cosmopolitan condition and translation. It traces the recent histories of both fields of cosmopolitanism and translation studies suggesting that in our contemporary cosmopolis, creating cultural and linguistic estuaries through the praxis of translation within and at the borders of the political formation of the nation is an effective tool in our efforts to protect cultural and political rights. Like natural estuaries, cultural estuaries allow for vastly different bodies of human experience to come into contact without losing their distinctiveness. Estuarine translation ensures that over time new forms of being (cultural, linguistic, political, etc.) emerge at the border, not so much to ensure and promote understanding but rather to cultivate the necessary conditions for forms of relational exchange to take root. In fact, estuarine translation undermines comprehensibility because of the latter’s hegemonic potential while valuing untranslatability, silence, discontinuity, and errors.
