Translation and Community Accountability

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Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Without translation, there is no solidarity. In this conjunctural moment, I address rising tendencies to collaborate across privileged academic spaces across South America and the US with the persistent failure to engage in accountable research with Indigenous communities, particularly those who do not speak English. Drawing on research and advocacy experiences across Guatemala, Mexico and the US, this paper grapples with the ways that geographers do – and do not – translate and interpret across languages. By grappling with gaps and erasures of translation, I seek to engage with the question of representation as a necessary precursor to community accountability. In other words, who is the constitutive community to whom Latinx geographies is accountable to?
I seek to engage some of these specific questions: How might human geographers engage the tension between authenticity claims of testimonio with authorship claims by those who published these as peer-reviewed works? How do human geographers based in Turtle Island (US and Canada) grapple with the mismatch between the relatively high representation of South America in research and researchers and the low representation in Mexico and Central America when compared with undergraduate students? In particular, first generation geographers are often translating their understandings of place-based knowledge within a framework of Latin American expectations that do not align with their experiences. Finally, how can the work of translation and interpretation facilitate community accountability processes amongst migrant and/or Indigenous communities to forge their own futures?