Ethnographic Approaches in Translation Studies and Migration Studies

This chapter critically surveys studies on translation and migration from an anthropologically informed ethnographic perspective. The review addresses three sets of literature covering various disciplinary intersections. First, the authors present the anthropological literature on migration studies that adopts an ethnographic perspective, and demonstrate that, for a long time, translation was absent in most discussions. Second, the authors survey the more recent migration studies publications that pay attention to language from an ethnographic perspective, and highlight the core concerns of these scholars studying migration in the contemporary context. Third, the review focuses on translation studies research on migration from an ethnographic approach, and elucidates common concerns in anthropology and translation studies. After this extensive literature review, the authors shed light on the main features, advantages and challenges of ethnography in the context of migration and translation, drawing on their ongoing action research projects in Hong Kong and Barcelona. Their reflections also point towards future directions for ethnographic research.