Translators Weigh In on the Amanda Gorman Controversy

March 17, 2021  |  in News  |  by Allison Braden

The incident sparked industrywide conversation about who gets to translate.

On March 1, The Guardian reported that Amanda Gorman’s Dutch translator, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, had quit. Amanda Gorman, the poet who catapulted onto the world stage after an astounding performance at U.S. President Joe Biden’s January inauguration, had approved Rijneveld, an acclaimed Dutch writer, themselves, but the announcement that Rijneveld would translate Gorman’s book The Hill We Climb provoked backlash. Journalist and spoken-word artist Zaire Krieger tweeted, “How salty on a level from one to the Dead Sea am I going to sound when I say that tons of female spoken word artists of color (Babs Gons, Lisette Maneza etc.) could have done this better?” Her post led to a response from Meulenhoff, the book’s Dutch publisher. The statement pointed out that both Gorman and Rijneveld were young, celebrated writers and announced that they would employ sensitivity readers for the translation. For many, this last detail implied that Rijneveld, who has never translated a book, was unqualified for the job. In an opinion piece for the Netherlands’ national newspaper, de Volkskrant, activist Janice Deul called the choice “incomprehensible.” She wondered why Meulenhoff, the publisher, hadn’t chosen a translator who was more like Gorman: a “spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black.” She characterized the choice of a white, nonbinary translator as a missed opportunity. In a February 26 Twitter post, Rijneveld announced their stepping down. Gorman’s Catalan translator, Victor Obiols, was later fired because the publisher, Univers, wanted, according to Obiols, a translator with a “different profile.” The move garnered headlines worldwide and provided ammunition for the “cancel culture” crowd. For translators, the episode speaks to a foundational question: Who gets to translate whom? Reckoning with cultural authenticity and identity is inherent to the art of literary translation. In an essay for The Conversation, Mridula Nath Chakraborty outlines a fundamental issue: Translation depends on difference.

It is this essential element of unknowingness that animates the translator’s curiosity and challenges her intellectual mettle and ethical responsibility. Even when translators hail from—or belong to—the same culture as the original author, the art relies on the oppositional traction of difference.

However, she goes on, translation has a fraught relationship with power and has long been a handmaiden to imperialism and domination. She wrestles with translation’s legacy and speaks to the vital role a vast diversity of translators has in preserving vanishing languages, disseminating world literature, and bridging cultural divides.

If humans only translate what is known within their own four walls, or what is familiar to them within the boundaries of their own imaginations, something essential is lost both to translation—and to the profligate tongues that proliferate our humanity.

Most translators would no doubt agree. The problem, as many see it, is that the field lacks that diversity. Haidee Kotze, a professor of translation studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, argues in a Medium post that Amanda Gorman’s identity was part of her message and that her translators should be part of the message, too: “It’s about the opportunity, the space for visibility created by the act of translation, and who gets to occupy that space.”

The question raised by Deul is not principally about who ‘may’ (who has permission) or even ‘can’ (is able to) write or translate particular experiences. The question is who is, institutionally, given the space to articulate this experience, to participate, to be visible. Who gets to have a seat at the table? A place on the podium? A prize? An interview or column in the newspaper? The exclusions, historically and contemporary, along race and gender lines, among others, are clear. The point is how institutions, like publishers, can work towards more inclusivity.

The can/may distinction that Kotze points out elegantly delineates much of the online chatter: In one camp, translators argue that the issue is representation in the field, as Kotze describes, not whether a white translator is incapable of translating an author of a different background. Another contingent believes the incident signals a threatening policing of who is eligible to translate, a step closer to a world where the validity of one’s experience and ideas is contingent on identity. Lots of translators weighed in on Twitter:

 

So, as the furor dies down, what happens next? How will the discourse around this incident help rewrite the rules of the game? How can the industry expand opportunity and welcome a broader range of voices?

The world is watching, and the translator is no longer invisible.

A reading list

Asymptote has long grappled with questions of identity and the translator’s role. For our tenth anniversary, we looked not back but forward, envisioning a Brave New World Literature. In the issue, Douglas Robinson playfully grapples with the translator’s (in)visibility, while Jeremy Tiang wonders, “Who are translators in the ‘world’ of ‘world literature’?” Eliot Weinberger maps the new trade routes of the word, and from a publishing perspective, John Freeman describes how Granta captured a global audience.

In the archives, Maggie Zebracka asserts, “My translation doesn’t want to wear white to someone else’s wedding, but it does want to throw its own party, in its own house. It wants a version of linguistic hospitality, the chance to play host.” In fiction, Adam Shafi (tr. Nathalie S. Koenings) reckons with crossing borders.

On the blog, Claire Jacobson discusses how to teach and learn narrative identity and Jessica Cohen describes how she navigates her bicultural identity through translation.

Allison Braden is an assistant blog editor for Asymptote Journal.