Faith in Conversation: Translation, Translanguaging, and the British God Debate

Taking ideas about interfaith communication among stakeholders in the B ritish “ G od D ebate” as an illustrative case, I propose that the translation metaphor, widely adopted across disciplines, might productively be replaced by a different metaphor, “translanguaging” ( G arcía and W ei 2013). I suggest that the model of sociolinguistic relations offered by translanguaging nicely addresses the genealogical inseparability of “religious” language and “secular” language. This working replacement for the translation metaphor invites new kinds of philosophical and anthropological engagements with difference and may be extended to the analysis of other phenomena that demand nonbinary thought, such as transculturalism, transgenderism and transnationalism.