You were clever to save this set of readings/ this particular discussion for last! This is a tricky conversation.
I remember, in a poetry workshop from last semester, we discussed the idea of who can write what— we talked about Sylvia Plath’s Daddy and Lady Lazarus which both assume the position of a Jewish woman and/ or holocaust victim— and while this is different than a discussion about translation, it’s related. I am particularly reminded of the refrain of this past conversation: you can’t tell people what they can and cannot write, but you can hold them accountable. To some degree, I think this extends to the conversation about “who can translate what.” Realistically, anyone can translate anything, but there might be social consequences (whether we agree with them or not).
I don’t feel good about someone assuming an identity that is not their own in order to translate a piece, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily what’s happening when someone assumes the voice of the source author. At the end of the day, if there is someone who demographically aligns with the original author and is able and willing to translate the piece effectively, then they should be the one to do it— but if the thing standing in the way of a writing’s accessibility in a new language because the translator does not share identity markers with the author, therefore stopping the piece from being translated and potentially accessed by an entire language speaking community, that feels limiting and exclusionary, and counter to the notion of accessibility or understanding of the author’s experience.
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