River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation

by Nuzhat Abbas (editor), Nuzhat Abbas (Editor)

"Translation, here, is decolonial feminist work." - from the Foreword by Françoise Vergès. What are the histories, constraints, and possibilities of language in relation to bodies, origins, land, colonialism, gender, war, displacement, desire, and migration? Moving across genres, memories, belongings, and borders, these luminous essays by poets, writers, and translators invite us to consider translation as a form of ethical and political love - one that requires attentive regard of an other - and a making and unmaking of self. Contributors Khairani Barokka, Yasmine Haj, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Nedra Rodrigo, Suneela Mubayi, Iryn Tushabe, Gopika Jadeja, Rahat Kurd, Geetha Sukumaran, Norah Alkharashi, and Lisa Ndejuru.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

223 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2023

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation, from the new Canadian publisher, trace press, is a collection of essays by poets, writers and translators from across the globe, edited by Nuzhat Abbas. These formally inventive pieces invite us, as the description advises, “to consider translation as a form of ethical and political love—one that requires attentive regard of the other—and a making an unmaking of self.” This project of decolonial feminism is a very important exploration of the intersection of language with questions of identity, belonging, gender and sexuality, giving space to voices and perspectives that many of us might not hear or even consider otherwise. I read each of these essays slowly, drawn into the stories and experiences with language, migration and translation that each author considers. Every piece is distinct in style and important. I carried this book with me to India on a recent visit and sold three copies as a result of enthusiastic conversation with friends who are writers. But over the past few weeks with the conflict in the Middle East, this collection has taken on even greater relevance.

Now to prepare a proper review.

[ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sujata says: / I haven’t forgotten my mother tongue. / I said: / my mother tongue burns in my kitchen every day.” (163)

really enjoyed this book; translation wasn’t a topic i’d explored before and these narratives and essays were all so fascinating and offered complex takes on decolonisation, culture and translation. very much loved the introduction i received to various languages — got to read indonesian, become more familiar with the tamil script and learn about rukiga and runyarwanda, traditionally oral languages. also got me pondering my own relationship with language, the languages i speak, and the ones i’m learning, and those relationships within the scope of colonialism. will be recommending to many many people !

edit 01/02 and another thing ! a couple aspects i wish had been explored a little more or would like to read/learn more about: (1) translation from marginalised/non dominant language to another marginalised/non dominant language (2) as many of these authors currently live on turtle island/in so-called canada, would have loved to read an essay on translation of/into any of the Indigenous languages of the country, especially given their endangered status/importance to trc & decolonisation

[Scott Neigh]

A collection of essays by feminist poets, writers, and translators about translation. Thoughtful, politically insightful, with lots of wonderful writing.

[Jacqueline Nyathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took my time over this collection of essays, and recommend that you do too. These writers present readers with much to consider when thinking about translation—from personal stories of getting into the work, thoughts on how to cope with racism and the separation of languages into classes, translating difficult works (like war stories), and so much more.

In the foreword, Françoise Vergès explains how *trace press*’s focus on decolonial translation aligns with her own feminist decolonial work and practice. She points out the great need for this in a world where the Far Right is seemingly gaining ground against the Global Majority, and where the Left is being overrun by neoliberal capitalism. She talks about how, even for her, with a French mother, “French … was the language of (post)colonial rule and power” while “Creole was the language forged in resistance, and our language of intimacy, but it was forbidden at school and in the media, and presented as a mere dialect.” This is the case for most of the essayists in this collection: a conflicted relationship with the language of the metropole which is, paradoxically, the reason for their work.

Khairani Barokka’s dual-language (Bahasa Indonesian-English) essay is the most trenchant on this, and on the deeply damaging emotional labour of translators who are not white in a market where their work is not often adequately recognised or acknowledged. These translators are frequently treated as simple intermediaries between their own culture and the white/Western translator whose name ends up on the final document or book cover. That this essay is written in two languages is breathtakingly poetic: it makes its point on the page before the reader even engages with the text, providing a visual rhythm with the juxtaposition of the two languages.

Yasmine Haj writes in her essay about the differing weights of languages, how Hebrew for her is authoritative, French neutral and semi-intellectual, and English “innocent”—a false innocence in a world where we’ve all been forcibly shaped by this language of Empire. And for Haj, Arabic is the language of everything else, of life, and loss, and play. Every language she has in her head is fraught.

Otoniya J. Okot Bitek’s contribution is a series of letters to her father, Okot P’Bitek, who wrote *Song of Lawino* and *Song of Ocol*—Lawino, the traditionalist, and Ocol, the “modern” urban African. She retraces her father’s footsteps in the UK as she considers her collaboration and engagement with his work, while thinking about decoloniality, national identity, and orality.

Nedra Rodrigo’s essay is a thoughtful discussion of how land and language are linked—tinai (“landscape”), while translating Tamil. Suneela Mubayi’s *The Temple Whore of Language* is a beautiful consideration of “mixed gender and mixed languages”; of how their identity sensitises them to nuance instead of the rigidity of boxes—helpful when translating from and into various languages; and of translation as unsettlement. Iryn Tushabe’s *Saved* muses on Christianity, coloniality, the Ugandan school system and the English language. Gopika Jadeja thinks about caste and language in translating Dalit poetry. Rahat Kurd’s *Elegiac Moods* is also epistolary, in letters to Agha Shahid Ali, the Indian-American, Kashmiri Muslim poet. Lisa Ndejuru made me think about what we lose when we translate African oral tradition and history, often in the form of songs, to paper. She examines Rwandan history as mediated through recordings—translated and transcribed—of ibitekerezo by a colonial Belgian historian, Jan Vansina, in the 1960s just before independence.

The individual pieces in *River in an Ocean* form a much greater whole, a picture of what it means to be a Global Majority translator. There are common themes: colonial damage, language loss, a certain level of disregard and even contempt from those in the position of dominance (language and cultural dominance being interchangeable), and also a deep yearning—a stance as advocates, even—in those working in translation for the preservation of (minority) languages and culture. Across the collection, each translator’s attention to and love for language are clear.

*River in an Ocean* advances a position that’s even more compelling now in our globalised world, that translation is crucial for increasing connection and understanding, but also that it’s important to preserve the diversity that causes us to need translation in the first place. It requires some delicacy, perhaps, to successfully thread the needle; but there are many thinkers considering what the future of translation could or should be, and the writers of these essays are some of them.

Thank you to Nuzhat Abbas and *trace press* for a DRC.