Guerrilla Translation's Goals and Values

Guerrilla Translation is a space for economic resistance through the creation of translingual commons and innovative cooperative work.

We are creating shared knowledge resources about topics that matter, such as the commons, new economics, feminism and environmental restoration. Not only do we translate, write and curate around these topics, but we actively put them in practice through our governance model and cultural practices. We believe in the power of meaningful work and care-oriented relationships to pose an inspiring alternative and a challenge to current patriarchal, capitalist dominant models.

Values

Our Values include peer to peer learning, clarity in communications and accessibility, diversity, resilience connected to systemic self-reflection, fairness, adaptability, commoning, equity, intimacy, high quality crafted work, and being prefigurative while aspiring to political transformation through relationships within and beyond the collective.

Goals

Our Goals: We see GT as a space for mentorship and peer to peer learning. This applies to mentorship in creating high quality, handcrafted translations and other communication strategies, and also to fostering collaborative culture. As a project, GT demonstrates that an alternative, post-capitalist economy is possible and can thrive on several levels. A first step is to offer translators (and other media workers) a way to do paid work apart from capitalist structures, and simultaneously create a translingual knowledge commons. GT also has the potential to encourage personal transformation towards commons-oriented futures based on concrete, daily practices (not theoretical frameworks), especially with its focus on the recognition of carework and power. As such, it is an exemplary project for Open Cooperativism, and a transnationally oriented, multi-constituent space to do socially and ecologically valuable work while also creating commons.

List of Goals and Values

The following text is extracted from the Guerrilla Translation Reloaded Full Report

Values

peer to peer learning

clarity and simplicity

diversity

“trustparency” (blending trust and transparency)

resilience connected to systemic self-reflection

finding value beyond monetization

fairness

adaptability

punk elegance

Do It Yourself values

fostering a collaborative culture of work

commoning

simplexity (blending complexity and simplicity)

resistance

equity

being prefigurative (in the sense of incarnating the utopia to be achieved)

being exemplary of the change we want to see

intimacy

high quality crafted work

developing a community identity

working towards producing a political transformation within the relationship between the individuals and the collective they work in.

Goals

While debating the aims and purposes of Guerrilla Translation, the following goals were agreed by the group:

• Considering GT as a place where mentorship in translation can happen among members of the platform and new translators wishing to join.
• GT could be a project that demonstrates that an alternative economy which takes into account other values is practically possible.
• To turn GT into a translingual commons.
• To extract translators and funds from capitalist regimes back into commons.
• To open the GT model up to being replicated in other contexts by translating it to friendly, visual languages (and doing it in a way is not coercive).
• To be sustained by a model that take into account care work.
• GT might be a space for peer to peer learning about how to work together and translate in a different way.
• A “Guerrilla Camp” event, as a place to get together regularly.
• To produce personal transformations that would allow GT to reflect on how to bring other people in.
• To create a framework of personal trust between one another in the digital sphere, that supports everyone in carrying out their personal commitment to the platform.
• Being an exemplary project in the sense of providing the needed information and resources to make the project replicable.
• Sharing and creating commons (“commoning”).

As a whole

During post-presentation conversations, other questions and ideas were raised:

• Guerrilla Translation could be a project to experiment with how to provide good living conditions from a commons.
• Richard Bartlett wondered how is this experience could be translatable into our own daily lives.
• Carmen Lozano highlighted the fact that GT embodies conversations that are not only theoretical but also based on concrete daily practices; but, also wondered about how communal commitment and individual interest will intersect for the platform to function.
• Ann Marie Utratel stressed the importance of having a long term vision for the platform.