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Catalan Gorman translator: "I was rejected because I am the wrong skin color and gender"

2021-03-13T15:01:31.695Z


The Catalan Victor Obiols was supposed to translate the volume of poetry by the black poet Amanda Gorman. Suddenly he was out of his job. In the interview he talks about his view of the decision.


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Amanda Gorman at the inauguration of Joe Biden

Photo: Patrick Semansky / AP

The translation of the poem was already done.

Victor Obiols, 60 years old, translator, musician and university professor from Barcelona, ​​had proceeded with the same conscientiousness as on previous assignments when he had translated Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde into Catalan.

When he was commissioned to translate first the poem and later the entire volume of poetry by the black poet Amanda Gorman, he was delighted.

Since her appearance at Joe Biden's swearing-in ceremony, the 23-year-old has been a world star.

But in the meantime Obiols got rid of the job.

He was told that he had the wrong profile and was looking for a woman, preferably an activist.

To person

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Victor Obiols, 60 years old, comes from Barcelona.

In 1994 he received his doctorate in Southampton with a thesis on the Catalan poet Joan Ferraté.

Obiols is a university lecturer, translator and musician, you can find him on Spotify as Victor Bocanegra.

The Catalan has been very busy since then.

Media reports from all over the world.

After the interview with SPIEGEL, he wants to speak to the New York Times and ORF.

In the interview, Obiols explains how he sees the matter - and why he now wants to write a song.

SPIEGEL:

Mr. Obiols, have you considered yourself an old white man so far?

Obiols:

I'm definitely old.

The white skin color has not been so much the focus of my self-perception.

Except maybe on my travels to Africa, to Burkina Faso, where I helped an NGO to build wells.

SPIEGEL:

You have translated Amanda Gorman's volume of poetry into Catalan.

Then you were canceled.

How did that happen?

Obiols:

At first I was thrilled when I saw Amanda Gorman at the swearing-in ceremony.

A young black woman after all that Trumpism.

Fantastic!

Last Monday, my publisher Univers called me and said that they had received an email from Gorman's agents from the USA.

Another profile is being sought, preferably a woman, an activist.

SPIEGEL:

Do you know whether that was Gorman's idea or whether she approved the decision?

Obiols:

No.

I suspect it wasn't her decision and she got hit by it.

SPIEGEL:

Can you understand that your publisher has now proposed the 38-year-old Catalan poet Maria Cabrera?

Obiols:

I understand the decision, but it is at least debatable.

I'm disappointed.

I was rejected not because I was a bad translator, but because I was the wrong skin color and gender.

It's a symbolic gesture.

Just as it was a symbolic gesture that a black woman recited a poem at Joe Biden's inauguration.

SPIEGEL:

You think Gorman was chosen because she is black?

Obiols:

I think she was chosen because she's black, woman, and young.

In this order.

SPIEGEL:

Not mainly because she is an outstanding poet?

Obiols:

Of course that also plays a role, but maybe not the biggest.

It's a matter of representation.

And obviously it is also a question of representation who translates the poem.

I don't belong to the group that you want to give a voice to.

And that's why they turned me down again.

I respect that, maybe I have to get used to the fact that this will be the case more often in the future.

"As translators, we put ourselves in other people's shoes, that's our job."

SPIEGEL:

Isn't it a well-known rule that the translator should also be related to the text?

Obiols:

Absolutely.

But the argument that I can't translate the text because I don't understand it is absurd.

As translators, we put ourselves in other people's shoes, that's our job.

If a young black Catalan woman who might come from the working class and who went to mediocre school were to translate, the question arises as to whether I am still more like Gorman.

She comes from Los Angeles, studied at Harvard, and makes fashion.

It's not just skin color or gender that matters.

more on the subject

  • Icon: Spiegel Plus Linguistics Professor on “Woke” culture and Cancel Culture: “Whites are in a bind: Whatever they do is wrong” A SPIEGEL interview by René Pfister

  • Amanda Gorman poem: Catalan translator has "wrong profile"

  • Debate about translations: "Of course, it is always about linguistic ability" An interview by Claudia Voigt

  • Discussion about "The Hill We Climb": Should a white person translate Amanda Gorman's poems?

SPIEGEL:

In a radio interview you rhetorically asked whether you should now smear shoe polish on your face.

Don't you disqualify yourself with such statements?

Obiols:

That was a failed joke that I regret;

an allusion to the jazz musician Al Jolson, who turned his face black when that was not yet considered reprehensible.

The comment was an own goal.

But neither should I be taught lessons about the African American civil rights movement.

I wrote a book about Cecil Taylor, one of the great masters of jazz.

I am neither xenophobic nor a racist.

But of course people don't know that.

I should have expressed myself better.

"This competition for the worst discrimination experience does not get us any further."

SPIEGEL:

Many people who were supposedly canceled by the woken mob are now receiving a lot of attention.

In the Netherlands, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld does not translate the poem after all.

Rijneveld himself wrote a poem for this.

What do you do?

Obiols:

I want to write a song.

SPIEGEL:

And what should it be about?

Obiols:

To Amanda Gorman.

I like her very much, I would like to get to know her.

Even if I'm a bit old for them, of course (laughs).

No, joking aside, I want to write a song of harmony and joy.

I love jazz, black music has accompanied me since my youth.

I have a black soul.

My last album is called »Poesies de Broadway« ...

SPIEGEL:

Excuse me, but don't you think that you will provoke another scandal if you explain to a black woman who writes about racism that you have a black soul?

Obiols:

(Laughs) Maybe I'll get even more famous.

Why shouldn't I say that?

Is that offensive?

SPIEGEL:

At least some people might find it incomprehensible.

Obiols:

But I can emphasize how close I feel to black culture!

Apart from that, as a Spaniard, I worked in Rotterdam in the eighties, I know what it feels like to be discriminated against.

But this competition for the worst discrimination experience does not get us any further.

Fanaticism should not be allowed to gain the upper hand.

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Source: spiegel

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