Translating Dissent

Voices From and With the Egyptian Revolution

Mona Baker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317398462
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

*Written by the winners of the Inttranews Linguists of the Year award for 2016!*

Discursive and non-discursive interventions in the political arena are heavily mediated by various acts of translation that enable protest movements to connect across the globe. Focusing on the Egyptian experience since 2011, this volume brings together a unique group of activists who are able to reflect on the complexities, challenges and limitations of one or more forms of translation and its impact on their ability to interact with a variety of domestic and global audiences.

Drawing on a wide range of genres and modalities, from documentary film and subtitling to oral narratives, webcomics and street art, the 18 essays reveal the dynamics and complexities of translation in protest movements across the world. Each unique contribution demonstrates some aspect of the interdependence of these movements and their inevitable reliance on translation to create networks of solidarity. The volume is framed by a substantial introduction by Mona Baker and includes an interview with Egyptian activist and film-maker, Philip Rizk.

With contributions by scholars and artists, professionals and activists directly involved in the Egyptian revolution and other movements, Translating Dissent will be of interest to students of translation, intercultural studies and sociology, as well as the reader interested in the study of social and political movements. Online materials, including links to relevant websites and videos, are available at http://www.routledge.com/cw/baker. Additional resources for Translation and Interpreting Studies are available on the Routledge Translation Studies Portal: http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/translationstudies.

1
Beyond the spectacle

Translation and solidarity in contemporary protest movements

Mona Baker

This chapter maps out the space of translation within the political economy of contemporary protest movements, using the Egyptian revolution as a case in point and extending the definition of translation to cover a range of modalities and types of interaction. It identifies themes and questions that arise out of the concrete experiences of activists mobilizing and reflecting on what it means to work for justice, both within and across borders, and to attempt to effect change at home while conversing with others who are fighting similar battles elsewhere. I argue that if our networks of solidarity are to become more effective and reflect the values of horizontality, non-hierarchy and pluralism that inform contemporary protest movements, translation, interpreting, subtitling and other forms of mediation must be brought to the centre of the political arena and conceptualized as integral elements of the revolutionary project. Translators, likewise, must be repositioned as full participants within non-hierarchical, solidary activist communities.

Deep translation, as opposed to crisis translation, deliberately moves beyond image and spectacle, with the intention of building international solidarity networks that are nonetheless firmly rooted in the granular struggles of a particular place.

(Samah Selim, p. 84)

In order to fight back we must connect, we must communicate, we need to learn solidarity, we must translate in more ways than just verbal translation, we must attempt a translation of the streets, a deep translation. Collectively we must move on to somewhere new.

(Philip Rizk, p. 237)

The Egyptian revolution has captured the imagination of audiences across the world and provided a model of citizen activism that is widely thought to have inspired other movements of protest in the USA and Europe, including the Occupy and 15-M movements (Teleb 2014; della Porta and Mattoni 2014:125). Despite the large volume of articles and books written about the revolution (Khalil 2012; Souief 2012; Sowers and Toensing 2012; Korany and El-Mahdi 2012; Gregory 2013; Golson et al. 2014; Salem 2015, among many others), one aspect that has received no attention in public or academic circles so far concerns the language-based practices that allow Egyptian protestors to contest dominant narratives of the events unfolding in Egypt since January 2011 and, importantly, to connect with, influence and learn from other place-based movements¹ and from global movements of collective action. Even the collection by Golson et al. (2014), which focuses on language and rhetoric and their impact on Egyptians’ evolving sense of identity, does not engage with issues of translation, understood in the narrow or broad sense. The only notable exception is Mehrez (2012), who reports on a collective project undertaken in 2011 as part of a seminar on ‘Translating Revolution’ at the American University in Cairo.

