Date and Venue: Saturday 5 October 2024 @ the Assembly Room, The Exchange, 3 Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 2DR and online
Translation Reading with Marilyn Booth: 11am-12.15pm; Feminist Translation Exchange: 2pm-4pm
Our inaugural event was part of the Birmingham Literature Festival 2024. We were due to hold a translation slam on Saturday morning with Marilyn Booth and Nariman Youssef but Nariman Youssef had to cancel her attendance at short notice and so the slam was replaced by a translation reading with Marilyn Booth.
Marilyn Booth is an acclaimed translator of Arabic fiction whose translations include Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies, which won the Man Booker International Prize 2019.In the morning event, Booth read from two recent translations: Silken Gazelles by Jokha Alharthi and Honey Hunger by Zahran Alqasmi
The afternoon was dedicated to a symposium – or Feminist Translation Exchange – when we started to ask some of the questions we’ll be exploring throughout the FTN project. What is feminist translation? How might it differ – or not – from translations of women or by women? Is feminist translation a matter of identity or a matter of practice? We had some late changes to the panel with three of the original speakers unable to attend. The panel comprised Marilyn Booth, Catherine Boyle,Thomas Glave, and Laura Woolley-Núñez.
The event was organised in collaboration with Writing West Midlands.