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Sawad Hussain
Monica Cure
Guardian of Surfaces - translated by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman
The Censor's Notebook - translated by Monica Cure
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Free Speech and Literature: Translation and Censorship
Sawad Hussain and Monica Cure
with Daria Chernysheva

Monday 31 March 2025
Zoom, 7.30 - 8.30
pm
Tickets: £PayWhatYouCan (donations welcome)

In this event, we explore contemporary issues around literature and translation through the lens of two novels that both address these concerns directly and are also themselves works available in translation: Liliana Corobca’s The Censor’s Notebook and Bothayna al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library (published in the UK as The Guardian of Surfaces).

Literature has meaning in the structure of its sentences and paragraphs, in what is said and what is omitted, and in its relationship to a social and cultural context: even where something can be said in a different language and location, it might be best expressed other than by literal translation. There are other elements in play too: politics in its bluntest sense, social and cultural taboos, the nuances of humour, the complications of slang and idiom.

In today’s world, the complications of translation have the potential to become more sensitised and controversial: the banning of books, for example, is more widespread than a few years ago. Silencing and cancelling is also being undertaken in the name of freedom of speech. It’s certainly arguable that managing these nuances requires a human translator rather than an algorithm, while introducing a human element with potential for biases and preferences: translation is an ethical issue.

About Sawad Hussain
Sawad Hussain
is a translator from Arabic whose work has been recognised by, among others, The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the National Book Award for Translated Literature. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards, and has run translation workshops for Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library, and the National Centre for Writing. Her latest (co-)translation (with Ranya Abdelrahman)  is The Book Censor's Library (UK title: The Guardian of Surfaces). A former Co-Chair of the Translator's Association (UK), she is committed to mentoring literary translators and developing the industry in general.

More about Sawad: 

  • Website
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About Monica Cure

Monica Cure is a Romanian-American poet, literary translator, and dialogue specialist currently based in Bucharest. She is a two-time Fulbright grantee and her poems have appeared internationally in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Salamander, and Graywolf Lab. Her poetry translations likewise have been published internationally in Kenyon Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her translation of Liliana Corobca’s novel, The Censor’s Notebook.

More about Monica: 

  • Website
  • Instagram
Daria Chernysheva
Fowl Eulogies - translated by Daria Chernysheva

About Daria Chernysheva

Daria Chernysheva completed her PhD in Translation Studies at University College London. In her doctoral dissertation, she analysed and translated the work of French poet Cécile Sauvage, with a focus on the translator’s creativity and the affective relationship between translator and text. Alongside academic commitments, Daria is a practising literary translator. Her latest translation from the French, a novel called Fowl Eulogies (World Editions, 2023) was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize. Daria joined the Open University in 2024 as Lecturer in French and Translation.

More about Daria: 

  • Website
  • LinkedIn
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