من لغة إلى لغة: ضيافة الترجمة

The book From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation addresses the idea of ​​translation as a bridge between cultures and languages, and not simply transferring words from one language to another. The author presents a humanistic vision that considers translation a means of dialogue, exchange and rapprochement between people, even in cases where there are large gaps between languages ​​or unequal power relations, such as colonial contexts. The book draws on the author's multicultural background, drawing on his African, French, and American experience to think about the meaning and place of translation. He emphasizes that translation may sometimes reveal inequality between dominant and less influential languages, but at the same time it can become an ethical and cultural act that provides “hospitality” to an idea born in another language. The available excerpt from the book explains that the author stems from a personal experience he lived with his family after moving from Senegal to Chicago, where the family faced challenges related to maintaining multilingualism and pride in the mother tongue. From this experience, he develops his basic idea: that all human languages ​​are equal in value, and that translation is the best thing that reveals this equality between languages. He also describes translation as a kind of humanity because it creates mutual communication between people and gives each language the opportunity to receive what was thought in another language. The author also argues that translation is not always an easy or innocent process, because postcolonial studies indicate that it may sometimes be associated with relations of domination and symbolic violence. But the book defends a more positive vision, that the translator can be a true cultural mediator, and that translation at its best opens the door to understanding and shows that people, despite their different languages, share a common humanity.