Language and Translation Policies in the Intellectual Cooperation Organization (1922-1946). Promoting The Internationalization of the Intellectual Field

The Intellectual Cooperation Organization (ICO) was an organizational network created under the auspices of the League of Nations (LON) to promote international exchange in the scientific, literary, and artistic domains. Active between 1922 and 1946, the ICO featured a structure in which both governments and intellectuals were represented. Given its international scope, the ICO, like the LON and its technical bodies, explored and tested possible solutions to the challenges of international communication, including the use of lingua francas and the practice of translation and interpretation. As such, they constituted some of the scenarios in which the “battle of languages” played out in the interwar period, marking the end of French linguistic hegemony and the emergence of English as the international lingua franca.

In this dissertation, I reconstruct the language and translation policies enacted by the ICO as part of its efforts to contribute to the internationalization of the intellectual field. Because these policies encompassed different areas of activity, I focus on institutional translation and literary translation. Institutional translation, I argue, was used by the ICO's constituent bodies to manage their internal and external communication strategies, and thus to construct their respective institutional identities. In the literary domain, the ICO operated with a clear understanding of the structural role of translation in the internationalization of the literary field, and for this reason it aimed to improve the conditions of its practice and its social recognition. In both areas, the ICO contributed to the early institutionalization of translation. However, this process was marked by the convergence or clash of multiple interests at the ICO, including political, professional, and institutional interests.

From a theoretical perspective, this dissertation inscribes itself within the discipline of translation studies, more specifically the study of translation policy, translation in institutional settings, and the history of translation. The analytical perspective can be described as a global historical sociology of translation, which means that this dissertation emerges at the confluence of approaches such as sociology of translation and global history of translation. The main theoretical framework is Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, applied from a global and relational perspective. Field theory is complemented by literature on scalar relations and, in particular, on the multiscalar architecture of most social fields. Furthermore, the analytical focus is on the relations between fields rather than on the specific functioning of a single field.

Methodologically, I conduct historical archival research using qualitative and quantitative methods. This includes source criticism and close reading of archival material, as well as analyses using tools from data science and digital humanities, such as the reconstruction of historical networks. Some of the contributions offered in this framework include a quantification of language use in the correspondence contained in the archives of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, an outline of a big data geographical approach to the records of the Paris Institute, and a social network analysis of a collection of translations published by the Paris Institute.