Lost in Translation? Try Second Language Learning: Understanding Movements of Ideas and Practices across Time and Space

Abstract This article considers interaction, negotiation and exchange across the borders of systems of knowledge, be they disciplines, moral frameworks, cultures or ideologies, by focusing on “translation” and “second language learning” as epistemic tools. It does this by first elaborating the incommensurability thesis which is centred on the notion of untranslatability. The article then proposes an alternative “epistemology of interaction”, namely the “second language learning thesis” as more suitable for describing the movement of ideas and practices across space and time. It argues that whilst translation is embedded in difficulties of one‐to‐one mappability, and at times ignorant of its role in facilitating power relations, “the second language learning thesis” aims to (1) capture the socially constituted nature of borders, interactions, transgressions, exchanges (and raids); (2) draw attention to the different types and layers of second language learning (from “pidgins” to bilingualisms) and (3) lay bare, where possible, the asymmetric nature of interactions, including epistemological and linguistic hegemony. In so doing, it turns attention to “strategies of exclusion” and “strategies of inclusion” in the policing of borders between cultures and disciplines, whether they are separated temporally or spatially.