 Hello and welcome. I'm Esther Allen, a professor at City University of New York. And since Allison Markendell will be part of today's conversation about translator communities, our co-host today is Marianne Newman, a leading translator from Catalan and Spanish and the organizer and curator of New York's annual San Jordi Festival, among many other events. Marianne is also a co-organizer of Translating the Future, the conference you are now attending. On May 19, in the second week of this conference, the immensely talented writer and translator Nina Moonser joined us from Beirut for an unforgettable conversation with Madhu Kaza. As you know last week, a catastrophic explosion occurred all over the city of Beirut. During today's presentation, we have specific suggestions for actions to take in support of that city and its people. For those seeking more insight into Beirut's history and current situation, we strongly recommend the work of Nina Moonser. The two editorials that appeared on the op-ed page of the New York Times prior to and following the explosion, her August 9 piece in The Guardian about its aftermath, and Waste Away, her extraordinary essay published in July by The Baffler. First, I'd like to thank Alison Mark and Paola and Esther Allen for inviting me to be part of this. This amazing series of conversations about translation. It's really an honor. In Nina Moonser's August 5th article in The New York Times, immediately following the explosion, she movingly and angrily evoked the impact of explosions in Lebanese history. I'm quoting her now, growing up in Lebanon taught me that an explosion resonates across time, that the shock reverberates forward into your life, and the pressure reconfigures the landscape of the mind. The people of Beirut have been shaped by the bombs that reconfigured this country. Beneath the rubble, beneath the sadness, an immense rage has begun to boil. Lebanese blood has been spilled for so long. After the war, the criminals all granted themselves amnesty. This time, it won't be theirs for the taking. Close quote. In this spirit of resistance, we salute the courage and strength of the citizens of Beirut and encourage everyone to choose a way to express their solidarity and collaboration with them. Today's mutual aid are the subject of today's conversation in what is the 14th installment of our weekly program. Today's group is particularly far flung. Paige and I am Morris, a writer, translator and co founder of the platform disoriented.blog joins us from soul. My name is Paige Saraswat, a writer and reading series director is in Boston. And M links Qualey, writer, translator and founder of the translation community website, Arab lid.org, comes to us from robot Morocco. They are joined by Allison Mark and Powell for a conversation about building translator communities and communities for translation. We will talk about all of today's wonderful speakers by reading their full bios on the center for the humanity site. Following today's conversation, there will be time for questions. Please email your questions for page should cheat mlq and Allison to translating the future 2020 at gmail.com will keep questions anonymous unless you know in your email that you would like us to read your name. We will continue in its current form through September. And towards the end of that month during the conference is originally planned dates, several larger scale events will take place. We'll be here every Tuesday until then, with the week's hour long conversation. Please join us next Tuesday, August 18 at our regular 130 hour for the third and final motherless tongues multiple belongings program. Janet Hong, Pierre Jordies and Maria Jose Jimenez, and do keep checking the center for the humanity site for future events. And the future is convened by pen America's translation committee, which advocates on behalf of literary translators, working to foster a wider understanding of their art and offering professional resources for translators publishers critics bloggers and others within interest in international literature. The committee is currently co chaired by Lynn Miller Lachman and Larissa Kaiser for more information look for translation resources at pen.org. I'm incredibly happy to mention this in the context of today's topic, because for many of us, the pen translation committee is our core community. If you know anyone who was unable to join us for the live stream today, a recording will be available afterward on the howl round and center for the humanities sites. Before we turn it over to Allison and the gang. We'd like to offer our utmost gratitude to our partners at the Center for the humanities at the Graduate Center CUNY. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center, the Coleman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and Pan America, and to the masters of dark zoom magic at howl round who make this live stream possible. For their special support for today's program in particular, we'd like to thank the Middlebury language schools and LTI Korea. And now over to you guys. It's so exciting to be here this. This panel is very meaningful to me because as Mary Ann and Esther suggested the translation committee has for some time been the sort of source of my translation community which has branched out into an inspired various other communities. Also speaking of that I would like to ask MLQ if she would like if she would be able to share a little bit more about ways in which we and our audience might be able to help those in Lebanon. Right. And I think as many people already know Lebanon was already deep in an economic crisis before this began. And the needs right now are very immediate. And so if the biggest thing to do is if you have any sort of extra money whatsoever is to to donate it to things. Ideally, things that are on the ground and things that are happening locally. I don't think there's any wrong place to donate unless you're planning to give money directly to the Lebanese government. But there are bookshops that are fundraising to to reopen such as Paper Cup in Manara. There are studios there are all sorts of things the Lebanese Red Cross Lebanese food bank. Ideally, if you can give to somebody who you know is traveling soon so they can bring cash with them. But otherwise any anything that's going on on the ground, such as Lebanese Red Cross Lebanese food bank is excellent there there are a list of things