Intercultural translation and indigenous articulation in higher education
What is it about?
Intercultural translation is a salient feature of communicative interactions in multilingual institutional spaces. This article draws on a concept of intercultural translation that functions as a linguistically radical strategy through which other ways of knowing and being are introduced, with particular emphasis on institutions, multilingualism, and less-translated languages. It describes the modes in which indigenous actors used intercultural translation to modify Mexico’s institutional tutoring program in higher education. It focuses on the selective appropriation of words and meanings, the standardization of concepts, and the configuring of an intercultural frame of reference, whereby members of an intercultural Mexican university introduced the Yucatec Maya word iknal as a hybrid educational system. In sum, the article posits intercultural translation as a critical communicative practice ubiquitous to the dynamics of language in socio-cultural spaces.
Why is it important?
Intercultural translation as a communicative practice ubiquitous to the dynamics of language in socio-cultural spaces can be used as a critical way to question and intervene in practices that replicate dominant trends in institutional domains. This article shows how members of the Maya Intercultural University of Quintana Roo (UIMQROO) made use of intercultural translation to transform Mexico’s institutional tutoring system to one that reflects an indigenous perspective, despite the legal challenges that block indigenous autonomy and self-determination rights. Intercultural translation is understood as the combined processes of a selective appropriation of concepts, language referents, and socio-cultural practices. As such, it comprises an invitation to dwell in the generative processes and directionalities that occur while engaging in translation. Investigating the processes of intercultural translation compels us to recognize certain assumptions of equivalence and to accept that understandings are not the same, thereby widening the realm of possibilities for thinking critically about that which we often assume as universal.