London 2019: You're at a drinks reception after a literary translation event and find yourself talking to two colleagues. It's unclear whether they are talking to you. Their body language seems to suggest you're in the conversation, although you haven't been addressed yet. Heritage languages. Your ears prick up. Here we go. They must be about to ask your name, no doubt they are keen to hear about your . . . Natural translators. You blush, it's rare to receive compliments from white colleagues. And what's in a name, anyway? Raw talent. Does raw mean good? Surely they're not suggesting all “heritage” speakers have . . . Need to nurture that. Wait, what? No pride in their heritage. You start edging slowly away from the conversation. Your colleagues barely notice.
Words have the power to distort and misrepresent, to blind us to the unarticulated, to the wilfully or accidentally obscured. Sometimes, our stories are left untold for fear that they would crack, splinter, and break under the pressure of the moulds available for the telling. Or because the words we have at our disposal would leave large swathes of our experiences in the dark. But words also have the power to reimagine and reshape. At the very least, they can illuminate some of the hidden corners of our lived experience. Audre Lorde writes: “The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.” Let the stories come as they are then, cracks and all. Perhaps that’s how the right quality of light gets in.
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The idea of being a professional translator seems strange when it's a seamless part of what you've always done from a young age—back and forth between home (family members) and the world (school, university, doctors, shops, public transport).
As someone who has been writing fiction and poetry in English for over a decade, I first became interested in translation three years ago when I developed a passion for drawing on my Chinese heritage and literary roots to inform my writing. I had been practicing code-switching in many ways already as a writer of the Chinese diaspora, so translation felt like a natural extension of my writing journey.
One day my mum claimed she wasn’t fluent in any of the four languages she speaks and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
I am a writer as well as a translator, which I like to think means I approach language with a lot of intention. I would even go so far as to say that I approach it with more intention than white writers and translators, if only because my claims of mastery over it are always tenuous, always being called into question.
I debuted at the same time as a white translator in the same competition. The white translator kept getting books to translate. I was given nothing.
Even now, I worry that much of the interest in my work as a translator has to do with the novelty of a Black person who somehow stumbled into the field.
At some point I started to remove my nationality from my bio and CV. It had become clear to me that the fact that I hadn't been born in an English-speaking country was hurting my chances of finding work as a literary translator, and in English-language publishing more broadly.
I was brought up reading Enid Blyton, despite not setting foot in the UK till I was eighteen.
You're usually one of few non-white faces amongst translator communities—and others who are not white tend to be from more privileged backgrounds.
Sometimes, I feel too foreign for this home. Sometimes, this home feels too foreign for me.
As someone who has been writing fiction and poetry in English for over a decade, I first became interested in translation three years ago when I developed a passion for drawing on my Chinese heritage and literary roots to inform my writing. I had been practicing code-switching in many ways already as a writer of the Chinese diaspora, so translation felt like a natural extension of my writing journey.
One day my mum claimed she wasn’t fluent in any of the four languages she speaks and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
I am a writer as well as a translator, which I like to think means I approach language with a lot of intention. I would even go so far as to say that I approach it with more intention than white writers and translators, if only because my claims of mastery over it are always tenuous, always being called into question.
I debuted at the same time as a white translator in the same competition. The white translator kept getting books to translate. I was given nothing.
Even now, I worry that much of the interest in my work as a translator has to do with the novelty of a Black person who somehow stumbled into the field.
At some point I started to remove my nationality from my bio and CV. It had become clear to me that the fact that I hadn't been born in an English-speaking country was hurting my chances of finding work as a literary translator, and in English-language publishing more broadly.
I was brought up reading Enid Blyton, despite not setting foot in the UK till I was eighteen.
You're usually one of few non-white faces amongst translator communities—and others who are not white tend to be from more privileged backgrounds.
Sometimes, I feel too foreign for this home. Sometimes, this home feels too foreign for me.