at Arab lit.org if people want to go look there. Wonderful. Thank you very much. So to begin our conversation. I I thought that maybe each of us could speak a little bit at first about the communities that we each have created. And I guess I would be glad to start today. I think the main communities that I would be talking about our was, I'm honored to be a part of to be founding member of two different translation collectives or translator collectives I should say, one of them is Siddhila and company, and the other is called strong women's soft power. So this was, I believe, back in early 2016. It just, they both came together right around the same time. And I think there was a collective moment happening at that point in time for me personally and in the in the ether I think. So I need to give credit to Sean by and Julia Sanchez, who were the, who had the original idea for Siddhila and company and they invited me and certain other members to become founding members of that and that's a translation collective, a translator's collective based in America. It was primarily based in New York and with translators of various languages. And we wanted to be sort of a mutual support organization in service to the publishing community, but also in to ourselves offering each other support. And at the same time so that that was coming together, I was in conversations and connections with two other women who translate Japanese literature, Lucy North, who lives in the UK and who lives in Japan. And we were coming together over various topics, and we all happened to be going to the London Book Fair that year. And so we organized our first event, which was a reading between we gave the reading our title, our name, strong women soft power. So we came together. The idea was to support, or to promote Japanese women writers in translation in English, and because we sort of saw there to be a need for that, in terms of works in translation, and then we also felt that women translators were not getting the same opportunities. So we wanted to to support ourselves but also bring attention to that in within the translation community so I'm going to leave it at that and I'm going to pass it on maybe to Paige now if you'd like to tell us a bit about how you're here. Yeah, so the community I'll be talking about today is disoriented up log, which is a blog platform that was founded to create a space for people to think through transnational lives and identities essentially lives and transit between Asia and the US. And how the community came about. I was in Korea, a few years ago as a full bright grantee, and I realized during my first grant year that a lot of us were coming from the context of the US, perhaps it was our first time out of the US. And we were discovering that we were having very interesting experiences related to our identities that we were struggling to find the language to name and discuss. So we had a lot of soul searching conversations basically about, you know, for for myself, coming from the US as a black American living in Korea, and sort of having to rediscover or renegotiate what it means to move through a space as a black person in the US as opposed to Korea, and trying to find ways to talk about that experience and just feeling that there were maybe other people having similar encounters and grappling with similar questions led me and some of the other grantees I was in conversation with to think that maybe a platform for that kind of conversation on a more global scale would be really helpful. So we founded the blog, sort of, just as a project of kind of calling on anyone who is living this just muddled transnational life to submit writing art any media that they felt they could use to ask those questions and struggle toward answers and maybe not arrive at answers but we found that it didn't begin as a translation project so to speak. But I think the questions we were asking kind of naturally gave way to multilingual and multimedia ways of asking and grappling with those questions so in the end the blog now contains several languages several countries represented several types of experiences in transit. And I think that's really exciting and it was really overwhelming but really comforting to see how many people were interested in participating in this conversation and interested in what it means to kind of live these lives where we're uprooted from certain contexts and planted in others and just trying to make sense of it with whatever language we have at that moment. Yeah, I will pass on the torch to Shuchi. And thank you Alison for putting this group together, really honored to be in this conversation with you all. The communities I'm talking about are the book selling communities. I work at a bookstore and and how to reach readers and and kind of I guess I'm not a translator so opening up the world of translation to communities that are not familiar with translation. So in 2018 I founded a author event series called the Transnational Literature Series, and that was really focused on the theme of migration and works in translation naturally fell into into that kind of, you know that theme but it wasn't until later that year after I attended the use translation now conference that I thought the conversations translators were having were really, really enmeshed with what the series themes were about considering you know kind of centering the American experience was one of the big things that we were trying to do with the series, and that's something that translators are facilitating through bringing various works in and and looking at how we use language, and the stories and the way stories are told in the US and how can we kind of open that up. And then of course you know just the, the business of translation and, and how hard it is to get translation published in the US and so all of these conversations really felt like they were in kinship with what was going on in the series and so I started to bring translators more into the conversation in a variety of ways, which we'll talk about later but that's that's basically the angle that I'm here you know kind of representing is sort of how do we how do we bring this work that you're all doing to to larger communities and make them aware of it. So I'll stop there and I'll pass it on to MLQ. Okay, so I guess the, the core of the community that I, I'm going to be talking about is Arab Lit, which started out as a