Book launch and reading: Many Tongues, One Commons
Poetry and essays in Persian, Wolof, Mapudungun and Dari, with English translations
This event is part of a demonstration of what Lera offers for running knowledge events. Its content is written with care and draws on real sources, but the conference has not taken place, and apart from the convener its participants are fictional.
Many Tongues, One Commons is an anthology of poetry and essays by writers who work in languages the global publishing market rarely listens to. Its editors, Golnar Tabrizi and Aïssatou Diallo, built it on one simple principle: each text is the original in its own language, and the translations, English included, stand beside it, not in its place. The book's layout follows the same principle; on every spread, the original comes before the translation.
In 1986 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o wrote that the coloniser's language captured not only the language of school and state but also transformed the picture a child had of the world and of itself. Édouard Glissant spoke of a "right to opacity": the right of every culture not to be wholly transparent and translatable. This book tries to stand between the two. It needs translation in order to be read, and it refuses to let translation take the place of the original.
The book has four parts: Golnar Tabrizi's Persian poems on names and estrangement; Aïssatou Diallo's essays on publishing in Wolof in Dakar; texts by Camila Antilef in Mapudungun on land and memory; and Farid Ahmadzai's translations of, and notes on, Dari-language poets writing in exile since 2021. The print edition is small. The digital edition is published openly, and each text in it has a stable address that is the same in every language.
Programme
- 17:30 — Welcome and introduction to the book, Golnar Tabrizi and Aïssatou Diallo
- 17:45 — Poetry reading in Persian and English, Golnar Tabrizi
- 18:00 — Readings in Wolof and Mapudungun, Aïssatou Diallo and Camila Antilef, with English translation on screen
- 18:15 — Poems by exiled Dari-language poets, read by Farid Ahmadzai
- 18:30 — Conversation with the audience and book signing
From the book
From the poem "Door" by Golnar Tabrizi:
They wrote my name in your language,
and I stayed a stranger in that name.
Now every word has a house
whose door opens in several tongues;
come in, through whichever door you choose.
Questions for discussion
- How can translation bring a text to new readers without taking the place of the original?
- What institutions does publishing in languages the market finds unprofitable require?
- How does the "right to opacity" sit with the ideal of open knowledge?
References
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey.
Glissant, Édouard. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.