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Unread 03-14-2021, 06:54 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Roger,

Objectively speaking, is "We Shall Overcome" any great shakes as a poem? It uses repetition as a substitute for rhyme, and the words really don't say anything poetic or profound.

It is the context of its performances as a protest song make that song sacred to millions of people around the world--and particularly to Black Americans, who were at risk of losing their lives or liberty in connection with the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s, and also in connection with the situations that prompted those protests.

So, too, the context of Amanda Gorman's poem--after the blatantly unequal administration of justice and the blatantly race-based voter suppression that crescendoed in the final year of the Trump Administration--makes "The Hill We Climb" sacred to many Americans, but particularly to Black Americans.

Isn't it understandable that the poem might be viewed with far greater reverence by people who felt it was important enough to risk COVID-19 infection by joining 2020's Black Lives Matter marches, than it is by people who did not?

Even the very thing that I regard (objectively, I think, but possibly through implicit bias) as a poetic flaw in Gorman's poem--namely its inclusion of so many clichés, such as the time-honored "justice"/"just is" pun that many White people have assumed was Gorman's original coinage--becomes a strength, in the context of quoting things that Black voices have been saying for decades without being heard outside of the social justice community.

If the reason that various publishers did not include any translators of color among the options that Amanda Gorman was given to choose from was that they've never before seen any reason to hire any, I think that's a perfectly legitimate point for Deul to raise. If translation should, as you contend, only be done by "the best translators available," what are the implications if "the best translators available" are perennially only White, due to hiring preferences?

Quote:
Meulenhoff said Gorman herself had approved Rijneveld appointment, though no Dutch Black spoken word poets were among the options, according to the BBC.

After Rijneveld’s resignation, the publishing house’s general director Maaike le Noble said the company wanted “to learn from this by talking and we will walk a different path with the new insights,” according to The Guardian. “We will be looking for a team to work with to bring Amanda’s words and message of hope and inspiration into translation as well as possible and in her spirit,” he said.
I don't see how Deul can be blamed for a decision by the publisher, which you characterize as resorting to "translation by committee." But surely Eratosphere itself illustrates the utility of communal workshopping. I don't see why you find a variant on that idea "comical." Regardless of its merits, though, this seems to be the publisher's idea, not Deul's.

Also, Roger, surely I've misunderstood your earlier comment that seemed to imply that since Blacks in the Netherlands are more likely to be recent refugees than the descendants of slaves, Blacks in the Netherlands don't have any relevant experience of racism that might inform their translation of a Black American's poem, and therefore there's no reason a White translator into Dutch can't do the job just as well. Knowing you, I'm pretty confident that that is not at all what you meant, so I'd be interested to hear what you did mean.

And finally, since identity is at the center of this discussion, it seems important to note that Marieke Lucas Rijneveld was identified as a girl at birth, but now identifies as non-binary, with the pronouns they/them. So "trans woman" is not accurate in any sense.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 03-14-2021 at 07:35 PM. Reason: tweaks for accuracy to antepenultimate paragraph
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