Using the Egyptian revolution as a concrete case in point, this volume examines the role of translation in shaping the space of protest from a variety of perspectives that include, but are not limited to, the scholarly universe of translation studies and social movement studies. It brings together a range of Egyptian and non-Egyptian activists, as well as activist scholars engaged with a variety of struggles, in order to think through the many facets of translation and the way they impact the evolving political landscape today. Together, this diverse range of contributors draw on first-hand experience to reflect critically – some for the first time – on the different meanings and uses of translation in contemporary activism. They do so in the context of a domestic movement of protest that is nevertheless embedded in and seeks to engage with global movements of collective action and with global publics – much like any other placed-based movement today, from the anti-austerity movement in Greece and much of Europe to the Green Movement protests in Iran, and from the Girifna resistance movement in Sudan² to the Gezi Park protests in Turkey. As such, the volume does not set out merely to offer an analysis of different facets of translation by those who have thought about and analysed the practice for many years but, equally importantly, it sets out to begin a conversation with activists who have so far largely taken translation for granted, despite their heavy reliance on it as they strive to forge networks of solidarity. Deeply frustrated with the failure of all current forms of language, both verbal and visual, to effect change, many of the contributors question much of our received wisdom about how to communicate across borders and media, how to nurture networks of solidarity, and how to learn from past mistakes and envision a new world. As Omar Robert Hamilton argues in the final contribution to the volume, the momentous and deeply traumatic events of the past few years are forcing us to rethink everything, including our use of language and translation, as we look to the future: “If there is to be speech,” he suggests, “it should be of something new, something that still has no language for the reality that it might create” (p. 244).

Against this background, in choosing the contributors and the themes for this volume I have not sought to reproduce the discourses and methods of the many books on revolution, dissent, and especially on the politics of translation, that often fall short of reflecting the way people experience the violence and vigour of revolution and political mobilization on the ground.³ Instead, I have tried to work from the outside in, rather than the inside out: from where the activists and their translational praxis are to where the discipline of translation studies is or thinks it wants to be. Conscious of activists’ deep frustrations with the hijacking of their struggle by ‘expert’ academic and media figures⁴ who have little first-hand experience of the events they analyse – a theme that figures prominently in many of the essays in this volume – I have deliberately prioritized first-hand accounts of engaged activists, irrespective of whether I agree with their view of translation, however defined and conceptualized.⁵ Whether or not their ideas about translation are always what translation scholars would like them to be, the experiences of these highly reflective activists shed light on the dynamics and complexities of a wide range of translational practices in protest movements, in ways that academics who are not totally immersed in the movements cannot hope to achieve. The reflections of these activists are particularly insightful when they reveal the interdependence of various movements and their inevitable reliance on different forms of translation to create networks of solidarity.

The volume also deliberately places a wide range of styles of writing, and of experiences, alongside each other. At one extreme, there are powerful, emotional pieces by writers such as Wiam El-Tamami and film-makers such as Omar Robert Hamilton, and, at the other, analytical essays by activist scholars of politics and sociology such as Todd Wolfson, Peter Funke and Helen Underhill, who draw on scholarly research and literature. The mix of styles and the combination of creative, visceral writing and research-based contributions brings different worlds together, or rather attempts to nurture the space of overlap between the two worlds since they are never completely separate. What all the contributions, including research-based essays, have in common is that their authors are deeply involved in social and political movements, whether in Egypt or elsewhere, and this experience clearly informs their writing – and, where relevant, their research. Hence, in designing their research, activist scholars adopt values that inform contemporary activism and social movements across the world today, as described by Wolfson and Funke in this volume. In choosing her interviewees for a study that examines the translation practices of diaspora Egyptians post-30 June 2013, for example, Helen Underhill strives to “challenge homogenizing representations that circulate within narrations of the Egyptian struggle, and the rigid categories that emerge from such representations – diaspora, migrants, foreigners, activists, Islamists, secularists, revolutionaries, among others” (p. 47). The same principle of challenging false divisions that undermine solidarity is evident in the conscious choice by Mosireen – one of the activist collectives discussed in several contributions – of its polysemous name, one potential interpretation of which is that it is a misspelling of Masriyeen, meaning ‘Egyptians’. The pun, like Helen’s choice of her interviewees and her refusal to put labels on them, is intended to challenge attempts to set different types of ‘Egyptians’ off from each other and from non-Egyptians and imply that some – especially those who speak a foreign language and presume to challenge authority – are not genuine members of the polity (Baker, forthcoming). This volume similarly aspires to challenge such false divisions, not only between activists and academics, but also between Egyptians and non-Egyptians. Alongside prominent Egyptian activists like Khalid Abdalla, Hoda Elsadda and Bahia Shehab, it also features contributions by non-Egyptians – whether working in Egypt or elsewhere – who share the same dream of creating a better world for all, and, importantly, the same set of values that have informed contemporary movements of protest since at least the Zapatista uprising in January 1994. It does so in the belief that the struggle against neo-liberal policies and heightened levels of repression is the same everywhere, from Tahrir and Gaza to Oklahoma and Ferguson, and that its success rests on the ability to tell stories “in a way that allows them to be heard” (p. 40), both globally and locally, as Khalid Abdalla argues in his contribution – not only in order to counter hegemonic narratives promoted by powerful institutions but also to allow activists to build networks of solidarity across linguistic and national boundaries.

