Translation is the canary in the coalmine
By: Haidee Kotze
Tags: Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Amanda Gorman, Translation

Many responses, in the Dutch and international news media and on Twitter, however, immediately fixated on a particular interpretation of the identity argument, reflecting at best a complete disregard of context, and at worst a wilful misreading of the arguments made by Deul. These contributions interpret Deul as arguing something like “only black translators can or may translate black authors” — a point she never makes. The two dimensions of the identity angle (the ‘may’ [i.e. permission] and ‘can’ [i.e. ability] arguments, as I will call them) are worth differentiating. Luc van Doorslaer, writing in the Belgian paper De Standaard (1 March), focuses on the ‘may’ dimension of this argument (similar arguments are made by Assita Kanko in De Volkskrant on 2 March, Kenan Malik in The Guardian on 7 March, Mridula Nath Chakraborty in The Conversation and Nuria Barrios in El País on 12 March. I focus on the article by Van Doorslaer, a professor of translation studies, as exemplary of this line of argument).

Van Doorslaer characterises Deul’s points as the “dictatorship of identity thinking”, reflecting “totalitarianism”. Apart from the fact that Deul only indirectly raises the question of identity in her argument, and does nothing more than ask for more representativeness, more diversity, more inclusivity in the publishing industry (hardly totalitarian), Van Doorslaer’s formulation here is ironic, given the asymmetries of power at stake in this debate. Groups who one would reasonably expect to feel the need to foreground the importance of identity are those who have traditionally been marginalised; if you are in a position of privilege, you don’t have to worry about how your identity will affect your opportunities, or will impose structural limitations on your access to resources. As the default, you are safe in the assumption that you can compete openly based purely on ability for access to resources and opportunities. You can assume a level playing field. In contrast, if you have to fight for fundamental recognition of your identity as valid, and deserving of equal access to resources and opportunities, you know from the outset that there is no such thing as a level playing field.

Van Doorslaer’s piece (and similar ones by Barrios and Chakravorty) sets up a straw-man argument that has little connection with Deul’s original points. He claims that the “disturbing march of identity thinking” is a creative dead-end, leading to a situation in which, for example, white people will not be ‘allowed’ to write about apartheid; black people will be ‘required’ to write only about ‘black experience’ — and only black translators will be ‘allowed’ to translate black authors. This line of argumentation is evident across social media and in the comments sections of newspapers framing the debate in terms of ‘cancel culture’ and ‘reverse racism’, and finds its ultimate absurdist reduction in histrionic claims and clickbait headlines of “the end of translation” and “a new and lethal censorship”: This now means no one can translate anyone (because no one has the same identity). A comment by the Catalan translator of Gorman, Víctor Obiols, whose contract was retracted by the publisher in the wake of the furore, exemplifies the extreme of this reductionism:

“But if I cannot translate a poet because she is a woman, young, black, an American of the 21st Century, neither can I translate Homer because I am not a Greek of the eighth century BC. Or could not have translated Shakespeare because I am not a 16th-Century Englishman.”

Barrios (the Spanish translator of Gorman’s poem) argues along the same lines:

According to Deul, applying what we might call Deul logic, only whites can translate whites, only women can translate women, only trans people can translate trans people… And so on ad infinitum: only Mexicans can sing rancheras, only the Japanese can write haikus, and so on. And, of course, forget about translating Marcel Proust if you aren’t homosexual and have never tasted a madeleine.

This misses the point entirely. 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.

This ‘sub-’line of the identity argument (who ‘may’ translate) is (also) not about translation. It sets itself up as a defense of freedom, of diversity, of the right to inhabit another’s skin; it sees ‘activism’ (used here pejoratively) as an impoverishment of the richness of human creativity and the ability to share in diverse experiences, a “disservice to the human imagination”. And yet, ironically, it displays a profound lack of ability to place itself in the shoes of others. As Hendrik Vos points out in a subsequent article in De Standaard (7 March): Someone unable to see how important representation is to groups who have lacked such representation, clearly lacks the ability to ‘inhabit’ the experience of others that they so strongly advocate for for themselves. Ultimately, what proponents of this line of argumentation demonstrate, more than anything, are anxieties about challenges to privilege — privilege so ingrained that it can afford to be wholly self-unaware. Johan Fretz, in his column in Het Parool on 27 February, highlights another important dimension of this: In shifting the terms of the debate, reframing it away from the original points of critique of Deul, valid, pertinent questions and critiques raised by people of colour are swept away by blithely designating these as nothing more than ‘identity politics’ or ‘wokeness’[2] — a way for white people to claim the discussion space, dismissing both the experience and perspectives of people of colour, and shutting down any space for self-reflection and conversation.

The question 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?

The other ‘sub-’line of the identity argument focuses less on who ‘may’ translate, and more on who ‘can’, from the perspective of identity or shared experience. This is to a marginal degree raised by Deul, but foregrounded much more strongly in subsequent contributions to the debate. These arguments do, to some degree at least, connect with a philosophy of translation itself, raising questions about to what degree familiarity with the lived experience encoded in and expressed by a text is a prerequisite for translation — the focus of a recent forum discussion in the journal Translation Studies, around an article by Şebnem Susam-Saraeva titled “Representing experiential knowledge: Who may translate whom?”. It is pointed out by Ingrid Glorie (in Voertaal, 8 March), and reflected in, for example, a summary article for BBC News by Amanda Holligan (12 March), highlighting (in reference to a conversation with Quinsy Gario, a black Dutch spoken-word artist) the importance of “embodied knowledge and the cultural baggage that come with being black” for translating Gorman. Writer and literary translator Canan Marasligil makes a similar point:

“A translator will make choices based on their life experience and their identity (so yes, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic background, disabilities… will matter), and so will the fluidity of these.”

Connected with this notion of ‘can’ come other aspects of experience relevant to the task of translating Gorman’s work: For example, experience with the genre of spoken-word poetry (which Rijneveld does not have), or experience as a translator and proficiency in the source language (English is, by Rijneveld’s own admission, not their strength).

Given that these relevant experiences clearly did not figure in the choice for Rijneveld as translator, what did? An article by Jos Joosten in Neerlandistiek, published on 27 February, highlights another dimension — one deserving of far more attention than it has been given in the discussion. Joosten points out that the debate is no literary matter at all, but a “cynical commercial conflict”: Meulenhoff took an interest in Gorman for commercial reasons after she shot to fame because of her performance at Biden’s inauguration, and gained the translation rights after a bidding war between eight publishers. Likewise, Meulenhoff’s choice of Rijneveld as translator had nothing to do with either their translation skills (Rijneveld is no translator), or (as Meulenhoff ostensibly claimed) Rijneveld’s affinity with the fight for equality (given that Rijneveld is non-binary and has been outspoken about mental health issues).[3] Rather, it was simply the case that Rijneveld brought with them the cultural ‘capital’ and visibility and prestige of a recent Booker prize winner: A commercial win-win for the publisher, thus. As Joosten laconically (and correctly) points out: The actual translation was merely a side-matter.[4]