Translating the revolution

international | miscellaneous | other libertarian press Thursday June 11, 2009 02:25 by Anonymous

We must put more effort into translating revolutionary literature, but also street news, into more languages.

A translator acts as a bridge across cultures by importing or exporting not only books but also concepts and fresh ideas across distant countries. Most importantly, however, the translator is capable of transferring new innovations across linguistic and political boundaries; innovations that might be scientotechnological, artistical, philosophical, or political - the latter category being of special interest to revolutionaries.

The proletarian struggle, especially its anarchocommunist and autonomist currents, is internationalist because the proletariat confronts the same cruel exploitation everywhere. Thus, revolutionaries need to escape the language boundaries in order to reach the minds of comrades in different places. Translation of new revolutionary innovations becomes even more important in a world where the bourgoisie is being globalized, which results in easy propagation of new security measures across the states.

It is necessary to put more effort in translating in as many languages as possible revolutionary, anarchist, and autonomist literature, but also news from the street and briefings on imprisoned comrades. Translations into languages spoken by immigrant communities is also very important. While some languages might seem more popular than others, all are important.

Some texts are too large to be translated by a single working comrade. Therefore, it would be a good idea to set up anonymous wikis on the internet and put the original text there, allowing any visitor to translate from a single word to whole chapters. This way, everyone will be able to contribute something, no matter their free time. A well-built wiki software package can be found at http://www.mediawiki.org/

Teaching foreign languages can also be organized in squats and other social centres used by our movement. Some squats around the world already organize free lessons for various languages, and this trend should continue.