Ethics of activist translation and interpreting

In an attempt to address the ethical issues raised by activist translation and interpreting, this chapter provides a brief historiography of activism from the interdisciplinary perspective of social movements studies and translation studies. It identifies two core issues that have been the motive of frictions but also convergence between the two fields of practice, i.e. agents’ positionality and organizational culture. These have been approached from two different, if not opposed, perspectives: impartiality versus engagement and expertise versus grassroots knowledge. Drawing on authentic cases of activist translation and interpreting, the authors show that the praxis and the field of inquiry at the intersection between political activism and translation configure ethics doxa, at their core, and ethics heterodoxa at its margins. The former stabilises an ethics of impartial, expert service provision which views volunteer activist translation as a mere act of solidarity and selflessness. The latter champions an ethics of agency and intervention in ways that prefigure the social justice advocated for.