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The world of Anglophone literary translation has, for a long time, been dominated by a number of assumptions about who translators are and what translation is about. Translators are presumed to be white. Their English that of the educated middle classes. Their modes of expression and creative processes primarily and unequivocally rooted in the language and tradition into which they translate. They come to learn and read “other” languages out of curiosity about the “outside” world. Translation is a bridge between two distinct cultures. Literatures are gateways into foreign lands. Translators cross the bridge, step through the gateway, and find the treasures hidden on the other side. They bring back what they can carry. Some things might get lost on the way. Although these assumptions only apply within the most mainstream literary translation spheres, articulations of translators’ experiences that occur outside of them remain few. This is a conversation about literary translation that centres the experiences of translators who do not fit within mainstream boundaries and assumptions.
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The world of Anglophone literary translation has, for a long time, been dominated by a number of assumptions about who translators are and what translation is about. Translators are presumed to be white. Their English that of the educated middle classes. Their modes of expression and creative processes primarily and unequivocally rooted in the language and tradition into which they translate. They come to learn and read “other” languages out of curiosity about the “outside” world. Translation is a bridge between two distinct cultures. Literatures are gateways into foreign lands. Translators cross the bridge, step through the gateway, and find the treasures hidden on the other side. They bring back what they can carry. Some things might get lost on the way. Although these assumptions only apply within the most mainstream literary translation spheres, articulations of translators’ experiences that occur outside of them remain few. This is a conversation about literary translation that centres the experiences of translators who do not fit within mainstream boundaries and assumptions.
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Whenever someone asks what my first language is, they get a speech about colonialism and its aftereffects. I'm sorry, did you think that was a simple question?
Not all languages are equal. Some take up more space in the world and in our imaginations than others. For English users who have no other language, or none until school or university, it may not be clear how ubiquitous English is, even for those who never use it. Meanwhile, those who come to English as a lingua franca, a language of the world, might never think of it as also a private language. It may be hard to imagine what it’s like to live in a world “where all instructions, all the lyrics of all the stupidest possible songs, all the menus” are in the language you uncomplicatedly call your own. Olga Tocarczuk, not without some irony, posits this lack of a private language to hide behind as a reason to feel overexposed. But it is also a source and signifier of power: the ability to choose when and if you ever want to step outside the comfort of your own tongue.
I am often praised for translating into a non-native tongue, and told by translators that they wish their second language could be as good as my English. What they don’t seem to understand is that English holds a different global status from other languages, and that English wasn't just some kind of hobby I picked up by choice, but my language of instruction.
Translators are often assumed, or told, to translate into their “native tongue” or “first language”, a simplistic rule that not only implicitly prescribes certain parameters of quality—which imprisons a lot of translation into the blandest form of literary English—but also presupposes a very specific and narrow relationship to languages in general. 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.
The most benign of responses to my source language are the most humiliating. “Oh! Wow! Really? Interesting!” An awkward two-second silence and ten vigorous nods later, the next line is almost always, “Your English must be very good!” That is usually the moment of a thousand deaths.
Not everyone comes to the languages and literatures of others out of a conscious move beyond themselves. Reading in multiple languages does not have to be an act of generosity or curiosity; some of us have existed with multiplicity all our lives.
I grew up bilingual and can't relate when people say translation is a bridge. How can it be, when for me both languages reside in the same place?
Because the anglophone literary translation world (especially in the UK) is so disproportionately concerned with European literatures—understandably more so in the wake of Brexit—everything else is relegated to a separate sphere, which is seen as less literary, more othered, altogether inferior, labelled “heritage”, “community” or “minority”.
The experience of grappling with, translating from, your heritage language can be intense and emotional, you have a different relationship to the language—this is something that a non-heritage language translator perhaps can't relate to.
