Twitter can be a useful place to learn new ideas if we use it right.
As much of my literary translation published so far has involved works from the classic Gujarati canon, I get asked sometimes about some of the problematic social mores of earlier times. My response is that I generally avoid translating works that feel problematic to me. But, yes, we have to consider such works as representative of their time when gender, class, caste dynamics were different. In that sense, they’re more like sociocultural and historical artifacts to me. That said, I also remind people that things aren’t all good now. Even when we might have improved some of our sociopolitical attitudes and behaviors, our language hasn’t always caught up.
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Take this first simple example of two words, “shirtless” and ‘topless”, and how we’ve genderized their usage.
The second tweet below is another truth that I feel hard as a literary translator.
A man is "shirtless" while a woman is "topless." One might say this refers to women's larger variety of clothing options. More intriguingly, it implies we have not decided on men's orientation in space. Who knows where the top of a man is
— lil pom poko jerk (@rajandelman) February 17, 2022
There's no such things as synonyms. Your teachers lied to you. The words we use are filled with an incredible amount of nuance and there are none that are exactly interchangeable. This also means that truly perfect translation is impossible. This is the hill I will die on.
— Jay Hulme (@JayHulmePoet) February 14, 2022
This important essay by Alice Whitmore about the controversial #NametheTranslator and #TranslatorsOnTheCover movements on social media shares a few more Twitter truths. And this particular bit resonates deeply too.
“A translator’s work involves months or years of careful re-writing: we choose and type every single word, sometimes working in flow, sometimes in exquisite agony; we research and edit and finesse and defend the text from cover to cover, several times over. [. . .] something that ‘proclaims itself to be an aesthetic problem’ is often much more than that; ‘what is consistently at issue is power.’ The fight for recognition now taking place may feel like empty symbolism to some, but it is deeply personal for others. Indeed, what could be more personal – or symbolic – than a name?”
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And, finally, I shared a small Twitter thread earlier this week about how I’ve created a sustainable writing and translating practice. I began this way back when I was still working a demanding, full-time job in Silicon Valley. Perhaps it might be helpful to others who cannot devote too much time to their writing and/or translating work.
1/n Sharing a thread about what I call my "Writer's 100" practice. I started this a decade or so ago at about the same time that I started a #wordoftheyear practice. Wrote about the latter in this essay: https://t.co/1nMZ7R4M1c
— Jenny Bhatt (on a social media break) (@jennybhatt) February 16, 2022
I don’t spend a lot of time on social media because, for me, it’s distracting and does something to my ability to focus deeply on something for long periods of time. That said, as a writer and translator from a minority background (in the US), I’ve found community and wisdom there. But, for the most part, I aim to be as professional (versus personal) there as I would be at my workplace. Everyone uses social media differently and this is the only way I’m able to use it effectively. So please feel free to connect with me at the social links below and share your own Twitter wisdom about translation, writing, language, etc. Happy to share it on.