Abstract (eng)
The point of departure for this qualitative, descriptive study is the interest for the sociopoliti-cal contexts in which translation takes place, borne from the sociological turn in translation studies. This thesis builds on past examinations of translation as an instrument for social jus-tice struggles, examinations that, among others, have investigated the relationship between translation and activism. Here, this perspective is extended into a sociology of knowledge one, and translation examined as an instrument for epistemic justice struggles. As part of a case study, the work of three activist collectives in which translation is one of the main activities was examined: Interessensgemeinschaft für 24h-Betreuer_innen (IG24, a self-organized interest group for caregivers working in Austria), Guerrilla Translation and Global Voices. Using data material in the form of the respective websites, a selection of translations published by the collectives, and interviews with members, a number of factors shaping the collectives’ work was identified. All three collectives consciously position themselves in the tangle of power and marginalization, and intentionally practice translation to influence the knowledge dynamics it entails. In all three cases, the three elements of the translation-activism-knowledge intersection are thus inextricably connected, even if they manifest in dif-ferent ways. Differences between the collectives were found, for instance, in the forms of knowledge they share, their goals, and parameters such as whether they are more collective-driven or target group-driven, whether their content is created by or targeted at marginalized groups, or the mode and frequency with which their translations are published. Given how strongly each collective’s activities are situated in the respective context, the re-sults of this study do not lend themselves to generalizations as samples or examples would. What this study does show, however, is a peek at the different ways we can understand and examine activist translation as epistemic work.