Translators who work with “heritage” languages are rarely part of mainstream literary translation conversations. And those who are invited in can be seen to be doing the service of bringing in “outsider” voices. If a white translator works from a minoritized language, their work is seen to be especially generous, selfless, or adventurous. The same praise does not apply if the translator is a heritage user of the language they translate from. Then they are seen as not having had much of a choice. They are seen as examples of raw talent over delicate craft.
You feel as if the language that you're translating from is in your bones, your blood, your veins. It's deep inside you. But you still feel insecure that you learnt the language in the home, you didn't learn it in a thorough and formal way—for example through a university course, through grammar, linguistics, or literature.
Translators of colour who translate out of minoritized languages are often assumed to be a heritage speaker of that language. If they’re not, they face a constant demand to explain themselves. In fact, if you're a translator who looks like you or someone in your family could have been born off the island, whatever language(s) you translate from, you’re constantly called upon to explain yourself: have you considered translating from your heritage language? Or, so you're translating from the language of your childhood? (Unsaid: so you haven’t studied it like real literary translators do.)
I am treated like an exotic creature when people see that I am brown and fluent in French. The questions and comments I get asked in return are insulting and thinly conceal a wonderment that, as a person of colour, I had access to learning a foreign language at all.
The reality is that many translators of colour do not have a “heritage language”, or may be estranged from it as a result of colonial legacies, conflict, or assimilation pressures. Our mother's tongue may be different to our father's and it's possible we know neither. Yet we are expected to, because “heritage” is code for non-European, and functions as a perpetual reminder that we don't belong.
I have been asked why I don’t study Black languages, as though that category means anything of substance. Black people exist all over the world. We come from several languages, and have had several languages forced upon us. What language is not a Black language, at this point?
The field is often described as too white, lacking diversity, not representative of the communities surrounding it. A common response is to call for “more diversity” and lament that translators of colour are “hard to find”. Attention is then immediately turned to short-term solutions, such as creating pathways to train and mentor new translators to come into the industry. Without considering how those new translators would find a place for themselves in the field as it is.
After a translation reading, an established translator approached me to say he noticed my accent and wanted to advise me to get a co-translator who is a native speaker of English.
Diversity calls are problematic in a number of ways. They lump us all into two groups: white and “non-white”, homogenizing “the diverse” into a box that can be ticked by inviting one person of a non-white hue to a panel and calling it diverse. By talking about ‘‘diversity’’ as the divergence from the norm, existing translators of colour are erased, engaged with as group representatives, not individuals. Newcomers are othered before they have even entered the room.
I can always tell when I'm only in a room as the diversity garnish, because someone realised at the last minute that their guest list was all white.
Numbers are an easy distraction—the number of languages on a prize list (the further from Europe they sound like they are, the better), the number of people of colour on a panel or committee. Both are seen to accomplish “diversity” and signal “progress”. But these numbers don't equate to making space for minoritized translators, writers, styles, languages, and Englishes, in all the different ways these may deviate from what is considered the norm. What these “diversity” efforts do is create an illusion of inclusivity that in reality consists of few, small spaces for us to squeeze into, shape ourselves by, shiny ourselves for. Power hierarchies prevail. Existing structures are kept intact.
Earlier this year, a colleague of mine remarked that I was the first Black translator he had ever met. I can’t help but wonder whether this is by design. Communities, networks, entire industries are structured in such a way that isolates a segment of us and makes us feel that we have to navigate all this alone.
Translators of colour who translate out of minoritized languages are often assumed to be a heritage speaker of that language. If they’re not, they face a constant demand to explain themselves. In fact, if you're a translator who looks like you or someone in your family could have been born off the island, whatever language(s) you translate from, you’re constantly called upon to explain yourself: have you considered translating from your heritage language? Or, so you're translating from the language of your childhood? (Unsaid: so you haven’t studied it like real literary translators do.)
I am treated like an exotic creature when people see that I am brown and fluent in French. The questions and comments I get asked in return are insulting and thinly conceal a wonderment that, as a person of colour, I had access to learning a foreign language at all.
