Paper short abstract:

The paper proposes to apply translation strategies to the complex debate about what is lusophony, in order to negotiate different approaches to the concept and open new horizons of meaning that potentially offer larger unanimity and deeper understanding of its tacit undertones.

Paper long abstract:

The current debate in the Portuguese speaking world about the concept of lusophony is extraordinarily complex as the different positions are not always expressed clearly. The sensitiveness of this topic, result of historically tangled postcolonial implications, leads to a superficially polite and politically correct exchange of meanings, which, however, on a second glance reveals some lack of dialogical coherency, some gaps in the knowledge about the Other and some meaningful omissions. These deficiencies in communication can be remedied by translation in the same way as the deficiencies of inter-lingual communication can be met by translation proper. Choosing the concept of translation in this case implies the admission of other assumptions inherent in the translation concept, as there is for example the premise of the dependence of context of any statement. Poststructuralist and postcolonial translation strategies, as e.g. proposed by Bhabha, Bassnett/Trivedi and Niranjana, put a stronger focus on the productivity of translation in the sense that meaning does unfold through translation, opening up new spaces for understanding. The paper aims to show the usefulness of the concept of translation for the perception of lusophony, as well as for the mutual perception of positions inside the lusophony debate. Furthermore, the paper aims to find the limits of the applicability of the translation concept here.