Welcome. This is the second episode of translating COVID 19 in new series of video conversations
exploring the significance of translation at the time of the coronavirus pandemic.
My name is maternally and I am, Lalami, research fellow at the Queens College University of Oxford.
I am the principal investigator of Trunking Illness, which is the project and 35 media series.
And if you would like to hear more about this project,
you can visit the Queens College So website and click on the research that believing in us today, I am honoured to join in conversation.
Charles Fox, The Professor James Sparrow, professor of French at the University of Liverpool Charles is not only the leading academic,
he is also a caring and inspirational mentor to his students and colleagues, including myself.
Charles, as published by date on topics as varied as travel writing, postcolonial literature,
colonial history, comics, penal culture and the afterlife of slavery.
Since 2012, and this is perhaps the part of Charles's career that will inform today's discussion with Iraqi society.
2012 Chances Being the HNC Theme Leadership Fellow for Translating Cultures,
a monumental research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Since his appointment now eight years ago,
Charles has overseen a portfolio of around 100 projects across the world honour which engage with concepts of multiculturalism,
multilingualism, tolerance and identity.
Charles is a renowned expert in the field of translation studies, and I am indeed thrilled to have him as a special guest of this series.
Charles, I would like to start with a question related to your own work and experience of translating cultures.
Could you give us a sense of what it is translating cultures, research themes and what it has to do with issues of health and well-being?
Thank you, Marta. First of all, warmest congratulations on the translating COVID 19 project, which I think is an extremely timely initiative,
and thank you also for giving me this opportunity to talk about the resonance
of translating cultures as a theme with your own work and your own interests.
Just a bit of background on translating cultures.
It was one of four strategic themes launched, as you said, by the Arts and Humanities Research Council back in 2012.
What's important about translating cultures is that it developed organically so it wasn't commissioned.
Work on the projects that emerged were a community response to calls that we put out.
And what fascinates me is that those 100 or so projects you've already mentioned that formed our portfolio provide a real snapshot of work
in the area of translation and interpreting and multilingualism that's emerged over the past decade or so of those hundred or so projects.
I think it's quite striking.
About a third of them were research networks, and that provides a real indication for me of the extent to which and you're seeing this,
I know in your own work that there's a commitment to collaborating to building capacity around questions of translation, interpreting multilingualism.
Now, translating cultures led in particular to three large grants.
I'll talk about a couple of them in a moment. They were grants of about two million pounds each.
At the time, they were unprecedented in their scope and scale.
They were the largest ones that the city had ever something else.
And this leads back to your question.
That was really important for translating cultures was the way in which the theme was a major input to the UK, our AI Global Challenges Research Fund.
So the fund, about one and a half billion pounds,
are supporting UK researchers to form partnerships with other researchers and with NGOs and organisations in the global south.
What was exciting about that engagement with the CRF was it allowed us to show the role of language and
translation in the formation of intercultural knowledge in a whole range of different partnerships with,
as I've said, researchers in the global south.
Particularly striking example we had, which I think again is relevant to your question, is the pioneering work done by Hillary Foote.
It led from the University of Reading on listening zones of NGOs.
Now, translating cultures was about a very broad concept of translation.
It wasn't just about inter lingual transfer. We focussed on issues that that are really important to the questions that interest you.
So globalisation, transnational connexions. We also, though, and again, this is part of my my response to you.
We focussed on domestic issues.
We looked at the way in which the United Kingdom itself is a multilingual society with world languages, minorities, languages,
community languages with a really complex linguistic ecology which brings with it all sorts of translation and interpreting needs.
And one other thing I'd say, and I think again,
as we look at the ways in which humanities social science scholars respond to the current pandemic, we were really keen on avoiding presenteeism.
So a lot of our work was looking at the need to historic size, questions of translation,
questions of interpreting questions of language and the key ideas that emerged were,
Well, we need to challenge any sense that monolingual ism is an unmarked case in our research, in our policies, in our everyday life.
We need to recognise and again, this is central to responses to the current health crisis,
recognise the ways in which being human involves fundamentally negotiating linguistic diversity.
That obviously leads to to a key point, and I think one will probably come back to and that's one of our jobs.
As scholars, researchers, teachers active in the area of language in translation is we need at every possible
turn to challenge linguistic indifference and to encourage sensitivity to language.
And part of that as well is something I know you're interested in,
and that's understanding the specific meanings of translation even when translation is deployed to.
For Italy, and in a very striking example of that is obviously thinking about translational medicine.
What does that term translational tell us about the journey of knowledge from bench to bedside?
And the final aspect that really emerged very strongly from translating cultures was the way in which we need to explore
the relationship between translating and culture and to understand the close independent interdependency of those terms.