The reality is that many translators of colour do not have a “heritage language”, or may be estranged from it as a result of colonial legacies, conflict, or assimilation pressures. Our mother's tongue may be different to our father's and it's possible we know neither. Yet we are expected to, because “heritage” is code for non-European, and functions as a perpetual reminder that we don't belong.
I have been asked why I don’t study Black languages, as though that category means anything of substance. Black people exist all over the world. We come from several languages, and have had several languages forced upon us. What language is not a Black language, at this point?
The field is often described as too white, lacking diversity, not representative of the communities surrounding it. A common response is to call for “more diversity” and lament that translators of colour are “hard to find”. Attention is then immediately turned to short-term solutions, such as creating pathways to train and mentor new translators to come into the industry. Without considering how those new translators would find a place for themselves in the field as it is.
After a translation reading, an established translator approached me to say he noticed my accent and wanted to advise me to get a co-translator who is a native speaker of English.
Diversity calls are problematic in a number of ways. They lump us all into two groups: white and “non-white”, homogenizing “the diverse” into a box that can be ticked by inviting one person of a non-white hue to a panel and calling it diverse. By talking about ‘‘diversity’’ as the divergence from the norm, existing translators of colour are erased, engaged with as group representatives, not individuals. Newcomers are othered before they have even entered the room.
I can always tell when I'm only in a room as the diversity garnish, because someone realised at the last minute that their guest list was all white.
Numbers are an easy distraction—the number of languages on a prize list (the further from Europe they sound like they are, the better), the number of people of colour on a panel or committee. Both are seen to accomplish “diversity” and signal “progress”. But these numbers don't equate to making space for minoritized translators, writers, styles, languages, and Englishes, in all the different ways these may deviate from what is considered the norm. What these “diversity” efforts do is create an illusion of inclusivity that in reality consists of few, small spaces for us to squeeze into, shape ourselves by, shiny ourselves for. Power hierarchies prevail. Existing structures are kept intact.
Earlier this year, a colleague of mine remarked that I was the first Black translator he had ever met. I can’t help but wonder whether this is by design. Communities, networks, entire industries are structured in such a way that isolates a segment of us and makes us feel that we have to navigate all this alone.
“Promoting diversity”, “celebrating multilingualism”, “nurturing minority talent”, and “championing international voices” are all things that can be done without acknowledging or challenging underlying structures, without facing how the practice of translation itself centres whiteness and Westerness, and how it defaults to reflecting and replicating colonial patterns. The subsequent erasure of the Other follows patterns of colonial violence. English is a colonial language. The work of anglophone translators–venturing out, bringing back, understanding the other by making them in their image–follows the routes of colonial acquisition. English is also a global language. The literatures written in English often grapple with its imperial legacies. Why can’t literary translation do the same? How can translators work with this larger-than-life language without acknowledging all the violence it may carry?
To untrained ears, English was the only language spoken in my family growing up. But underneath the violently enforced ‘‘standard’’ English I think of as a veneer, our true language was African American Vernacular English, a variation on the English that was brutalized into my bloodline in the place of anything I would have been able to call a mother tongue. AAVE repurposes imperial English and ruptures its constraints. It’s dynamic. It’s warm. It’s evocative. It is the closest thing I have to something I can call my language.
Colonial acquisition has its rules and conventions. What is brought over is made to fit into the predetermined spaces of labs, libraries, and museums, its difference accentuated but its foreignness contained. These rules and conventions have been internalized by many in the West who are allowed to go through life with uncontested identities. Their curiosity about “others” remains forever bound on a scale of otherness: too foreign, not foreign enough. We see this in the exoticizing sparkle around “discovering” literature from places that have little representation in the anglophone literary sphere. We see it in the lack of critical commentary about what or who is at stake during the translation process. We see it in the “high stakes” involved in translating literature that represents people that are “othered” in the anglophone world.
