Translation Policies and Community Translation: The U. S., a Case Study

Abstract

While community interpreting has attracted considerable attention in the last two decades, its counterpart, community translation, represents an under-researched area in Translation Studies (International Conference on Community Translation 2014, Call for papers). With a view to narrowing this gap, the article starts by analyzing the concept of “community translation”, and then moves to that of translation policy. After situating translation policy within the concept of language planning and its categories (corpus, status and acquisition planning), the author then addresses a specific case study, that of translation policies and community translation in the U.S. at the federal and state levels, the latter of which focuses on California. While surveying and comparing translation policies at these two levels, the author also examines to what extent these policies, and the presence or absence of penalties for their noncompliance, lead to different degrees of regulation of community translation practices.