Day of Translation

Day of Translation panel: Interspecies Translation

What is gained in narrating from the perspective of a polar bear, a clam, or famously, a cockroach? This panel explores the idea of “interspecies translation” and how the languages of the animal, aquatic, and otherwise natural world inform the way we approach narrative and storytelling. Is it more freeing to be a clam than a woman? What happens to a polar bear’s voice when it’s translated both across species and across languages? Will we ever be able to understand animal language? Will they ever understand ours?

Join Susan Bernofsky (translator of Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear, New Directions), Bonnie Chau (All Roads Lead to Blood, 2040 Books), Anelise Chen (Clam Down, One World), and Kate Zambreno (Animal Stories, forthcoming from Transit Books) in a conversation about what translation can teach us about understanding the animal world and vice versa. Moderated by Dr. Elisha Cohn (Milieu: A Creaturely Theory of the Contemporary Novel, Stanford University Press).