Colonial acquisition has its rules and conventions. What is brought over is made to fit into the predetermined spaces of labs, libraries, and museums, its difference accentuated but its foreignness contained. These rules and conventions have been internalized by many in the West who are allowed to go through life with uncontested identities. Their curiosity about “others” remains forever bound on a scale of otherness: too foreign, not foreign enough. We see this in the exoticizing sparkle around “discovering” literature from places that have little representation in the anglophone literary sphere. We see it in the lack of critical commentary about what or who is at stake during the translation process. We see it in the “high stakes” involved in translating literature that represents people that are “othered” in the anglophone world.
The agent said, ‘‘Give me a story more typically Indian, you know. Caste. Women's stuff. Poverty.’’
For the majority of anglophone publishers, stories from the Global South have to fit certain narratives and writing styles. Often “fluency” is the main criterion used to assess the quality of a translation. Concepts of fluency shift our focus to the target language and the norms of its most standard form, the one with the highest capital: “This is what works in English.” Whose English? Ethical concerns are seen to stand in opposition to formal elements, rather than pathways to new forms of experimentation: “That would sound odd in English.” What if that which sounds odd to one person evokes familiarity for another?
For the majority of anglophone publishers, stories from the Global South have to fit certain narratives and writing styles. Often “fluency” is the main criterion used to assess the quality of a translation. Concepts of fluency shift our focus to the target language and the norms of its most standard form, the one with the highest capital: “This is what works in English.” Whose English? Ethical concerns are seen to stand in opposition to formal elements, rather than pathways to new forms of experimentation: “That would sound odd in English.” What if that which sounds odd to one person evokes familiarity for another?
While I pride myself on reading widely across different languages, I had never realized how much of what I was choosing to read in those languages was restricted by what had already been translated and ‘‘accepted’’’ by the West.
Migrating across linguistic and cultural borders means the translated text faces the same challenges as the migrant person in a new land: lack of belonging, pressure to assimilate, threats of erasure. Depending on where the text is migrating from, it may find it easier to enter, easier to blend in. Other texts are held at the border and forced to prove their worth.
Migrating across linguistic and cultural borders means the translated text faces the same challenges as the migrant person in a new land: lack of belonging, pressure to assimilate, threats of erasure. Depending on where the text is migrating from, it may find it easier to enter, easier to blend in. Other texts are held at the border and forced to prove their worth.
An agent I was working with told me there was a publisher interested in acquiring a book I'd translated a sample of, but that they refused to work with me because I was not a native speaker. Another publisher praised the same sample for how fluent it was, especially considering ‘‘she's not a native speaker’’.
The anglophone literary translation border force are the gatekeepers of the industry, deciding which texts, which translators make it through. They define the scope of a “good” text, what will “work” in translation, what will sell, in whose English. They define the reader. They interrogate the text at the border. And, as translators, we are often made to choose between internalizing the gatekeepers’ terms and conditions, and sending the text “back home”.
I’ve been an immigrant my whole life, and I will often find myself listing reasons why I belong in this country as much as the next person. I go through the same mental process with literary translation. I tell myself I have to be better than or I won’t be allowed to stay, in the same way as immigrants are made to feel they have to be exceptional, either in terms of their skills or their suffering—otherwise, what are they doing here anyway?
The anglophone literary translation border force are the gatekeepers of the industry, deciding which texts, which translators make it through. They define the scope of a “good” text, what will “work” in translation, what will sell, in whose English. They define the reader. They interrogate the text at the border. And, as translators, we are often made to choose between internalizing the gatekeepers’ terms and conditions, and sending the text “back home”.
I’ve been an immigrant my whole life, and I will often find myself listing reasons why I belong in this country as much as the next person. I go through the same mental process with literary translation. I tell myself I have to be better than or I won’t be allowed to stay, in the same way as immigrants are made to feel they have to be exceptional, either in terms of their skills or their suffering—otherwise, what are they doing here anyway?
