Epistemic translation: towards an ecology of knowledges

Responding to a challenge raised by Douglas Robinson in the conclusion of his book Translationality (2017, pp. 200–202), the recently launched EPISTRAN project uses concepts, methods and theories from Translation Studies to investigate the semiotic processes (verbal and nonverbal) involved in the transfer of information between different 'epistemic systems'. Drawing on research from different disciplinary fields, it studies not only the various textual transits occurring when scientific knowledge is repackaged for non-specialist consumption, but also the more complex multimodal operations taking place between the dominant epistemologies of the global North (or West) and the informal knowledges of the global South (including East), and the vertical (diachronic) translation processes involved in the construction of modern knowledge. This paper offers an overview of the project's aims, methods and preliminary results, framed within the emancipatory discourse of an ecology of knowledges.