Translation and Decolonisation: A South–South Panel Discussion
What does decolonisation mean for translation? Does translation help or hinder progressive movements in the Global South? Are there important similarities between the practice and experience of translation across the Southern Hemisphere? Experts in the language and literature of Southern Africa, Indigenous Latin America, the Middle East, and the Indian Subcontinent come together for a panel discussion of translation and decolonisation, with a particular focus on the promise of and obstacles facing South-South dialogue and translation as we fast approach the second quarter of the twenty-first century.
This panel discussion will be chaired by Mohamed-Salah Omri.
Register via Eventbrite, here.
Cecilia Rossi is Associate Professor in Literature and Translation at the University of East Anglia, where she convenes the MA in Literary Translation and works for British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) as Postgraduate and Professional Liaison. Her latest translation, Alejandra Pizarnik’s The Last Innocence and The Lost Adventures, published by Ugly Duckling Presse, was shortlisted for the National Translation Awards for Poetry (ALTA) in 2020. Since 2019 she has been working with the AATI (Argentine Association of Translators and Interpreters) and researchers at UNSAM (Universidad Nacional de San Martín) on the Translation and the Revitalisation of Indigenous and Minoritised Languages project and is Consulting Editor of the Argentine Etnodiscursividades Book Series, which has to date published three volumes of indigenous writing in bilingual format.
Kavita Bhanot is a writer, translator, editor, researcher and organiser. She wrote the landmark essay ‘Decolonise not Diversify’ in 2015. She is the editor of three short-story collections, including Too Asian, not Asian Enough (Tindal Street, 2011) and The Book of Birmingham (Comma, 2018), and co-editor of Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation (Tilted Axis, 2022) with translator Jeremy Tiang. Her translation of Anjali Kajal’s Hindi stories Ma is Scared and Other Stories, winner of a PEN Translates Award in 2021, was published with Comma Press in 2023. Kavita founded and co-organises Literature Must Fall and Jaag: Panjabi and Pahari-Pothwari Language and Literature Festival in Birmingham. She is currently writing a book Literature Must Fall: Resisting Literary Supremacy (Pluto Press) and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.
Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic. Her translation of Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind? (Fitzcarraldo, 2022) was shortlisted for The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and longlisted for The Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing in 2023. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation. Her most recent translations include Edo’s Souls by Stella Gaitano (Dedalus Books, 2023), The Djinn’s Apple by Djamila Morani (Neem Tree Press, 2024), and the co-translation of The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna al-Essa (Restless Books, 2024).
Tinashe Mushakavanhu is a writer, editor, and Junior Research Fellow in African and Comparative Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford. He is co-creator and lead researcher on readingzimbabwe.com, a digital archive collecting, cataloguing, digitising and making available information on books about Zimbabwe from the 1950s to the present. He is also co-founder of Black Chalk & Co, which brings together writers, artists, designers, academics, and technologists and engenders a new culture and new forms of publishing and creative production. Some of his recent books include Some Writers Can Give You Two Heartbeats (Black Chalk & Co, 2019) and Ndabaningi Sithole: A Forgotten Founding Father (HSRC Press, 2023).
