A Politics of Feminist Translation: Using Translation to Understand Gendered Meaning-Making in Research

In this article, I reflect on the politics of working across language differences in research. Drawing on examples from my own research, I suggest that the lack of attention to translation within the social sciences needs to be problematized if we are to take seriously the idea that our social world is mediated by and constituted in language. Failure to do so not only ignores important aspects of gender, power, and inequality in the research relationship but also closes down an avenue for understanding the different ways in which social categories are coconstructed and sustained in different contexts. I draw on concepts from translation and interpreting studies to suggest how the social sciences might generate reflection, debate, and critique of working across languages in research.