Pandemia in translation: a comparative understanding of European social values

Abstract

This volume, resulting from the training and research activities of the “Pandemic in translation” project – FORTHEM’s Experiencing Europe Lab, University of Palermo –, deals with central issues related to COVID-19 pandemic, and aims at contributing to a comparative understanding of mainly, but not exclusively European values challenged during this contingency. This interdisciplinary projects mobilizes a multicultural and multilingual debate about norms and beliefs, cultural identities and societal values, public policies and emotional communities. Using methodologies drawn from Comparative and International Law to Comparative Literature, from discourse analysis to Translation Studies, this book clarifies the socially constructed nature of the pandemic reality and calls for a redefinition of some long-assumed categories. Although translation can function culturally, epistemologically and cognitively as a metaphor, in fact translation seems more like “a process endogenous to social life”: in this sense – and from an anthropological point of view – it allows for the articulation of ethical, legal, normative and ideological representations. In some cases, translation can highlight the hermeneutic impasse between public policy actions and the discursive politics that emerge from them. The social suffering caused by the pandemic crisis calls into question both scientific mediation as a whole and scientists’ position in particular: how can scientific accuracy be reconciled with the need to make certain warnings known? Who is qualified to speak about the pandemic and its societal implications? Which authority figures are expressing their thoughts on the matter, and how trustworthy are they? Indeed, the methodological combination of 1 the approaches of Translation Studies and Multilingual crisis communication points to translation as a key theoretical concept not only in social and human sciences, but also in the anthropological and epistemological construction of global public health discourses.