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 texts 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.

Nuzhat Abbas is a writer, editor, cultural worker and educator. She was born in Zanzibar and, after several detours, now resides in T'karonto. Her itinerant practice includes teaching literature, writing, gender, and migration at colleges and universities in Canada, the US and Europe; developing community-based writing projects with immigrants and refugees; and curating grass-roots cultural events and festivals. Her critical and creative work has appeared in various Canadian and international journals, anthologies and magazines.

 

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Françoise Vergès' profile page

Khairani Barokka's profile page

Yasmine Haj's profile page

Otoniya Okot Bitek's profile page

Suneela Mubayi's profile page

Iryn Tushabe's profile page

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Rahat Kurd is a writer and poet based in Vancouver. Her most recent publication, The City That Is Leaving Forever (Talonbooks 2021), is a hybrid of correspondence and poetry exchanged between Vancouver and Kashmir over a five year period with poet Sumayya Syed.Kurd’s first collection of poems, Cosmophilia, was published by Talonbooks in 2015. Kurd draws on multilingual poetics and is especially interested in the ghazal tradition in Urdu and Persian literature. With writer and poet Meredith Quartermain, Kurd co-curated and co-hosted The Rhizomatic, a monthly online poetry series featuring a single guest in a deep-dive format, from September 2020 until June 2021.Kurd was the guest editor of the 2019 Summer Supplement issue of The Puritan online literary magazine, publishing poetry and fiction around the theme, “What does it mean to be a Muslim writer?” Commissioned by composer Brian Current , Kurd’s libretto “Light Upon Light” was performed as part of an oratorio, The River of Light, at the Vancouver Opera Festival in May 2019.

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Geetha Sukumaran's profile page

Norah Alkharashi's profile page

Lisa Ndejuru's profile page

Nedra Rodrigo's profile page

"River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation...is an archive of such intimate offerings and chilling provocations from practicing translators, writers, and thinkers of language -- who all ask that we rethink our relationship with the language we use, the language we've inherited, and the ones we might have disavowed."
--Chandrica Basu, Wasafiri

"...these pages are surprisingly accessible, transcending theory and offering compelling stories grounded in real life. As Vergès puts it, the collection foregrounds the authors' "¬personal voices" and presents "the work of translation in all its complexity, and the frustrations, joys, and emotions it provides." True to that informal approach,River in an Ocean flows like an extended craft talk, a lively roundtable, or a dynamic dinner party. It's not just for translators; it's for everyone."
--Claire Foster, Literary Review of Canada

"...a unique anthology that attempts to make sense of personal and political trauma and offers the possibilities of a new approach to translation not based on Eurocentric translation theories. Seen through a feminist, decolonial lens, translation can be understood as un-settlement, as landscape, as memory, as self-discovery and even survival, but, most importantly, as a path that can lead to collective healing."
--Nancy Naomi Carlson, World Literature Today

"...to listen to the voices of translators from the Global South for whom translation is inextricable from essential questions of identity, history, land, dislocation, gender and sexuality offers an invaluable opportunity to expand one's understanding of what translation can be. Here, crossing linguistic borders is not simply a possible professional endeavour, it is a way of being in the world, of understanding where one comes from and how one belongs."
¬--Joseph Schreiber, Rough Ghosts

"...a sublime and urgent book that illuminates the heart of the politics of literary translation, makes its inroads and inner workings graspable, and unflinchingly discloses its human face through vivid testimonies which are scholarly and speculative, personal and political--all in varied lenses from human geography to memoir, from cultural poetics to the personal essay, from historical linguistics to reportage.
--Alton M. Dapanas The Shanghai Literary Review.

"When a feminist translator responds to her calling, the world is enlarged and a better place. This book is exquisite in its scope, and its well-thought out approach to translation"
--Dr. Wangui wa Goro, Public intellectual and activist, translator of Véronique Tadjo and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

"Reading these rich, personal and lyrical essays allowed me to connect with the lived experience of translation. Each author shares not only a passion for language, but also their experience with the sound, taste, smell, music, and even posture, of various languages of the global South."
--Dr. Mehr Farooqi, Author, Ghalib: A Wilderness at my Doorstep.

"These politically charged essays offer a much-needed nourishing approach to translation, bringing acute attention to the processual in translation. For anyone interested in the power and politics of translation in our world today, this collection is a must-read."
--Dr. Dima Ayoub, Author, Paratext and Power: Modern Arabic Literature in Translation.

"When a feminist translator responds to her calling, the world is enlarged and a better place. This book is exquisite in its scope and its well-thought out approach to translation." - Wangui wa Goro, translator of Véronique Tadjo and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

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"Reading these rich, personal and lyrical essays allowed me to connect with the lived experience of translation – each author shares not only a passion for language, but also their experience with the sound, taste, smell, music, and even posture, of various languages of the global South... their words reflect on decolonial and feminist practices in translation while celebrating the beauty and the possibility of language, its ecstasies and its efflorescence, and what it means to live between tongues." -Dr. Mehr Farooqi, University of Virginia. Author, Ghalib: A Wilderness at my Doorstep.

* "A powerful exploration of the complex and pressing issues facing translation now. With a deep commitment to interrogating the act of translation from the ground up, this volume tackles questions of translatability and resists regimes of monolingualism and borders. These politically charged essays offer a much-needed nourishing approach to translation, bringing acute attention to the processual in translation. For anyone interested in the power and politics of translation in our world today, this collection is a must-read." –Dr. Dima Ayoub, Middlebury College. Author, Paratext and Power: Modern Arabic Literature in Translation (forthcoming)