Now, in terms of the second part of your question,
and that's what we see in translating cultures in relation to the medical humanities in relation to medicine and translation.
Well, I don't want to be disappointing, but there was less activity than than I anticipated.
I think that's in part because some of that work that would interest you very much went to our sister theme,
science in Culture, with whom we worked quite closely.
That said, though, concerns around health and well-being were central to a number of our core projects.
So one of the the three large grants researching multilingual at the borders of language, the body and the state?
Well, a key part of that was the work of Ross White previously in Glasgow,
is now a colleague of mine in Liverpool looking at questions of global mental health.
Considering the ways in which Western medical knowledge is translated to context in
the global south and the importance of factoring in to that translation process.
Indigenous knowledge as an alternative, another one of our large grants,
you might know it because it was focussed very much on on Italian culture trends nationalising modern languages.
They had a large project in Namibia.
It was under the aegis of the Global Challenge Research Fund looking at the role of multilingualism and in particular,
the use of local languages in health education.
And just to give you a third example, I'm not so much in the area of medical humanities, but in the area of disability studies.
I'm Jemaine and Napier at Heriot-Watt led a fantastic project called Translating the Deaf Self,
which looked at the way in which I'm hearing impaired people.
Deaf people live literally in translation as they rely on interpretation for communication.
And just one final issue I'd mention translating cultures also engaged with a constellation of other awards.
And it's a number of those other awards which are probably of interest to you and the work you're doing.
One particularly comes to mind it's it was based in Lancaster, and it was called translating chronic pain,
and it was an incredible research network that brought together people living with chronic pain.
Representatives of pain charities, medical practitioners,
creative writers to think about the ways in which chronic pain can be can be turned into what those involved in that project called flesh illness,
writing short, fragmentary episodic pieces of writing which capture that particular experience.
Thank you so much for this very rich overview, which is really which highlights a series of very impressive projects all around the UK and abroad.
And now my second question would like to explore a bit more.
These are metaphorical sense of translation and reflect on the current situation as well by linking these reflection to our presence.
So in our in one of your latest blog posts that you suggested,
and I quote that to translate and to reflect on translation in our current context of confinement is to sense in
often unexpected ways the expansiveness and interconnectedness with which the practise is inevitably associated.
I was wondering whether you would like to comment on this sentence,
perhaps by helping us see which aspects or outcomes of translating cultures can be applied to the current health crisis.
What we can learn from these practises of cultural translation.
Yes, it's a it's a big question. And as I said,
I'm really very grateful for the invitation to to reflect on this because I think the learning
from translating cultures really is very relevant to the current challenges that we are facing.
Translating cultures, as you said, was launched in 2012. It dealt with many geopolitical shifts that we hadn't anticipated.
It dealt with the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the the.
European Union, we had a lot of collaborations with colleagues in the United States,
and so during the lifetime of the theme, we saw the impact of the election of the 45th president of the United States.
We saw the the rise of popular nationalism in Europe and beyond.
We saw the 2015 refugee crisis or the the crisis of hospitality in Europe.
But so although we didn't anticipate COVID 19, it's clear that our findings and the way in which we handled other major challenges can be factored in.
The first point I'd make and and it's one we've mentioned already is the need for
responses to the challenges of this magnitude magnitude to be linguistically sensitive.
And that was a key message coming out of translating cultures.
I think what we've seen over the past three or four months is an initial emphasis on STEM research.
Understandably, in terms of the crisis, we're in a focus on some of the areas that you're familiar with aetiology,
epidemiology, the development of vaccines. What excites me, though, is that we're now increasingly seeing this need for scholars in the arts,
humanities and social sciences to be part of a much more consolidated effort.
People now are talking.
I don't know if you've seen this about shape, so social sciences, humanities and arts for people and the economy or people and the environment.
So this sense that for us to handle the current pandemic and for us to imagine possible futures beyond the pandemic,
the arts humanities are absolutely crucial.
And I would say that I'm a major part of that is to do with reflecting on the linguistic and it's to do with reflecting on the cultural,
and it's to do with thinking about about translation.
So I think that the responses that we're seeing now and the responses that will emerge as this virus is is slowly brought under
control need to be rooted in an understanding of language that needs to be rooted in understandings of of into cultural difference.
As we seek to grapple with how this virus has had an impact within cultures and across cultures, often revealing great inequality.
So that's the first thing I'd say that that emphasis on on linguistic sensitivity.
The second aspect you've alluded to already, and that's having a clear understanding of what it means to evoke translation metaphorically that
need to to unpack ways of talking about the virus in terms of the translation of of disease.
And there's a lot of work to be done on that. And I know that's central to to your own current interests.
