Institutional translation: the art of government by translation

The article aims to identify the sources of disunity between different usages of ‘institutional translation’ and to propose a clarifying foundation for the concept. It argues that the core function of institutions as regulatory organizational systems is to govern, and in a multilingual environment they can and often do employ translation in performing their governing function. In that case, they govern by translation. To better understand the nature of government by translation, the concepts of governance, governing and governmentality are discussed; Meylaerts' model of translational options in multilingual governance is applied to governing, and a tentative model of the translation regimes (maintenance, regulation, implementation and identity work) is designed.