wordpress blog in 2009. Although I've been asked about it several times, only, you know, after many, many years had passed and I no longer quite remember why I opened it up. I know I had a new baby, and I was freelancing at home, and I was probably lonely. When I did open it up and I started to post just kind of thoughts about Arabic literature and translation and micro reviews, I found immediately that I was contacted by, by translators Arabic to English first, and then really very quickly English to Arabic translators as well from around the region and around the world. So I think there was really sort of this untapped need for a communal space and for a community in a very cross cutting way so it's it's now not not a community, the translators of the core of the community in both in multiple directions in and out of Arabic. But it's also Arab publishers. Anglophone publishers who are interested in Arabic literature, Italian publishers who are interested in Arabic literature and read in English. And it's, you know, got Arab kid lit now now which is a children's aspect to it well which involves Arabic children's publishing. And I think what I've enjoyed the most about this community and there are a sort of a number of things you know we had this Arabic translation challenge recently that ran for seven weeks where we threw out poetry and people translated it in different ways, and often amusing ways. Because you know translations often something that you do in your home, particularly in this corona time without seeing other other humans. And I freelance in a number of different ways and it's all, you know right here in this room. One, the thing I think that is worth the best about this community is that for Arabic to English translation. There are a lot of people who are really brilliant at it to are not in in the United States or England, who don't have access to the journals don't know how to access publishers at all, who do beautiful work, but don't have any access to the sort of anglophone publishing or professional or have the citizenship to belong to any institution, or residency or anything. And, and it has been sort of helping people work on pitch letters and I mean really bumbling along together, making connections between people sharing my contacts with people, helping people who wanted to translate and who do beautiful work, find their way to into publishing. So I think, you know, so the Arab lit community is all sorts of different people who are interested in literature and moving how it moves between languages. That's, I mean, this is just it's so amazing to hear from each of you and to hear about this mean one of the reasons that I brought this group together is I think because I felt like there's something about the field or if you even want to call it a field or an industry of literary translation. It's not, it's not really centralized it's not really organized. And yet we are all, you know, striving and struggling to make it and to create literature and to get it into the hands of readers. And so, I think, you know, I, I personally came to literary translation, translating Japanese literature, working through publishing I'm not an academic but I think, and so academia does offer a certain kind of structure. But I think what I know what I noticed or what I felt about each of these, you hear today, is that like you saw a need, or you saw something that you wanted to exist, and you created it, and it worked. People were attracted to it, you know, obviously it was something that you know it wasn't, you know, you weren't it wasn't just in the void, you know, something that that happened like I said you know my collectives both happen at the same times and they feel different needs. So, that's what something that I would like to talk about but you know one of the things like MLQ you were referring to is the sort of precarity I mean because of this lack of structure. You know I think we all and you know booksellers are in a very precarious moment as well. But there is a lot of precarity for literary translators particularly those who don't have jobs, other kind, don't have full time jobs who are doing this as a primary. As their profession. So, MLQ did you want us, would you be able to speak. I'm one of those people who doesn't have a job. I have a lot of jobs, but not, not a one job. And, and that is so when, when I think about creating community around Arabic and Arabic literature and translation. There are, there are so many communities inside the community. And different needs and different access and different authority. So there are, there are translators who live in the United States who are tenured professors, or in Canada or, or in the UK, and who have, you know this sort of immediate authority. You know, there are other ways of course to gain authority Jonathan right, who came to translation through being a writers for after being writers journalists, but there are there are people who have this sort of settled life and they do translation as part of what they do. And that's one translation community and, and you know they're an important part of the translation community and they can help the broader translation community in many ways. And there's another part of the translation community who is like me who's freelancing full time and supporting oneself ones family, sometimes ones extended family. And then there is our different, different still kinds of other precarities, you know, a translator living in Beirut right now, who is also trying to support their family. So inflation is going out of control and they don't have any windows. So this is a broad community with all kinds of different access authority, financial precarity, or not. And so around some issues it becomes very easy to build community right like some things, their big translation challenges fun anybody wants to do it no matter what their, you know, financial position is today. So joining being part of the magazine that we spawned out of it to me it was so important that we pay writers and translators, because, because some people can afford to participate in a magazine that where you're donating your labor. And some people cannot and, and it, it, I was recently speaking before the events of August 4 with with remarantisi who is who does something similar to Arabic quarterly in Beirut, which is a magazine called rusted radishes that moves between Arabic and and English and she'd