Translation’s Inevitable Amanda Gorman Dispute
By: Noah Lorey
Tags: Poetry, Literature, Globalization, Race, Translation

But it is also inevitable that if we cordon ourselves from working with one another in cross-cutting ways, our creativity and vibrancy will atrophy and die. When I first heard of the controversy surrounding the translation of Gorman’s work, I thought of my own experience grappling with the poetry of women of color. For a class project in my third year at Emory University, I and a classmate decided to build off the poetry of Natasha Tretheway as found in her celebrated collection Bellocq’s Ophelia. Writing from the perspective of other mixed-race women not profiled in Tretheway’s original poems, my partner and I constructed an Instagram profile and a series of posts that featured our own poetry that mimicked and expanded upon the thematic and lived realities that Tretheway interrogated in the original Ophelia. As a White man, I was acutely aware that the stories that I was telling, that I was making myself a part of by every stroke of my pen, were not mine in any sense of the imagination. Yet, at the behest of my classmate, a Hispanic woman, and my professor, a Black man, I was encouraged to continue. There was something to be gleaned from the entirety of the process, even if my racial fingerprint did not match that of the original author.

It is this group approach upon which it seems most effectual to stake a theory of the case when it comes to doing translation work, particularly translation work that carries with it a certain cultural intimacy that must be respected. Such was the approach used from the get-go by Gorman’s German translator. Bringing together a talented group of three women from varied ethnic backgrounds (Hadjia Haruna-Oelker who is Black, Kubra Gumusay who is of Turkish descent, and Uda Strätling who is White) the German team endeavored tirelessly to bring to market a product that reflected the will and intent of the original author while remaining comprehensible to the average German reader. They strived to make the political and social significance of “The Hill We Climb” clear, to spurn exclusion, and to remain true to Ms. Gorman’s spirit. They debated how to translate “skinny” without making it appear derisive. They sought out ways to reflect the gender-inclusive language that the poem utilized, despite German’s extensive labeling of all words and peoples as either masculine or feminine.

What they birthed in their collective efforts was a poem that represented the unity of Gorman’s vision. What their colleagues birthed elsewhere around Europe was more of the discord that none of us relish.

There was one more point that struck me from Chakraborty’s piece: “It was only a matter of time before these burning issues ignited the art of translation.” Here too I concur, though not simply because cancel culture and unmitigated racism have become war cries for partisans the world over, but more so because of the inevitable connectivity of our world.

Incremental yet ever-growing globalization has transformed and is transforming the face of our planet like never before. If it is to become common for the works of a celebrated author to be published in every language under the sun mere months after she has become a leading and iconic figure, and if it is to become common to remark on that dispersion of work in real-time, then it is also to be expected that questions and curiosities, disputes and debates, will likewise arise. Thanks in large part to the Internet, cultures are widening, reaching out, and touching one another in a multivariate manner, in ways which they never have before. Not in this size or on this scale. Is it any small wonder then that we may still have much to navigate?

There has been much pain and confusion sown as a result of the Amanda Gorman translation dispute, but it is in some ways an inevitable byproduct of who we yet hope to be. As the poet herself said, “Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true./That even as we grieved, we grew./That even as we hurt, we hoped./That even as we tired, we tried./That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.”