Translation as discrimination: Sociolinguistics and inequality in multilingual institutional contexts

Abstract

Abstract Sociolinguistic approaches to social justice tend to treat the use of interpreters or translators as a remedy to linguistic inequality in multilingual institutional settings. This article challenges this assumption by showing how translation can instead contribute to inequality and discrimination. Drawing on studies of face-to-face interpreting in judicial contexts and of written translation in linguistic landscapes, it explores inequalities found in habitual practices of professional interpreters and in the use of machine translation. It shows how language ideologies about multilingualism motivate translation practices that systematically restrict the participation of speakers of subordinated languages, or that stereotype them as deviant when addressed solely by prohibitions and warnings, a practice I call ‘punitive multilingualism’. The article thus argues that sociolinguistic studies of multilingualism should pay closer attention to translation practices within a wider context of language contact and in relation to phenomena such as translanguaging, mock languages, or language shift. (Translation, interpreting, justice, linguistic landscape, discrimination)*