said her reaction to things becoming more and more precarious in Beirut was that they wanted to create positions for people that they wanted to try and, you know, put something around to protect people to to support people for for doing their work this work and this important work in the arts. And I think, you know, I never imagined myself as sort of a zine photocopying teenager, like worrying about bank transfers and, and paying right you know paying translators I mean that sounds so like grown up and boring. But I, I think there is something, you know, radical also to to paying people to be part of this community. And then, you know, sometimes of course people who have these positions where they don't need to be paid they can donate it back to the magazine as well but so but but it does make creating community sometimes harder because with people who are precarious and people who are not they have different interests and don't necessarily so for instance if you and publishing translations with a university press. They usually don't pay anything at all. And for an academic this may be fine. You know you spent whatever a year working on this translation. It can be important to you in other ways obviously none of us are wholly driven by the financial aspect but for many of us we can't just translate a book and then give it away for free as a regular practice. And, and there's sort of, you know, different. So there's all sorts of different entry points it's a wonderful thing that that's sort of you don't need a certificate you don't need. You don't need any you know you don't need to join a board or a group in order to become a literary translator but there are all kinds of levels of belonging in in the in the industry and. This is something that page can really speak to in terms of gatekeeping and breaking into the industry and what the different kind of levels of barrier to entry are. Thank you so much MLQ I think a lot of what you talked about is especially salient to me as you know I consider myself definitely a new emerging, all of the sort of novice words for translator and you know I'm only really able to comfortably call myself a translator because of these opportunities right for you know getting paid to do this work and being taken seriously and having your work seen as valuable. I think a lot of the barriers that you described definitely would have kept me out of this industry and out of doing this work just because you know there are only so many people who can afford to do it for free or who have access to the rooms where a lot of these decisions are made I think you know as someone who I also am a writer and also had an interest in working in and publishing in an editorial capacity. I see a lot of the same barriers to entry in translation as a part as a wing of the publishing industry and I think there's a clear investment in maintaining those barriers and a lot of ways and that's really why we often see the barriers to make our own communities and to sort of work around the barriers to entry. I think, obviously, a lot of publishing and a lot of, you know, professionally translating is who you know and you know who your circles are and who, who do you think will be a person who can you know rope you into the correct space or rope you into the correct opportunity or room. And you know I've just been so fortunate in my, you know very brief but you know hopefully long tenure as a translator to have encountered a lot of individuals, rather than you know, very large industry wide institutions I've often found that it's those individual gestures of outreach that have really made a huge difference for me, I don't feel that I can say I belong to something that feels coherent as a community but I feel that at every step of, you know, my career so far there's been someone who has, you know, done that work of reaching out and inviting me into spaces conversations you know thank you to Allison again for inviting me into this conversation in this space. And all sorts of interactions can make all the difference and I remember just this year was my first translation reading. And that all came about because it just took one person to introduce me to another person who happened to be organizing a local reading series and then remembered me and you know sent an email and just like that you know I was brought into the space by one person. Right, I want to thank Sam Bet who translates from Japanese as well who hosts the us and them reading series in Brooklyn and you know just brought me into this small indie bookstore in Brooklyn one night and you know people who were in that room and who I was able to share this work with, they, you know, are still in touch and I think that created a community you know however transcend to me seem to have like a kind of one night reading I think those are like lasting examples of community that can come from just individual gestures and the work that so many individuals do to create spaces. And I mean I'm especially curious to hear from, from the bookselling end of it from Shuchi, like what you think about when you are organizing a reading series or organizing events in your bookstore. How do you think about those in terms of community and how do you, how does that work, you know, operate when you're trying to bring in translators and translated writing. I mean I think what you said about meeting someone and and what they can do and as far as opening up community. And that's, that's so much of what was happening at the beginning of the series was, I was trying to find these communities that were talking about literature in this sort of deep way in a very transnational way and I actually found out about the translation now conference at Boston University from Stacy Maddingley who had been coming to the transnational events and helped organize that. And sort of meeting her through the events that she had been attending as just an audience member and express and she expressed interest and this is this is really great and I'm not seeing this kind of work and then keeping that line of communication open and even just realizing you know Boston University is just a mile or so from Brookline Booksmith I mean really we're really close to each other. And yet, even in the city and I think this happens a lot in cities. We just kind of stay within our own communities and we don't intersect and then the second you open it up I mean the views