"Translating Ourselves into Action" by María Reimóndez
It is my last day in New York today and I start the day reading this article https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/we-see-you-faiz/article30999076.ece?fbclid=IwAR3MqJ1fPdfW_jRAwmogeKFHowoCj2RH9pbUzcjxj0nm5hM2twCM8WYtV1A about the translations of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Hum dekhenge (We shall see) into Tamil, amongst other languages. The article explains how a plethora of women from different language communities across India have appropriated this Urdu poem to speak against the state and create strong alliances in times of disturbing political upheaval. “Carnatic vocalist TM Krishna, who performed the song in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi at Shaheen Bagh earlier this year, stresses that translations lead to “uncaging” of thought”. This sentence in particular made me smile, and the different quotations in the article took me back to my talk and workshop last week at Hofstra University, sponsored by the Department of Romance Languages