Translation and solidarity in contemporary activism

The ability of contemporary movements to effect change and stage a robust challenge to existing power structures, Melucci explains, “hinges on the symbolic capacity to reverse meaning to demonstrate the arbitrariness of … power and its domination” (1996:358). Soraya Morayef (pp. 197–200) demonstrates how such a symbolic reversal of meaning is actualized in the work of Alaa Awad, an Egyptian street artist who painted graffiti on the walls around Tahrir Square between 2011 and 2013 using pharaonic styles and themes. Pharaonic art is traditionally understood as “supporting the status quo and a form of propaganda intended to glorify the ruling pharaoh”, and yet Awad was able to turn it into “a street performance that subverts the established art form and empowers anti-regime protests in modern-day Egypt”. This ‘rewriting’ or ‘retranslation’ of established, dominant codes, Morayef argues, “took something away from the state – something that had upheld the sanctity of the state – and gave it back to the people”. Recent responses to heightened levels of repression and the increased risks of physical protest on the street across the world offer further examples of this type of symbolic challenge to power. The ‘nano demonstrations’ that swept through many cities in Russia in 2011–2012 involved staging dramatic flashmob protests using toys instead of human beings, and were so successful that “The Forbes Magazine included nanodemonstrations in Barnaul on its list of ‘The 12 loudest art protest actions in Russia’” (Nim, in press). The activists who thought of this innovative form of protest exposed the fragility of power when they forced the police to seek formal advice from the prosecutor’s office to determine whether protests involving non-human participants constituted public events and therefore required prior authorization from the authorities, and when the organizers of the third nano demonstration humoured them by filing an application for a demonstration “to be attended by ‘toys from Kinder Surprise (one hundred pieces), Lego figurines (one hundred pieces), toy soldiers (twenty pieces), soft toys (fifteen pieces), miniature cars (ten pieces)’” (Nim, in press). Spanish activists responded to the draconian measures taken by their government to outlaw protest in July 2014 in similarly creative ways. The first hologram protest was organized in Madrid by No Somos Delito, a platform of over 100 groups, on 10 April 2015 (Flesher Fominaya and Teti 2015).⁶ It involved “a screening of a previously filmed holographic protest” which used holograms, written messages and ‘shout outs’ collected online through the campaign webpage.⁷ The film was screened in front of the Spanish parliament, in the presence of spokespeople from No Somos Delito and the media. Neither type of action (nano demonstrations or hologram protests) is intended to replace the presence of real protestors on the street, nor to suggest that activists are willing to accept restrictions on access to public space. What this type of symbolic challenge manages to do, with minimal risks, is raise awareness among the wider public, challenge and expose the arbitrariness and lack of imagination of those in power, and provide a further platform for connecting individual activists and groups and hence expanding the network of protest.

Beyond creative, dramatic responses such as nano demonstrations and hologram protests, Melucci’s analysis suggests that activists have to transform a variety of codes in order to “modify the symbolic relationship with the world”, that they must – and do – engage in the kind of “destructuring of meaning which opens up the way for other modalities of experience beyond instrumental rationality”, and that one of their biggest challenges is to “subvert shared criteria of codification, the obligatory set of signs with which the social order seeks to impose a reality which is solely its own” (1996:358). This is a project that is deeply embedded in the politics of language and translation, especially if one accepts Melucci’s more specific claim that “it is enough to structure reality using different words for the power monopoly over reality to crumble” (1996:358). Many of the contributors to this volume explicitly subscribe to one or another version of this view, as evident in Sherief Gaber’s discussion of the challenge of translating the nomenclature around urban social justice and urban governance in Egypt, and his assertion that “[u]ncovering and developing new terms for the Egyptian city – or any city – is … a process of uncovering the mechanisms and tools that can create leverage to change the city” (p. 105).⁸ The quest...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Permissions
• 1 Beyond the spectacle: translation and solidarity in contemporary protest movements
• PART I Narrating revolution: historicizing revolutions
• PART II Translation as political intervention
• PART III Challenging patriarchy
• PART IV Translation and the visual economy of protest
• PART V Solidarity, translation and the politics of the margin
• PART VI Epilogue
• Index