But I go from that focus on the metaphorical back to the practical, and this is one of the things we did in translating cultures.
There was this constant balance between practical understandings of translation and much more metaphorical understandings.
I think what we've seen over the past few weeks is that there's a growing sense of the need to ensure
that those at risk of this virus need absolutely to have access to information in their own language.
And that awareness is a real challenge to assumptions about the monolingual nature of public information.
The monolingual nature of science, education and science education,
which needs to be seen as translational, both metaphorically but also in this sense, quite literally,
there is a need for public information to be disseminated in a wide range of community languages,
not just in majority languages, and I'd add something here.
I think that translation can also be seen as a way of engaging the public through other media.
And I've always been interested in the work of the graphic medicine movement who have
shown us that we can use other forms pictorial forms to translate scientific knowledge.
And I suppose the final point I'd make there about this sort of ethical and social value of translation.
We've seen this. This is where History Association even recently saw association is important.
We've seen this in in in previous health crises, not least the 2009 swine flu pandemic, when there was an acknowledgement that.
Knowledge about health circulates beyond English, it circulates in other languages,
and we really need to make sure that information in other languages is made available in in translation.
The final point I'd make, and to a certain extent, it's one you've alluded to already.
And again, we're seeing this quite firmly at the moment.
And that's the need in terms of addressing this current pandemic for transnational and comparative knowledge.
Now, a lot of the concerns relating to epidemiology relating more generally to public health have underlined
precisely the importance of comparative approaches that need to grasp how the virus has taken root,
how it's spread, how it's being controlled, crucially elsewhere.
And the only way we can have that knowledge, global knowledge is through detailed cultural understanding, which comes through linguistic knowledge.
And I was when you asked that question,
I thought of the in translation studies of that concept of trans editing and that need to understand the ways in
which we can maximise the flow of information and understand how that information is being filtered as it reaches us.
So I think the learning from translating cultures in relation to to the current situation in which we find ourselves is extremely broad.
Thank you very much for elucidating all these areas of exploration and concern at the same time.
And I will my next question in a sense,
moves from these public collective scenario to a more private one and enters into the reality or around holding the houses and lives at the moment.
Yes, yes.
So coronavirus disease is one that undermines not only our immune system, but also our common understanding of words such as isolation and community.
We are the COVID 19 generation, the most connected and yet perhaps the loneliest of all.
Mental Health Foundation has reported that, according to a survey of UK adults,
which took place during lockdown at the beginning of April, one in four people said that they had feelings of loneliness.
Well, in the same question was asked shortly before lockdown, just one in 10 people said that they had these feelings.
So in a matter of weeks, the social distancing, social distancing lack.
EE ee, ee ee ee.
And in this age of confinement. Right.
This, for me, is a key question because it allows us to think about the interdisciplinary response to the virus and the way in which the sort of work
that was represented by translating cultures has a complementary and indeed supplementary role to play in the response to the virus.
As you said, the current emphasis is understandably on on on medical control of the virus, the sorts of questions we're already asking in the arts,
humanities and social sciences to do with these other legacies legacies around, as you've said,
mental health and wellbeing legacies around a sense of community legacies around what it means for a significant number of
people across the world not to have been allowed to to mourn their dead in the ways that they would usually expect to do.
This is a major impact which goes beyond the immediate health related and and physical.
The answer I'd like to give you really in terms of illustrating how thinking on this is emerging relates to precisely that sense of isolation
and that sense of confinement and the way in which literature and culture have clearly played a major role in this age of confinement,
particularly for our purposes, literature and culture in translation, which have continued to give people access to the world in in its diversity.
I think what's become increasingly clear over the past few weeks is that literature, cinema, access to to museums,
virtual access to museums have been really important tools in negotiating what
you've just described those very negative effects of isolation and confinement.
What we're seeing is a really strong endorsement of what a number of people have been aware of for a while.
That is the potentially therapeutic value of culture and the therapeutic value of literature in translation of world cinema,
which, as I've said, have played this real role in ensuring that many of us have been able to maintain international connexions.
Many of us have been able to continue to to nurture forms of openness to to the wider world.
So. So I agree with you, the translation has really had a major place already in this age of confinement.
And I'm wondering whether we're actually learning quite a lot now about this emerging area of of of
social prescribing and the way in which in terms of preparation for future episodes of this type,
if we ought to face them in the future, which seems quite likely that we need to be thinking a much more collectively about the role of culture in our
in our facing up to the sorts of challenge mental health and wellbeing challenges that you've talked about.
One thing that really interests me and I know this interests you too, is the way in which certain texts have come.
I've come to the fore. So Kamuela, past Kafka's different long metamorphosis,
translated texts which have circulated widely and have really allowed a number of people
to reflect on and understand better and come to terms with our current predicament.
