3/25 Claire Kapitan

 In Bhanoo’s article about who should translate Amanda Gorman’s work, I liked how she explored the importance of understanding not just a language, but what it's like to live in that language—in an experience adjacent to the one described or explored in the original text: 

“A good translation conveys the “untranslatables,” or what is being conveyed without actually

being explicitly written” (paraphrasing Junot Días). I thought this was interesting because it made me think about all of the holes between words that are filled by understanding and trust in what is there. If I’m reading a scene about a beach and the waves are written about, the sand is written about, I might also picture the sky, what it might sound like, etc., but if something is a bit odd and the image starts to become one I don’t trust in, this entire world and experience crumbles. 

I think that is why identities, sensibilities, and experiences matter so much in translation. In the NYT’s article, the group of translators working on Gorman’s work were stuck on the word “skinny.” The way I understand the word, it doesn’t sound particularly extreme in the context of Gorman’s poem, and I found it interesting that some translators were struggling to find a word that wouldn’t be distracting, or that wouldn’t conjure up an image of “of an overly thin woman.”

This goes to show how much sensitivity is needed when working with a language, beyond just fluency. If translation is a bridge between two distinct cultures, a translator only brings back what they can carry. How equipped they are for the load determines how much is lost along the way. 

I also liked how this article explored the scarcity of Black translators, a problem underlying the controversy with Gorman. 

Power dynamics were further explored in “All the Violence…” by Gitanjali Patel and Nariman Youssef: “Only when we shine the light on the power dynamics inherent in the way we are told to do translation, on what we get criticized or lauded for, will the private, complex, layered subjectivities of diverse translators find the space to flourish.” I thought this piece was so creatively written, giving us glimpses of individual struggle and experience within translation. I also liked how it explored problems around the idea “only translate in your native tongue:” “This relationship privileges language-learning on a foundation of monolingualism, discounting the phenomena of migration and the experiences of migrants; it renders the majority world—where colonial languages prevail—invisible.”