Patel and Youssef (and the many translators who contributed quotes to their piece) draw our attention to the need for translators, editors, and publishers within the literary community to not only make space for heritage speakers, translators of color, and translators of "minority" languages, but to actively challenge the structures that devalue and discourage their contributions. They mention the descriptor "fluent," which reviewers often attribute to "good" translations and which, to me, is a coded way of saying that it adheres to white, educated, upper-middle class standards of English language and literature. I feel the same way about the word "seamless" as it is used to describe translations. 

In addition to the changes that must occur on an individual and interpersonal level within the translation community, it is only possible to decolonize the field of literary translation once translators are properly recognized and compensated for their work. This is where Croft and Page-Fort's advocacy for the role of the translator comes into play. For those of us in the MFA here at BU, we've been repeatedly told that it is near-impossible to make a living as a literary translator and that we certainly shouldn't be pursuing it for the money, but rather for the art of it. I can't help but speculate that this makes the pursuit of literary translation inaccessible for a lot of people, and when Patel and Youssef point out that many translators are white and come from a certain privileged background, it makes sense, knowing that it is both 1) difficult to break into the field and 2) difficult to sustain oneself on the work alone. Things like getting royalties (as Croft points out, she received none for her work on Olga Tokarczuk's books), an end to the hierarchization of languages and literatures, and, yes, names on the covers of books can do a lot to make the translation community more supportive of its translators. Diversification efforts can only go so far if publishing as an institution isn't prepared to support those efforts. 

These articles, specifically the one by Patel and Youssef, made me think back to this series of tweets by Nick Glastonbury (translating from Turkish), which got a lot of attention when it was published back in April 2021. It touches on some of the themes from this week's articles, specifically the translator's role as an advocate for the text, the hierarchy of languages in world literature, and the inhospitality of the publishing industry. 

-Maggie