Amanda Gorman read one of her poems, about a ‘skinny Black girl’, at President Biden’s inauguration [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNFAICB8vxw], and found an international audience overnight. But who is the right to candidate for translation has proved to be a tricky question. In Europe, publishers are turning down white translators or adding Black translators. This has triggered a debate in literary and cultural circles about identity, language and ‘the right to translate’.

Gorman’s poem, ‘The Hill We Climb’ [https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/amanda-gorman-inaugural-poem-transcript/index.html], carries a special resonance, capturing in words a landmark in American history. Many readers would like to read it as marking a moment in the saga of civil rights, the possible end of a difficult period characterized by “White Supremacy” and the hope of a new beginning under a new presidency. This experience of the Black community should be (or can only be) rendered by a Black translator, and for anybody else it would be an act of cultural appropriation, the argument goes. Thus, the German translation is the joint work of three people, a Black journalist, a write of Turkish descent and a white translator. In the Netherlands a prominent Dutch author was turned down, a Catalan publisher dropped a white translator. [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/books/amanda-gorman-hill-we-climb-translation.html] (The resulting controversy also brought out the fact there are not enough black translators.)

For a section of the global literary community, making race a criterion for qualifying as translator is outright tokenism. The American Literary Translators Association too feels this is a “false framing of the issues.” [Statement on ‘Racial Equality in Literary Translation’: https://literarytranslators.wordpress.com/2021/03/22/alta-statement-on-racial-equity-in-literary-translation/] This signals, as one translator said, “the victory of identity politics over creative freedom.” [https://english.elpais.com/arts/2021-03-12/the-challenge-of-translating-amanda-gorman-if-you-are-white.html] Literature is supposed to aid empathetic imagination. There had been no complaints so far of any poor quality in so many literary translations involving a crossing of the boundaries of gender, class, caste, creed, nationality and so on. If only whites can translate white authors or women alone will translate women’s poetry, we won’t be celebrating diversity and literature would lose some of its powers.

Reports:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-translations-gorman-controversy/2021/03/24/8ea3223e-8cd5-11eb-9423-04079921c915_story.html

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-03-22/amanda-gorman-hill-we-climb-translation-backlash-sparks-controversy

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/01/amanda-gorman-white-translator-quits-marieke-lucas-rijneveld

Debate:
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-is-this-the-end-of-translation-156375

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2021/03/17/translators-weigh-in-on-the-amanda-gorman-controversy/

https://haidee-kotze.medium.com/translation-is-the-canary-in-the-coalmine-c11c75a97660

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/03/26/hills-we-climb-translators