Thank you. Thank you, Charles.
And I would like just to reflect to be more on the word confinement because it is that specific word and experience it refers to means,
of course, something very different to each one of us. It happens to be a different concept across different generations, social groups and countries.
As you have rightly pointed out in your research blog hypotheses and I quote, we need to be wary of the ethics or metaphor arising confinement.
These and other modes of anxiety are nothing new. And I continue to quote to those rather the she's physically immobile by disability,
imprisonment or other forms of confinement reliant as a result on the imaginative
possibilities or micro S. in order to reach out or transcend the everyday end quote.
So do you think that translation, at least in some of its forms, can offer support or care to the vulnerable populations in the current circumstances?
Yeah, thank you for quoting from that. That blog post.
It was a piece like the British comparative literature.
Her association invited me to write that piece on on on comparative literature in an age of confinement,
and I was very interested in the place of travel writing as a supplementary form to those we've already discussed
and the ways in which travel writing and indeed travel documentaries as well seem to be doing two things.
They seem to be allowing various forms of vicarious travel,
but they also seem to be encouraging people to to rethink their relationship to their direct surroundings
and to see how their direct surroundings can be a place of microbe selection of looking at detail,
but also of introspection and thinking about the ways in which we interrelate individually to those surroundings.
That said, as you've noted there, I've always been very wary of metaphor arising idealising romanticising confinement.
And that's why I very much welcome your question because clearly the confinement that many of us are living through now is highly differential.
The confinement we're living through reveals massive inequalities within our own society,
as well as between our own society and those elsewhere in the world.
Also, I think it's important when we're talking about confinement to pick up on other forms of confinement and and immobility like disability,
like imprisonment, like confinement in refugee camps, which clearly call into question any sense of of romanticising where we find ourselves.
So I was interested in that blog post in in what some people have called sort of claustrophobic travel.
So there's this idea that although we are stuck in one place, we can still explore the world from that place.
My point was, let's be careful here.
There's nothing new about that for and for those who are rendered physically immobile by some of the various conditions that I've described.
I've, you know, another part of my work we haven't talked about. I've worked a lot on on the penal exoticism and penal heritage,
and I've always been worried about the exoticism of exoticism of imprisonment as well in my work on pedestrian travel writing.
I've always been aware that that sort of romanticism of pedestrian ism, idealises and able bodied ness in ways that aren't obviously apparent.
So that's why I think we need to be wary about that sort of metaphor ization of confinement.
That said, and this brings it back to your question. I've already alluded, I think,
to the practical potential of translation in protecting bringing support to vulnerable populations for reasons we don't understand.
The impact of COVID 19 on black and minority ethnic populations seems to be disproportionate.
And as I've said already, that there is this pressing need to ensure equality of access to information,
which depends on the high standards of translation. That's a practical understanding of the way in which translation operates now.
But to think more metaphorically and this is where I think I'll I'll conclude today.
Translation for me has always been a way at looking at the margins.
It's always been a way of bringing marginalised voices, often silence voices onto to the foreground.
So what I'd like to finish with is this idea of translation being a means of bridging understanding between groups.
Translation as a way of articulating the fears.
The frustrations of the sorts of groups who live in confinement on a regular basis that you've already talked about.
And it's that sort of articulation of fears,
frustrations that leads us again to thinking about how translation can challenge the assumptions of the majority.
Thank you very much. Now this is indeed an illuminating,
far reaching and very important contribution because he shows in a sense that the
expansive nature to record your word for translation and yet at the same time,
the capacity of translation to reach those margins that would remain untouched otherwise.
So thank you so much for this and thank you for suggesting ways as well and underlines the ways in which
is why the humanities can be part of the pandemic response by means of pioneering translational work,
like the work that you have been conducting together with your colleagues and within the translating culture theme.
And thank you also for explaining with clarity and to see how questions of contact
and cultural diversity can overlap with questions of the illness and confinement.
At a time when the distinction between the closer the distance has somehow given way to a fluid,
the idea of space interaction and relation to its message would like to thank you also for completing and expanding the
discussion I had with Nicola Gardini in the first episode of the series when we reflected on the new language of COVID 19.
Today, we knew we had an opportunity to reflect that the new spaces caused by COVID and the new concept concepts
of relationship that are these post-pandemic world is asking us to accommodate in our own lives.
So finally, as always, I also would like to thank each one of you for watching this video,
which we hope will help us find a safe, orderly, safe zone, approximately cross-cultural encounter and translation.
Thank you very much indeed.
Marta, thank you for the opportunity to discuss all these, these key issues, and I wish you well for the continuation of the project.
Thank you very much.