Article published in:
Translation Spaces
Vol. 6:2 (2017) ► pp. 230–250
Sociocultural spaces

Intercultural translation and indigenous articulation in higher education

| University of California Berkeley, U.S.

Intercultural translation is a salient feature of communicative interactions in multilingual institutional spaces. This article draws on a concept of intercultural translation that functions as a linguistically radical strategy through which other ways of knowing and being are introduced, with particular emphasis on institutions, multilingualism, and less-translated languages. It describes the modes in which indigenous actors used intercultural translation to modify Mexico’s institutional tutoring program in higher education. It focuses on the selective appropriation of words and meanings, the standardization of concepts, and the configuring of an intercultural frame of reference, whereby members of an intercultural Mexican university introduced the Yucatec Maya word iknal as a hybrid educational system. In sum, the article posits intercultural translation as a critical communicative practice ubiquitous to the dynamics of language in socio-cultural spaces.

Keywords: intercultural translation, higher education, indigenous articulation, translation and multilingualism, less-translated languages, iknal
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Intercultural translation
  • 2.Intercultural education in Mexico
  • 3. Iknal/Tutoría as a product of intercultural translation
    • 3.1From common usage to intellectualization
      • 3.1.1 Tutoría and acompañamiento
      • 3.1.2Iknal
    • 3.2From equivocation to commensuration
    • 3.3 Iknal as a corporeal field to facilitate learning
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 04 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.6.2.03bor
References
Ahearn, Laura M.
2012 Living Languages: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Álvarez Mendiola, Germán
(ed) 2015 La ANUIES y la construcción de políticas de educación superior [The ANUIES and the Construction of Higher Education Policies]. Mexico: ANUIES.Google Scholar
ANUIES
2001 Programas Institucionales de Tutoría. Una propuesta de la ANUIES para su organización y funcionamiento en las instituciones de educación superior [Institutional Tutoring Programs. A Proposal from ANUIES for their Organization and Functions in Higher Education Institutions]. Mexico: ANUIES.Google Scholar
Apter, Emily
2011 The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal
1986 “The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Anthropology.” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by James Clifford & George E. Marcus, 141–164. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Barrera Vasquez, Alfredo
1980 Diccionario Maya Cordemex: maya español, español maya [Maya Cordemex Dictionary: Maya Spanish, Spanish Maya]. Mérida: Cordemex.Google Scholar
Borge Janetti, Gabriela
Intercultural Translation in Higher Education: The Case of Iknal at the Maya Intercultural University of Quintana Roo.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the American Anthropological Association, Minneapolis, MN, November 16–20, 2016.
Bricker, Victoria
1998 A dictionary of the Maya language as spoken in Yucatán. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Briceño Chel, Fidencio
2015 “Prologuemos.” [Prologue]. in Cambios y permanencies en las lenguas mayenses, edited by H. Chi Canul, M. Núñez Núñez and S. M. Berlín Villafana, 17–27. Mexico: CONACULTA.Google Scholar
Castillo Cocom, J. A., Timoteo Rodríguez, and McCale Ashenbrener
2017 “Ethnoexodus Escaping Mayaland” in “The Only True People” Linking Maya Identities Past and Present, edited by B. J. Beyyette and L. J. LeCount. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castillo Cocom, J., and Ríos Luviano, S.
2012 “Hot and Cold Politics of Indigenous Identity: Legal Indians, cannibals, words, more words, more food.” Anthropological Quarterly 85 (1): 229–256. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
CGEIB
2009 Universidad Intercultural Modelo Educativo [Intercultural Univeristy Education Model]. Mexico: SEP/CGEIB.Google Scholar
Farriss, Nancy
1984 Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gambier, Yves
2016 “Rapid and Radical Changes in Translation and Translation Studies.” International Journal of Communication 101: 887–906.Google Scholar
Hamel, Rainer E.
2008 Bilingual Education and Indigenous Communities in Mexico, in Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 51: Bilingual Education, edited by J. Cummins and N. H. Hornberger, 311–322. Philadelphia: Springer.Google Scholar
Hanks, William F.
1990 Referential Practice. Language and Lived Space among the Maya. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
1993 “Metalanguage and Pragmatics of Deixis.” in Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, edited by J. Lucy, 27–158. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1996 Language & Communicative Practices. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
2010 Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “Language in Christian Conversion.” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion, edited by J. Boddy & M. Lambeck, 387–406. Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
