Language, Translation and Knowledge Production: A Framework for Intellectual Sovereignty and Epistemic Justice (Published)
Despite language and translation being fundamental to knowledge production, they have traditionally been understood primarily as instruments of communication, education, and knowledge transfer. This conceptual paper argues that persistent epistemic inequalities within contemporary global knowledge systems require a broader understanding of how knowledge is produced, legitimised, circulated, and transformed. Drawing on decolonial theory, translation studies, language policy, and epistemic justice scholarship, the study examines how colonial and postcolonial linguistic hierarchies continue to shape research, higher education, and knowledge production across the Global South. It contends that uncritical dependence on dominant international languages and externally generated epistemologies reinforces intellectual dependency while it marginalises locally grounded knowledge systems. The article proposes a Language-Translation-Knowledge Production Framework that reconceptualises language and translation as interconnected infrastructures of knowledge production rather than being just instruments of communication or linguistic transfer. Within this framework, language functions as a repository of cultural memory, cognitive diversity, and intellectual agency, while translation is conceptualised as a process of epistemic negotiation through which knowledge is interpreted, localised, and co-constructed across linguistic and cultural boundaries. The framework demonstrates that sustainable development depends not on choosing between local identity and global engagement but on fostering equitable conditions for reciprocal knowledge exchange among diverse epistemic communities. The paper concludes that transforming the structures through which knowledge is recognised, produced, and mobilised is essential for advancing multilingual participation, intellectual sovereignty, and epistemic justice. The framework offers a theoretical foundation for more inclusive, locally grounded, and globally connected knowledge systems.
Keywords: Language policy, decolonial theory, epistemic justice, intellectual sovereignty, knowledge production, linguistic diversity, translation studies