And they shouldn’t be chosen over someone who is more experienced for the project. He adds that Black translators should be given more work, but not just because they are Black. “The idea that it all hinges on this particular issue of how it feels to not be white is an extremely artificial perspective on what it is to be a human being, including a Black human being,” he says. While experiencing racism is a small part of it, it’s not a complete picture. The soul of a Black person isn’t the racism they experience at the hands of white people, but rather the essence of who they are, McWhorter says. Or could not have translated Shakespeare because I am not a 16th-century Englishman.” He told the Agence France-Presse, a Paris-based international news outlet, that, “If I cannot translate a poem because she is a woman, young, Black and American in the 21st century, neither can I translate Homer, because I am not Greek in the eighth century. Obiols shared similar sentiments to Barrios. “In order to be everyone, they must dissolve and be reborn to come out of themselves in order to enter into others,” she wrote. In an editorial for El País, Spanish translator Nuria Barrios gave a striking defense of translators, saying the ultimate goal is for them to embrace all voices. Artistic translations rely strongly upon interpretation and portraying the right concepts. Translating a poem and other types of literature is an art form that differs from transcription. “And suddenly we can't imagine that person's artistic statement being rendered in another language appropriately by someone who isn't of her color and hasn't had those particular kinds of experiences as if they utterly define everything that she is.” “There's a sense that when it comes to Black people's relationship with white people, then all bets are off,” he says.

He says Gorman’s racial identity shouldn’t be a determining factor in who translates her poem. Linguist and Columbia University professor John McWhorter disagrees.

Neither translator was accused of doing a poor job, but recent controversy over who should translate the poem began when a Black Dutch style writer argued a translator who isn’t a Black female spoken word artist like Gorman shouldn’t translate her work.

Gorman approved both white Dutch nonbinary writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and Catalan translator Victor Obiols to translate the poem. But now, one translator dropped out and another was let go after mounting criticism. 20.īy one count, the poem has now been translated into 17 languages, all of the translators approved by Gorman herself. Millions of Americans heard 23-year-old Amanda Gorman recite her moving poem ' The Hill We Climb' at President Biden's inauguration on Jan. (Patrick Semansky/AP) This article is more than 2 years old. American poet Amanda Gorman reads a poem during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S.

Amanda gorman the hill we climb