conference was open to the public, you know, and, and I had realized that I didn't know that and so I have this very lucky connection of being in a bookstore. Brooklyn Booksmith's been around for almost 60 years so it's really established within within Brookline and Greater Boston. And so I have access to a public space. And this really is really valuable and, and especially the last few years under Trump's presidency understood the value of having this public respected platform, and how that can be used in new ways and how important it is that those platforms are used in And so I really wanted to break out of this, this sort of, I don't I want us to do something different and new and it was necessary that I started having conversations with people who are already doing this. So talking to the good to Institute was important, you know, the cultural, the French, the French cultural center. They've been doing so much. So all of these communities were already doing so much in Boston and it was like well how can we help. First of all, you know how can we, how can we bring what you're doing to our community, and how can we sort of offer our space up to what you're doing as well. And so, I guess with, with incorporating translators. It was such an experiment there was sort of nobody who had been doing this in a reading series format. So we tried a lot of different things. We, you know, we did a new England translators panel. And that was sort of a great first step because we were able to find translators locally in the community and so that opened it up to students who are interested in translation and and friends the translators and that brought out the kind of natural communities to bring them to the store into this series and saw hey this is a place that's welcoming this kind of conversation. We also mean you know so much has changed of course since the pandemic so we were really fixed to our space. And of course with virtual events that that's kind of opened up in a whole new way. But you know we were, we were when we were able to have authors and translators together in conversation that was always really wonderful to to see how two people work together on a book. And so having Gabriella Alamon in conversation with Dick Dickwell, I'm sorry I'm sorry if I'm forgetting his name. They were, they read back and forth from the Spanish and the English and the Spanish and the English and then it was just this completely new different kind of reading that we hadn't even thought could happen and they were, they were alternating paragraphs. And yet everybody followed and understood what was happening and it was so amazing to just see wow that we can even do this reading in a whole different kind of way. And, and then we've been doing sort of, you know, gathering translators in a particular language, which Alison knows she was part of our translating Japanese panel. And I think what that does is framing it in that particular way it brings in people who are interested in Japan. And people are interested in Japanese literature, it was a chance for us to talk about general ideas of what Japanese literature is and how to break out beyond that. So I think it was finding these ways to kind of to be really, we were being really flexible and open what works what doesn't. Translators can are sometimes the most fiercest advocates of the book that has been brought into English and so they're more than happy to be a part of these conversations and to to realize that and to, and to keep as many lines communication and learning about the collectives has been part of that too. So yeah, I think, I think, you know, just kind of opening, opening up ideas of what we can do and how we can embrace new communities has been, has been really important, and especially in this time where we're sort of, you know, the last couple of years where we're thinking about systems and how to break open from systems that have been established. I want to turn it back to you, I'm accused, and actually all of you to talk about about how you kind of have to what are the challenges you, you face systemically with being a translator and how do you break outside of that. That seems really important to kind of start talking about now. I mean the challenges systemically for, for Arabic literature and translation are sort of many. There, you know, there's the challenge of, of sort of, yeah, you can easily become a part of this. This group somehow, you know, you can, you know somebody you know a writer you love their work, you translated you publish it somewhere, you're a translator, right. But in terms of finding a way to get inside the group. It's, it's, it's very difficult. And then Arabic itself of course is sort of on the margins. So to get inside of the in group that's already at the margins is then you're still at the margins in terms of getting work brought into English or other languages. And, you know, Arabic is just, I think, reaching a point where you're more likely to see the work read. Okay, not more likely, who sometimes are seeing the work read in a really literary way versus just in an ethnographic, you know, behind the veil. This is a story of a woman escaping blah, blah, and reaching America, you know, this sort of gloss put on. So the, and then so there are systemic issues in terms of sort of imperialism in the target language and then there are systemic issues in the source in terms of lack of lack of support so I'm currently part of this group called Arab voices and we're trying to copy LTI. And we're making a brochure for the Frankfurt book fair none of us like, I'm not sure any of us are going to have paid on the committee. It's being organized by this super wonderful Egyptian publisher. Probably the translations will all be done for free. I don't even know is the book it's the booklet going to be distributed I mean, and then we were hoping also that there would be some kind of translation fund for it attached to these 24 books that we're going to put in this booklet. Currently there's no translation formed for Arabic like there is for, for, you know, certain other languages. So they're, they're all kinds of difficulties on multiple sides of this. And I wanted to ask actually to. So for Arabic literature, there's this sort of additional gate, or difficulty of breaking in if you have an Arab name. So you can be, you can be Lena Munzer you can be the best. You can be Yasmeen Zohdi, but you still have