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As it appears, we need translation because we are immersed in the historical condition14. I have reflected elsewhere on the difference in terms of linguistic politics of colonialism and of the post-colonial condition, on the differences between French and English, the latter only having become a global language. The political consequences in countries speaking those languages are huge, both in the metropolis and the former colonies. Indian intellectuals, whose local language (English, one among their local languages) coincides with the global language, benefit greatly from this situation and go directly to universities in the USA, unlike the Algerians for whom there is no equivalent situation, since their colonial language is not at the same time a global one and gives no cosmopolitan access to knowledge15. Very convincingly, André Chevrillon argued that English is more at ease with “becoming” (devenir) and the flow of time, while French is so with “being” (être) as well as with immobile but successive chunks of time16. Even today, or today more than ever, the two languages seem to engage in different degrees or intensities of actualisation of the virtual. There are of course continuities and discontinuities between the two at the same time, in the sense in which any language carries within itself other languages, and this also has a parallel in (in)compossible continuities and discontinuities between past and present at all times: it has all boiled down to the present condition of globalization. The erosion of sovereignties and deregulation has coexisted with new “assemblages” (S. Sassen, A. Ong) or rather agencements (G. Deleuze) that, in the interconnectedness of the new cosmo-political, produce new networks and unexpected combinations and connections. This production of new ways of life, of politics, of production, of public spheres, of closed spheres, of informal politics, of new sovereignties (including those built on war), of nonlinear developments and unexpected results, of imaginaries, of new meanings and new symbolizations – is also translation. These translations from the global level can even still trickle down into the national level: it is still possible to translate from the national-state level to the global level17 as well as to the personal level, and vice versa, with some misgivings, some misfirings sometimes, and many diversions and gaps to be filled with other unexpected elements. It is contexts that change and that need translations,
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