Translators in the UK Call for Racial Equality in Literary Translation
The UK’s Translators Association issues a statement on debates about who should translate whom–and ‘institutional barriers.’
Londoners at Kings Cross’ Granary Square on April 2, amid pandemic restrictions’ easings in the United Kingdom. Image – iStockphoto: VV Shots
There are several prompts to this newly enunciated stance, and we’ll talk through them to help explicate the issues.
Briefly, the translators are writing to two points deeply important to workers across all the creative industries, fully inclusive of both international book publishing and literary translation.
First, they argue that anyone can translate anyone. That is to say, the rejection of one or another translator based on a factor such as race is, they say, unacceptable. (If you’ve ever stopped to admire how deftly a male translator like David Hackston can handle the most sensitive work of a female author like Finland’s Katja Kettu in