The role that translation has had in the academic field remains contradictory and underrepresented. While the use of translated texts is the preferred option in research activities, translations are hardly ever highlighted or acknowledged as functional for conveying content (Venuti 1998). If it is understandable that not all languages can be equally accessible, and that translations are consequently inevitable, it is also a procedural mistake not to acknowledge their existence or their implications. Indeed, translation, as a form of interpretation, implies that a translated text becomes a secondary source, which adds a layer of potential misinterpretation.
This paper, based on the presenter's PhD work on language hierarchies, focuses on the role of translation in relation to the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, in two ways. The first point is theoretical, as Gramsci (2014 [1975]) argues that, despite the impossibility of perfection, translation is essential both as a linguistic act involving individual researchers, and as a collective social process. If human activities become a form of language because there is the intention of communicating a content and making it understandable, translation should be regarded as a socio-collective choice that finds its dimension in the connection between different world views, and its tools in language as a social microcosm. In this perspective, a field such as academic research becomes crucial, because it represents a network of multilingual people cooperating for specific cultural and social interests and who need translation to share unique knowledge.
The second component is empirical, as Gramsci is often studied only through the Selection from the Prison Notebooks (1971), a partial collection of selected translated passages from the 33 original Prison Notebooks, written in Italian and not yet fully available in English. Approaching Gramsci's theories by acknowledging that the source of those theories resides somewhere else, transcending the mere English translation, forces the researcher to take into consideration what lies behind and beyond a quote, and to critically problematise the role of translation. By addressing the pivotal role that translation has in sharing knowledge, academic research can become the ideal context where translation is critically represented and socially acknowledged.
