Am I Too White to Translate Certain Texts?

Translation & identity politics: the event that has translators reflecting on what rights their skin color gives them in the context of their craft.

When Amanda Gorman delivered the US inaugural poem on January 20, 2021, she was met with overwhelming praise and affirmation. Her words were poignant but hopeful, raw but eye-opening, deep-rooted but fresh. But then something interesting happened.

A nasty battle ensued over who should be entitled to translate her work. Could a white translator really grasp the depth of her words, and faithfully portray them in another language? What about translators from countries that do not share a history of racism with the US? Could these translators—and better yet, should they—be tasked with bringing this vital and stirring message to the rest of the world?

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, the Dutch writer who was originally commissioned for the translation, stepped down from the project amid growing pressure to do so because of skin color. When asked about this, Nuria Barrios, the poem’s Spanish translator, wrote that “It is the victory of identity politics over creative freedom,” adding: “To remove imagination from translation is to subject the craft to a lobotomy.”

Ms. Barrios warns against a world where “only whites can translate whites, only women can translate women, only trans people can translate trans people.”

Other critics, such as John McWhorter, a linguist and professor of English at Columbia University, added that “there is a tacit idea that we are supposed to be especially concerned about the ‘appropriateness’ of a translator’s identity in the particular case of blackness. Other differences between writers and their translators — such as wealth levels, or political views — were not sparking concern.”

Janice Deul, who wrote a piece in the Dutch daily newspaper de Volkskrant, said “Nothing to the detriment of Rijneveld's qualities, but why not choose a writer who is — just like Gorman — a spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black?”

In an article published by the Los Angeles Times, the #OwnVoices movement, which advocates that texts and stories by marginalized people be written or translated by people who share their identity, challenged: “Is the act of translation also an extension of a particular identity? Is the experience of a person of color in Holland analogous to that of an African American?” In the same article, Chad Post, publisher of Open Letter Books, said the following when referring to texts that address motherhood or sexual assault: “Having those translated by a generic white guy is viscerally irritating,” he said, “and isn’t dissimilar from the emotions people are having in the Gorman situation.”

The German publisher tasked with releasing Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb poem chose to hire a team of three women to jointly translate the text – a mere 710 words – made up of a writer, translator and journalist with diverse experiences and backgrounds… an innovative and insightful way to bridge the gap between experience and expertise.

The German team spent two weeks mulling over the translation, which, based on the word count, any professional translator would have been able to complete in a couple of hours. The stakes were simply too high.

For more information, read the full English articles from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and www.dw.com.