Introduction. Translating and Interpreting Linguistic and Cultural Differences in a Migrant Era

In Metamorphoses (2002), Rosi Braidotti argues that those who do not like complexities cannot possibly feel at home in the third millennium; and in Transpositions (2006) she expands this idea with the notion of “transposition”, a term which indicates (Braidotti 2006: 7): An intertextual, cross-boundary or transversal transfer, in the sense of a leap from one code, field or axis into another, not merely in thequantitative mode of plural multiplications, but rather in the qualitative sense of complex multiplicities. It is not just a matter of weaving together different strands, variations on a theme […], but rather of playing the positivity of difference as a specific theme of its own. Transpositions are in-between spaces “of zigzagging and of crossing: nonlinear, but not chaotic; nomadic, yet accountable and committed; creative but also cognitively valid; discursive and also materially embedded – it is coherent without falling into instrumental rationality” (Braidotti 2006: 7). ‘Trans-’ implies translation, movement, a nonunitary, complex, paradoxical and contradictory vision of life. This is, one could say, the main aim of this monographic issue