Knowledge Translation Across Boundaries

Sor Juana wrote theological treatises and also popular poetry and drama; she engaged with elite intellectual discourse while creating work accessible to ordinary people. This concept describes the practice of translating knowledge across social, economic, and cultural boundaries. For those experiencing poverty, this practice operates in two directions: gaining access to knowledge typically gatekept by educated elites, and developing capacity to articulate one's own understanding in multiple registers. Knowledge translation breaks down the barriers that make poverty and limited education seem like natural separations between those who know and those who don't. Sor Juana demonstrated that intellectual sophistication could coexist with accessibility, that complexity need not mean obscurity. For poverty-experienced communities, developing the ability to translate between the languages of academic, institutional, and lived knowledge becomes a form of power and advocacy that honors the intelligence of all communities.