Opinion | Uproar over Biden inauguration poem translators underestimates literature’s power to cross borders
- Publishers have dropped translators of Amanda Gorman’s poem after they were criticised for not choosing people of a similar background to the young, black poet
- In doing so, publishers not only put themselves in an impossible position, but elide opportunities for learning
While browsing a bookstore in St Petersburg, Russia, back in the golden days of 2019, when we could leave our Zoom bubbles, I searched for a translated copy of any of my four books. Russia is known for its illegal knock-offs.
Yet, if I had found one of my titles translated in Cyrillic, I would not have been upset. I would have rejoiced. After decades of toiling with words, to see my name in print – in any language – is always validating.
But, with caveats, it turns out.
Renowned Dutch translator and 2020 International Booker Prize winner Marieke Lucas Rijneveld had been commissioned by the Dutch publisher Meulenhoff to translate Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb, the one she read to worldwide acclaim at US President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Gorman herself had approved of the selection of Rijneveld.
But in this time of enhanced racial identity one needs to tread delicately. A Dutch activist named Janice Deul objected to the choice of translator because the publisher had not commissioned a “spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black”.