BCLT Research Seminar with Nariman Youssef, BCLT translator-in-residence 2024

Description

This talk will present a snapshot of a work-in-progress reflecting on what multilingualism – used here to connote a porous, non-hierarchical relationship to one’s languages – means for literary translators. The long-held precept that translation is conducted exclusively into one’s mother tongue has been challenged time and time again, both by the work of researchers questioning the assumptions behind it and by the sheer existence of translators with a diverse array of language ties and directionalities. Far from being an incidental detail, or a shortcoming I have to define myself against, my own linguistic in-betweenness has been integral to my work as a translator; to the reasons I do it, to my enjoyment of it, and – in ways I’m still endeavouring to articulate – to my translation process and my stylistic approaches. I set out here to tease out the ways, some subtler than others, in which ‘multilingualism’ shows up in my own work, and to develop a few questions that I hope will be relevant beyond it.

Period	8 May 2024
Event type	Seminar