From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation

In this engaging humanist text, a renowned Senegalese philosopher explores the power of translation to bridge cultural divides.

Informed by his own multicultural background--African, French, and American--Souleymane Bachir Diagne interrogates the practice of translation in this thoughtful text. Although translation often produces a relationship of profound inequality between dominant and dominated languages, it can also be a source of dialogue and exchange, including in situations of asymmetry, particularly regarding colonialism, where the interpreter becomes a true cultural mediator.

To praise translation, "the language of languages," is to celebrate its plurality and equality, because to translate is to give hospitality in one language to what has been thought in another. It is to create reciprocity, a shared sense of humanity, and to imagine a positive version of the Tower of Babel.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Other Press (NY)
Published: 09/23/2025
ISBN: 9781635423938
Pages: 128
Weight: 1.25lbs

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2025