Frantz Fanon wrote in 1961 that 'Decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon,' meaning that the violence of colonialism can only be counteracted in kind. As colonial legacies linger today, what are the ways in which we can disentangle literary translation from its roots in imperial violence? 24 writers and translators from across the world share their ideas and practices for disrupting and decolonising translation.
For the past few years, Ive written and rewritten this line in journals and proposals: literary translation is a tool to make more vivid the relationships between Afro-descendent people in the Americas and around the world. - Layla Benitez James
Muu info
Contributors including Khairani Barokka, Anton Hur, Monchoachi (tr. Eric Fishman), Layla Benitez-James, Eluned Gramich, Hamid Roslan, Lúcia Collischonn, Sawad Hussain, Aaron Robertson, Elisa Taber, Tiffany Tsao, Yogesh Maitreya, Shushan Avagyan, Onaiza Drabu, Yogesh, Sofia Rehman, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, and Sandra Tamele.
Dr. Kavita Bhanot is ECR Leverhulme Fellow at Leicester University. She is editor of The Book of Birmingham, Too Asian, Not Asian Enough, and co-editor of the Bare Lit Anthology. Her fiction, non-fiction and academic work has been published, performed and broadcast widely, including the landmark essay 'Decolonise not Diversify' and her Tedx Talk 'Reading, Writing and Self-Interrogation'. Kavita initiated and co-organised the Literature Must Fall Festival in Birmingham 2019 and founded the Literature Must Fall Collective - her monograph exploring these ideas will be published in 2022 by Pluto Press. She has been a reader and mentor with The Literary Consultancy for ten years and is on the board for Comma Press. Her first novel came third in the 2018 SI Leeds Literary Prize. Jeremy Tiang has translated over thirty books from Chinese, including novels by Yan Ge, Yeng Pway Ngon, Lo Yi-Chin and Zhang Yueran. He also writes and translates plays. His novel, State of Emergency, won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. He lives in Flushing, Queens.
