18 March 2021
Climbing That Hill
Translating Amanda Gorman.
By Neil Tidmarsh
Marieke Lucas Rijnevelde is a young Dutch novelist and poet. Last year, they (Marieke identifies as both male and female and so chooses to use gender-neutral personal pronouns) won the International Booker Prize for their debut novel The Discomfort of Evening. This year, they were commissioned by the publisher Meulenhoff to translate Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb (the poem and the poet of President Biden’s inauguration) into Dutch. But the choice of translator was immediately criticised by diversity activists in the Netherlands. The Dutch journalist Janice Deul argued that the work should have gone to someone of the same ethnic and artistic background as Amanda Gorman, ie a black poet who has worked in the spoken-word genre of slam poetry. Marieke Lucas Rijnevelde accepted the criticism and resigned from the job.
Victor Obiols is a 60 year old poet and musician from Catalonia who has translated the works of Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare. He was commissioned by the Barcelona-based publishing house Univers to translate Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb into Catalan. But this week, less than a month away from publication, Univers rejected his work. According to an editor at Univers, Amanda Gorman’s US publisher said that they would prefer the translation to be done by “a woman who is young, an activist and a poet, with experience as a translator, and preferably, black”.
These two cases raise very obvious questions and apparent ironies about discrimination, the essential ‘otherness’ of translation, the universality of poetry, artistic values v. political values, etc, etc. But… “It is a very complicated subject that cannot be treated with frivolity” as Victor Obiols himself said.
Consider, for instance, the interview with the journalist Janice Deul on the BBC’s website. It’s clear here – as it isn’t in other reports – that she objected to Marieke Lucas Rijnevelde on artistic grounds as much as on political grounds. She makes the point that a translator who had experience in hip-hop, performance and slam poetry – genres which underlie Amanda Gorman’s work – probably would produce a better version of her poem than a translator who didn’t. And the very nature of those genres means that the translator with the most experience of them would probably not be white. So in this instance the art of poetry and the politics of identity do inevitably overlap. And after the performance of poet and poem at Joe Biden’s inauguration, art and politics are uniquely intertwined here anyway. “I’m not saying a black person can’t translate white work and vice versa” Janice Deul said. “But not this specific poem of this specific orator in this Black Lives Matter area, that’s the whole issue.”
Consider also Victor Obiols’ point that “If I cannot translate a poet because she is a woman, young, black and an American of the 21st century, then I cannot translate Homer either because I am not an eighth century BC Greek… Nor could I have translated Shakespeare because I am not a 16th century Englishman.” Fair enough, but it isn’t a question of not being able to, but whether an eight century BC Greek (familiar with Homer’s models, methods and subjects) or a 16th century Englishman (familiar with Shakespeare’s models, methods and subjects), if they were still around today, would do a better job of it; if they also had an ear for poetry and a fluent command of Catalan, then one suspects that they probably would. They would have an obvious advantage over Mr Obiols, fine translator though he clearly is. And of course there are indeed black, female, hip-hop, spoken word poets around in modern Europe today, and they will inevitably have the same artistic advantage over translators not familiar with the genre and its subjects, and thus be better qualified artistically for the job.
And consider, finally, this advice given to a far more eminent columnist than yours truly: “White men can’t understand that sometimes, just sometimes, their opinion is neither relevant nor required.” And that columnist – Giles Coren, possibly the most combative and opinionated columnist in the world – signed off his weekly piece (You’ll never guess my opinion about Piers) in last Saturday’s The Times with the words “But some white men can. I can. Which is why, for slightly different reasons than Piers, I haven’t got an opinion for you this week. And may never have again.”
By a strange coincidence, the other columnist who yours truly follows week in and week out – Arturo Pérez-Reverte in ABC’s XLSemanal – also declared in his piece last weekend (Aquí, mojándome) that his combative and opinionated days are over.
So this column – this week at least – appears to be in good company even as it leaves those obvious questions and apparent ironies largely unexplored.
Cover page photo of Amanda Gorman: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington DC (Creative Commons).
