Putting meaning back into development; or (semio)translating development

Abstract

Studying the relationship between translation and development is a fledgling enterprise. Apart from my own work, a number of postgraduate studies and projects have been attempted in this regard. As the whole of Africa is usually regarded as a “developmental context” or “un(der)developed” (see criticism against this view in Marais & Delgado Luchner, 2018), the sociological turn in translation studies dictates that a debate about the nature and implications of ‘development’ should be high on the agenda of translation studies in Africa. In socio-economic terms, translation in Africa is constrained by a particular developmental context while simultaneously contributing to the development of that context.