Translating migrancy through the senses: migrant objects as tangible translation

Translating is today a complex, comprehensive process that mirrors social, cultural, and political shifts in its context. Building on this broad understanding of translation and on the “outward turn” in translation studies, which opens translation to other disciplines, this article introduces a type of translation rooted in the anthropology of the senses which will give way to a “tangible” translation. From these theoretical foundations, the article explains how objects that migrants carry from their places of origin to new countries convey emotions and traumas of these difficult experiences, not through words but through the senses. The focus is on the objects that migrants bring with them, where touch, smell, and texture express feelings and hardships more powerfully than words.