Translating the European House

Book excerpt: This anthology of papers, written by Christina Schäffner, brings together a selection of articles on the theme of translation and politics. Written from the perspective of translation studies and critical discourse analysis, it provides an overview of the textual and ideological factors that determine processes of translation within the arena of international politics. The selected articles afford a fascinating insight into the dynamics of intercultural exchange against the backdrop of European politics from the fall of the Berlin Wall to debates on EU enlargement. By taking a context-sensitive approach to linguistic description, this book will be of interest to scholars in various adjacent fields of research, such as (applied) linguistics, (intercultural) communication studies, media studies, political science and the sociology of globalisation, as well as to relevant higher education programmes around the world. The discipline of translation studies has made its mark by conceptualising translation as a form of cross-cultural communication that transcends asymmetrical relations of power, foregrounding issues such as (colonial) domination, (cultural) hegemony, and ideology. To date, however, there has been no compelling evidence of the linguistic implications of transnational political communication, and little research has been done to help us to understand how political discourse at the international level presupposes translation. Featuring a wealth of examples from political text and talk, each article here links contextual features to the linguistic choices of political actors. By moving beyond national and cultural boundaries, these analyses help the reader to get to grips with the discursive implications of power politics, and to open up a new debate for a novel area of studies that might be termed cross-cultural political discourse analysis.