this. So the name is not. Now Humphrey Davies is also like an amazing translator your name is not, you know, Bob Smith, which gives you this additional credibility because Bob Smith must be really good with English, I guess. Does this also exist page with with Korean as well. I think a lot of what you spoke to I can definitely see parallels in my experience so far. I think Korean is one of the languages I would say is is definitely well supported within the context of the source language I think Korea is very supportive and incredibly dedicated to getting more readers in all languages and not just support for that, you know, LTI Korea support has a translation fund for several languages. I know there have been translations into Turkish French, you know, they really do have the resources and like pull the resources well. I think my struggles so far in translating from Korean to English are coming from the more systemic or more kind of structural issues within publishing, which is, you know, not immune to right issues of imperialism and imperialist influence or racism and I think definitely I'm less likely to be taken seriously as a translator than you know someone who emails anybody you know on the US and or the Korean end with a name like Bob Smith. I think that that it definitely it allows for those the abundance of resources that exist to tend to kind of fall into a lot of the same hands a lot of the time which narrows, you know, just how many people are able to yeah enter this already marginalized group and already incredibly small group, which I think we should be doing as much as we can to bring more people in and you know have more people interested in reading and sharing Korean literature. But a lot of those barriers just there's there's an investment in maintaining them and I think that's the most important thing is to really open open up the definition of a translator and open up our understandings of what translators are doing and the work that we do so that yeah more people can enter these spaces and I think yeah it would be wonderful to see translation funds exist for every language I would love to be reading more literature in every language and it's often it comes down to just the concrete funding support the structural support for the work. I think, yeah, Korean definitely has a lot of those resources but I think we, I mean, yeah we can still be doing a lot more to diversify who's translating and take seriously the the translators of color especially and you know heritage language speakers tend to be discredited or their work is not taken as seriously either or is praised or lauded. And so I think all of those are issues that need to be dealt with at the same time as the kind of concrete financial issues as well. Right, and I guess I'd imagine there's also an issue of transparency as well, because I just know that Bob Smith is being paid more for word than everybody else in the industry. And just those, we don't know. I mean I, you do I do know how much Bob Smith is being paid but I don't know what those different levels are and how to negotiate better. I don't think that meant most people don't know I mean there is transparency is a really good thing to bring up but I think, and I, you know, for instance, like the pen translation committee has done a lot of work and of advocacy and I personally have done a lot of work with them, advocating for translators and to have better terms and standards in the industry but but I think I mean there's so many things to talk about here but one of the things also I wanted to bring up is sort of like bring like enabling the sort of inspiration for some of these, you know, like, you find something you want to translate you translate it you find a place to publish it, you're a translator, but you know since we're all since translation is so sort of solitary. Sometimes we are working in isolation and we don't even consider these other things that we might be able to do but as a, as a for instance I'll talk about strong women soft power what you know we've written articles together we've done readings together, but back in 2017, we organized a day long symposium that took place in Tokyo. We did it in Tokyo because we are target was our market or audience was Jap people translating into and out of Japanese and so obviously that was the place to do it. We weren't funded we did this, we didn't really we weren't we didn't have any funding or support we did it ourselves, but the idea you know the basis was we wanted to talk about community. We wanted to bring people together we wanted to talk about some of these barriers or stereotypes that exist within publishing. So we had, you know, different panels organized and we brought together all of these people and I think, you know, it wasn't in the mainstream. You know the fact that three people living on different continents could put something like this together. And we weren't funded like I said we weren't funded we didn't have you know an academic institution or a governmental institution. Supporting us so we had, you know, there was, you know, we were scrapping you know scrambling and scrapping things together but at the same time there was a certain amount of freedom and like expansiveness in terms of what could be possible and it was it was a tremendous we were covered in the Japan times you know we had and I think out of that convert the conversations that took place that day we inspired other groups to form their own collectives were to take up their own, you know, kinds of work literary or translation workshops and things and so sometimes it's just like this, suggesting what's possible. And I'm, I know, I knew that this was going to happen I'm looking at the time it's. It's time I'm hoping that we have some questions that have come in otherwise we can just keep asking ourselves these questions but I knew we would just kind of scratch the surface of all of the things to talk about here. So yes, I think that Mary Ann has a question. And she's coming back. Yes. Hello. I have many, many questions. But the first one came from paid pages first intervention because I find the notion of creating a community through a blog, really interesting and and the nature of the blog which was, you know, transnational. I wondered if you would give us an example of some insight that you derived from through the blog on the trans translational transnational connection something that, you