2014 “The Space of Translation.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 (2):17–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanks, William F., and Severi, Carlo
2014 “Translating Worlds. The Epistemological Space of Translation.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 (2): 1–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Havránek, Bohuslav
1964 “The Functional Differentiation of the Standard Language.” in A Prague School reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style, edited by P. L. Garvin, 3–16. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Hernández, Rosalva A. and María T. Sierra
2004 El Estado y los indígenas en tiempos del PAN: neoindigenismo, legalidad e identidad [The Estate and indigenous peoples in the times of PAN: neo-indigenismo, legality, and identity]. Mexico: CIESAS.Google Scholar
Hidalgo, Margarita
(ed) 2006 Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, Roman
(1959) 2004 “On linguistic aspects of translation.” In The translation studies reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti. 113–118. Second edition. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas
2000 The Road Since Structure, edited by J. Conant and J. Haugeland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meylaerts, Reine
2010 “Multilingualism and translation.” in Handbook of Translation Studies, Volume 11, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, 227–230. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mignolo, Walter D. and Schiwy, Freya
2003 “Transculturation and the Colonial Difference: Double Translation.” in Translation and Ethnography. The Anthropological Challenge of Intercultural Understanding, edited by Tullio Maranhao and Bernhard Streck, 3–29. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Olen, Amy
2015 “Decolonial Translation in Daniel Caño’s Stxaj no’anima / Oración Salvaje.” The Journal of Specialized Translation 241: 214–229.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary L.
1991 “The Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession, 33–40.Google Scholar
Pym, Anthony
2010 Translation and Text Transfer: An Essay on the Principles of Intercultural Communication. Accessed March 27th, 2017 http://​usuaris​.tinet​.cat​/apym​/publications​/TTT​_2010​.pdf
Quine, Willard Van Orman
1960 Word and object. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ramos Diaz, Martín
1997 La diaspora de los letrados. Poetas, clérigos y educadores en la frontera caribe de México [The Diaspora of the Literate. Poets, Clerics, and Educators in Mexico’s Caribbean Frontier]. Mexico: UQROO-CONACYT.Google Scholar
Rappaport, Johanna
2005 Intercultural Utopias. Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosado May, Francisco J.
2012 “Una perspectiva intercultural al concepto de tutoría académica. El caso de la Universidad Intercultural Maya de Quintana Roo.” [An Intercultural Perspective to the Concept of Academic Tutoring. The Case of the Maya Intercultural University]. in Aulas Diversas sobre educación intercultural en América, edited by Iván Deance, Veronica Vázquez Valdéz. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala.Google Scholar
Santos, Boaventura de Souza
2014 Epistemologies of the South. Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schmelkes, Silvia
2009 “Intercultural universities in Mexico: progress and difficulties.” Intercultural Education, 20 (1): 5–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty and Elizabeth Grosz
1990 “Criticism, Feminism, and the Institution.” in The Post-Colonial Critic Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, edited by S. Harasym, 1–16. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Starthern, Marilyn
1992 Reproducing the Future: Anthropology, Kinship, and the New Reproductive Technologies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
UIMQROO
2010 Modelo Educativo Intercultural [Intercultural Education Model]. Accessed March 31, 2016. http://​www​.uimqroo​.edu​.mx​/Documentos​/NuestraUniversidad​/Modelo​-educativo​-texto​.pdf
Vaira, Massimiliano
2004 “Globalization and Higher Education Organizational Change: A Framework for Analysis.” Higher Education 48 (4): 483–510. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Villa Rojas, Alfonso
1945 The Maya of East Central of Quintana Roo. Serie de Antropología Social, 56. Mexico: INI.Google Scholar
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo
2004 “Perspectival Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Equivocation.” Tipiti 2(1): 3–22.Google Scholar
Walsh, Catherine
2009 Interculturalidad, Estado, Sociedad. Luchas (De)coloniales de nuestra época [Interculturalism, State, Society. Decolonial Fights of our Times]. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala.Google Scholar
Worley, Paul M.
2017 “Máseual excluido/indio permitido: Neoliberal Translation in Waldemar Noh Tzec.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 12(3): 290–314., DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Intercultural translation and indigenous articulation in higher education