The consequences of having a homogenous group at the port of entry is that a dominant, mainstream perspective is centred, actively encouraged, protected. Anxiety about the “foreign”, the “different”, is packaged as economic viability. These stories and the characters in them are seen as “unrelatable”, without spelling out exactly to whom.
I'm self-conscious of how much I have to prove myself, as an outsider in a Eurocentric field. What kinds of risks am I not taking or choices am I not making as a translator for the sake of proving my “normalcy”?
The core readers that publishers cater for are as undemanding as they are risk averse. These are readers who want things to make sense, instead of wanting to make sense of things, who want to journey into another world that is identical to the one they have already imagined. Demands are made on behalf of these “core readers” with little interrogation of the underlying assumptions about who they are and which readers are being excluded as a result. There will always be a “for whom” question. Being conscious of the question and responding to it with intent, aware of how our choices include or exclude, will facilitate greater freedom in our craft.
I can’t imagine that many of the white translators I know feel the same debt to the source language, the same desire to do it justice. Because that indebtedness comes, I think, from my own experiences of having my English(es) mocked, disparaged, invaded, misappropriated, co-opted, used for personal gain, and stamped out. I do not want to reenact that violence on another language.
When translation is done well, daringly, it can broaden perspectives, shift paradigms, challenge assumptions. But it doesn’t carry inherent value in its own right. An ethical approach to translation requires understanding enough about linguistic power hierarchies to take chances on destabilizing dominant forms of English, and deny them the unquestioned privilege of making the whole world in their image.
I am fascinated by the ability of translation to inform, add to, and expand the target language. In my translation practice, I try to work towards ways of translating that push against the Western gaze and decolonize translation practices.
The core readers that publishers cater for are as undemanding as they are risk averse. These are readers who want things to make sense, instead of wanting to make sense of things, who want to journey into another world that is identical to the one they have already imagined. Demands are made on behalf of these “core readers” with little interrogation of the underlying assumptions about who they are and which readers are being excluded as a result. There will always be a “for whom” question. Being conscious of the question and responding to it with intent, aware of how our choices include or exclude, will facilitate greater freedom in our craft.
I can’t imagine that many of the white translators I know feel the same debt to the source language, the same desire to do it justice. Because that indebtedness comes, I think, from my own experiences of having my English(es) mocked, disparaged, invaded, misappropriated, co-opted, used for personal gain, and stamped out. I do not want to reenact that violence on another language.
When translation is done well, daringly, it can broaden perspectives, shift paradigms, challenge assumptions. But it doesn’t carry inherent value in its own right. An ethical approach to translation requires understanding enough about linguistic power hierarchies to take chances on destabilizing dominant forms of English, and deny them the unquestioned privilege of making the whole world in their image.
I am fascinated by the ability of translation to inform, add to, and expand the target language. In my translation practice, I try to work towards ways of translating that push against the Western gaze and decolonize translation practices.
Because power breeds entitlement, unquestioningly accepting and benefiting from the supremacy of standard English leads to the belief that anything can, and should, be translated. Untranslatability is not a temporary barrier to be broken into but a fundamental right. Understanding this is the cornerstone of translation as a reflective practice that involves ongoing learning and humility.
The tendency to view otherness as a challenge or a threat, to be neutralized with “fluent” translation, rests on the many assumptions about who translates literature and for whom, and enables those assumptions to seep into every aspect of the translation experience. A more “diverse” translation cadre will not seamlessly lead to a more diverse translation practice. Not while translators are measured by their ability to fall in line with a fluency imperative that implicitly privileges the dominant language. 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.
The tendency to view otherness as a challenge or a threat, to be neutralized with “fluent” translation, rests on the many assumptions about who translates literature and for whom, and enables those assumptions to seep into every aspect of the translation experience. A more “diverse” translation cadre will not seamlessly lead to a more diverse translation practice. Not while translators are measured by their ability to fall in line with a fluency imperative that implicitly privileges the dominant language. 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.