know that really struck you. And I, I think everybody, perhaps you could all give us an example of how your community has somehow, you know, given, given you some, some special experience. Thank you for the question. I think. Yeah, definitely. Everyone who was kind of on the founding team also participated directly in editing a lot of the pieces that came in and by editing I don't mean in the stricter publishing sense but just sort of curating and seeing how things fit together. One of his pieces I remember. I think that just in general getting to hear from people who sort of saw the challenge of the blog and took it upon themselves to also ask questions about how their own language shapes their identity and vice versa how their language shapes the way that they use language was really interesting to see, because I was obviously coming to it from the standpoint of, you know, an American who moves to Korea and now has a lot of questions about what I'm doing here and and how I'm doing here. I read a lot of pieces from writers on the other end of that and I'm thinking of my co founder Eugene Lee, who is a Korean American, often grappling on the blog with issues around sort of living in the US without a concrete sense of what that identity is and then now being in the context of Korea where, you know, he is expected certain things are expected of him and among them is like a certain skillfulness with the language. He wrote a lot about kind of understanding his identity through maybe the ways that language often fails him in Korea but also the ways that that expectation sort of changes the stakes for him when it comes to speaking Korean or using Korean. I think just pieces like that really. You know, obviously, I'm coming to the language from a completely different standpoint but I think that just asking questions about like how much of our daily identities is informed by language was something I took away from the blog and questions I still, you know grapple with when I'm working in translation Thank you Paige. That is really cool. We have another question from Avery Udagawa that is you guys have all skirted around it but I think it's good to address it directly and I'm sure you'll each have a different response. Avery asks, how do you organize and sustain a translator community without it becoming overwhelmed. How do you encourage others to help shoulder your burden as an organizer and activist. Avery knows very well that I don't. No please answer the question. I haven't the slightest idea. I mean the so the organization I'm in with Avery is called World Kid Lit and I think actually that group has done a far better job than Arab Lit in terms of establishing a core committee that it that works together and that shares things together has a regular now we're supposed to have a monthly zoom call together that we so that we so that there's not one person that who is really kind of silently doing many things that nobody else even knows about. So, I think with that with that I think spreading out somehow into into some kind of system whatever it is is helpful. For my experience I guess it would actually come from my experience when I was co chair of the translation committee. One of the things that I learned from that you know you have this group of people who are coming together and lots of people have different ideas or ambitions for what what they might like to see and again I think sometimes it's just about empowering people to recognize like you know if this is something you want to happen you can start working towards that goal yourself you know you don't necessarily necessarily you know will support you and so I think I think that has a lot to do with the community of just sort of like bringing bringing you know letting people have their vision and then supporting them to I mean I do understand I know very well from working with Esther on translating the future how it can be very overwhelming but the translation community is also they are very willing to to lend their support and help I think. I just wanted to kind of go back to Mary Ann's I wanted to have my own chance to sort of respond a little bit to one of the things to what Mary Ann was asking earlier, and I think obviously community is about coming together and supporting each other but I think like the two collectives that I'm a part of you can kind of see like one of them is all various languages and so you would see that we're sort of supporting literature and translation but with the Japanese translators coming together and I know like there are other groups there are other like Smoking Tigers I know is a Korean a collective of Korean translators. I know this because Alta we did this relay blog on Alta last year that we interviewed each other and but I think it's one of the questions that comes up with communities who are translating the same language pairs. You might think that there's like competition that you think oh well you know other you know like I'm competing with Ginny and Lucy for the same work. But the reality is that we're not that I mean first of all we're sharing resources we're sharing information. And so that helps to sort of boy us up but it's also that like a rising tide lifts all the relationships, I think, and the idea that if you're working together somehow it creates more work, more opportunities. And I just wanted to to make sure that I feel like that's certainly been my experience and I wanted to share that with other people because if you're, if that's if that's keeping you from from working together with your fellow translators. Don't let it please. It's a really good follow up on that question actually in creating your own initiatives. It seems obvious that having a source of dollars or money to pay participants would be desirable. Are there other specific things you want or need for your projects that institutional support might offer. I mean, obviously money is in funding is the most but I mean a platform for publishing things is, you know, in extremely valuable, even in this exact moment, having someone like how round, you know, having a media platform who's going to help because there are a lot of technical considerations that literary translators probably don't know very much about. So there are very, you know, the Brookline Booksmiths, you know, bookstores. I mean that's another thing that, you know, I was so attracted to an end just awed by what she did with the