Rethinking Translation in Feminist NGOs: Rights and Empowerment Across Borders

This article examines the modes of circulation of discourses and practices about women's rights and women's empowerment in transnational nongovernmental organizations. Using examples from Kampala, Uganda and Jaipur, India, the authors argue against the usual explanations of “translation” as a mere conduit by which global discourses of rights are vernacularized or localized, either without substantial change or with inaccurate, “traitorous” translations. This view misunderstands the citational nature of translation, which is inevitably a transforming and generative practice that changes what is taken up, making it into something new. The theoretical task of this article is to understand how and why such changes happen. The ethnographic examples illustrate several types of transformation and their implications for transnational feminisms.