In this session Cécile Wajsbrot and Tess Lewis will discuss their work as writers and translators, the relationship of translation and literary creation, and the challenges of conveying a complex and sensitive story to audiences with vastly different backgrounds,

insights, and expectations.

Can translation, as an act of responsiveness and responsibility, create common ground when relations between and within societies are increasingly fraught? By resisting the pressure to smooth out differences between cultures and by complicating our ideas of the universal, translation paradoxically makes the foreign more accessible. What, for instance, does it mean to be faithful when navigating charged language or conflicting social mores? How can nuance be preserved in a new context? How does the translator skirt the perils and pitfalls of specificity or even use them to advantage?

About the Life of the Mind Series

Life of the Mind—a series of presentations and conversations by writers and translators, exploring diverse mental landscapes and imaginations, inspirations, musings, and any number of other silent and invisible processes that add up to the creation of a literary work.