transnational series is that, you know, I found as I was learning to as I was having books being published and wanting to participate in the promotion of them is that like a lot of translators were not considering they didn't consider inviting the translator, even like book groups, they'll do book groups and they'll they'll select your book, but obviously they can't invite the writer who's living in Japan or Morocco or Lebanon or they're going, but they don't invite the translator. And so I was finding that like, you have to sort of reinvent the wheel every time you wanted to do a try an event, promoting a book or books in translation. And so the fact that she's sort of establishing this format was really helpful, not just in Brookline, Massachusetts, but also as a sort of template that other bookstores could use so it you know that's the kind of in kind support that I think is can be offered. Thank you. Do you want to respond as well. Um, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's as far as we don't we don't actually we've never paid our, our speakers, everybody who's coming in is promoting a book. And so they're on tour from publishers. And so that has has been really challenging because we want to invite people and it's how do we how do we get people, people to come because it is it is labor. Yeah, so I mean I don't really have anything to add other than then that I think that that financial bit of it is is always is always sort of a struggle. And you know how do we how do we make sure people understand that this is this is valuable work and that their time is valued, and that even as a bookstore when we're asking them to come and we are you know and kind of publishing, you know, promoting their book that we also value that work that they were doing even if we can't pay them. I mean, I think that's a really that's a really big challenge, definitely for independent bookstores. But I think in the industry in general, is that kind of financial compensation that proves a word, you know, yeah. I have one quick question I don't know if we have time for it but English is an issue I think when MLQ was speaking, you were talking about how through arablit.org Italian publishers were seeing Arabic works. So I'm wondering on the one hand English is an issue because it's really hard to break down that door. But on the other hand through your communities. Do other people find literature in it because you're translating into English. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, a Greek translator just told me she watched the interview, oh that she watched the interview that I did with Lizzie Jacquette for for the Geordie festival, and now she's That's amazing. Oh, and arablit is often articles specific specific pieces are translated to Spanish to French to Italian, at least once once a week into into some, and there are a number of sort of spin off sites there's an Arabic literature in Spanish there's an Arabic literature in Italian site. As well. So, so, you know, there was a book that I felt very passionate about and translated the whole thing without having a publisher for it's finally coming out in October but for a while the sort of the only fruit of it was that that the author was able to show it to European publishers who were then interested in it based on them. I mean, English can be a door but it, it also can create opportunities and other languages. And does that happen in Korean as well, Paige. I'm still too new to say, but I think definitely just given the scope and the support that I mentioned like LTI Korea and other foundations have. I think definitely, you know, English is not seen as sort of the only option for translating from Korean and I think that, you know, while many of the into English translations can sort of open up more readers to an interest in Korean literature. You know, it's Korean isn't a really interesting position where a lot of that interest is pretty close by. I think there's a lot of like interaction between you know Korean literature and Japanese literature, Korean literature and Russian literature and I think that's interesting to watch from, you know, my standpoint working not working from those languages but thinking it's just memorable that those connections are already there and I would love to see similar platforms spring up. Yeah, something like Arablet.org or other platforms for, you know, fostering those connections to I have one more question for these last few minutes or last minute that I think is really pertinent. It's from the UK, and the questioner would like to ask all the panelists. If they think the established translators associations in the US UK can do more to remove barriers to entry and welcome a more diverse range of voices into their community. What do you will think about that. I mean, to me it would be it have to be about from where I am about removing citizenship or residency as a barrier. So they'd have to say, we're open to everybody, even if you are a Moroccan living in Morocco even if you are a Syrian living in Berlin even whoever you are if you translate in these languages, we are open to you. And currently I think these institutions really are people who live there. Anybody else. I mean I think. No, I mean I'm speaking more for. Well the American ones I think that they. I think they are working hard to reach outside of the sort of obvious community you know not communities but where people are and I think I think it's just, I think it's I'm seeing more and more. Outreach happening, but I think it's, it's, it's something that we always need to keep foremost in our mind so. Alright. I reached 11am, which is a last the moment we have to say goodbye to each other. This has been an extraordinary conversation. It's been fantastic to get so many different perspectives from so many different places. And really enlightening as well I think for myself and many people in the audience. So, as we say goodbye. But we need to thank once again our partners, how around pen America, the Center for the Humanities the Graduate Center CUNY, the Common Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Martin E. Segal Theater Center. And today in particular, the Middlebury language schools and LTI Korea for their generous support for today's events and especially thank you to Shu Chi Allison, MLQ and page. This has been an extraordinary conversation. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you.