Is Translation a Violent Act?

Imagine being praised by your white colleagues for your “raw talent” as a “natural translator,” only to realize that they are subtly reinforcing stereotypes about heritage speakers. This situation highlights some uncomfortable realities faced by translators of color in the predominantly white world of Anglophone literary translation. According to Venuti, the translator’s invisibility results from an ethnocentric approach to translation into English that privileges fluency and assumes an erasure of the source culture through a submissive ethics of domestication in translation. Alternatively, resistance to imperialistic and conservative modes of English translation could be achieved through an ethics of foreignization in pursuit of cultural diversity embedded in the translated text. Echoing Venuti, the collaborative collage of Gitanjali Patel and Nariman Youssef explores how translators of colour are marginalised in the Anglophone literary translation world and how this is reflected in “the tendency to view ‘otherness’ as a challenge or a threat” that can erase diversity by hiding behind “a fluency imperative” that assumes only one version of acceptable English. This conversation sheds light on the deeply ingrained assumptions and biases that determine who is allowed to translate, what gets translated, and how those translations are received. It intertwines powerful and often disheartening experiences of translators of color, challenging the romanticized view of translation as a straightforward bridge between cultures. 

~Ibrahim