river in an ocean: essays on translation, Ed. Nuzhat Abbas

Reviewed by Manahil Bandukwala

(trace press, 2023)

​river in an ocean: essays on translation is the first collection from trace press, a feminist press based in Toronto. Edited by trace’s founder Nuzhat Abbas, river in an ocean features essays by translators and authors working in decolonial contexts and languages. The contributors to this collection grapple with complex relationships to colonial languages, namely English. They unpack how translation allows them to move beyond the confines of English, and towards a practice of decolonization.
 
It is a testament to Abbas’s curation that she has pulled together a collection of engaging and eye-opening essays. The variety of perspectives, writing styles, approaches, and language makes this a dynamic read. In the foreword, Francoise Verges ponders the use of two colonial languages, English and French, and how the authors “most with an experience of migration and of living between languages, describe the work of translation in all its complexity, and the frustrations, joys, and emotions it provides.” These essays are not simply translators talking about the technical task of translation, but rather providing insights and anecdotes into the ways translation meshes with their personal lives, ethos, and approaches.
 
A reoccurring line of thinking across essays is how translation has allowed the authors to understand sociopolitical contexts better and empathize more with the people whose language they are translating. In a world where English-speaking countries like Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Australia wield power against formerly colonized countries, or “the Global South,” the idea that language both blocks and opens up avenues of empathy is unsurprising. In the introduction, Abbas reflects how “[h]istories echo, they leave traces. Some take decades, even lifetimes, to reverberate, transform, and reveal themselves in new formations, new translations.”
 
The authors ask difficult questions not only of translation, but of ancestral language. In “The Meaning of a Song,” Otoniya J. Okok Bitek asks: “What is the space for those of us thrust into a world without the language of our African ancestors—us born away from the ancestral homelands?” In this way, translation transcends literature, which Gopika Jadeja explores in her essay, “A Tally of Unfulfilled Longings.” She writes how “[i]mprinted on my memory is my mother’s desire for an interpreter of a world that was not hers, for a translator.” Translation is not a literary art that is only accessible to those who possess a certain type of knowledge. What river in an ocean proves is that being a translator, especially for people born into non-dominant languages or cultures, is inherent. Translating literature is only one part of the broader space of decolonial translation.
 
In “The Temple Whore of Language,” Suneela Mubayi writes how translation is inextricably linked to the self: “I do think that being nonbinary and mixed might make me a more sensitive translator because I exist on the margins of various opposing elements—masculine and feminine, white and non-white, and of languages and spaces that are both culturally hegemonic and non-hegemonic…as a skilled translator, whether within textual realms or live situations…I am needed, and sometimes indispensible.” Translation is not simply a knowledge of two languages, but rather an embodied practice that brings in history and lived experience. But sometimes the practice of translation demonstrates the opposite. Mubayi goes on to write how “daring to translate into or out of Arabic still feels as though I am encroaching into a space to which I have no right—and that my work is not testament to any intelligence or ability as much as it indicates the degree of my own unsettledness.”
 
The act of translation is embedded in politics. When writing or translating into or from English, the political implications of Western colonialism are, of course, a concern for many of the writers. But the essayists in this collection do not shy away from their own privilege within their own specific communities and contexts. Jadeja writes about her work translating Dalit poetry as an upper caste Hindu woman. She asks the following questions: “Can translation of Dalit literature—or any literature from the margins—into English be termed decolonial? Can a translator from a dominant culture translating literature from a marginalized community into the language of another dominant culture, call their translation decolonial?” That the authors in this collection are willing to challenge the supposed decolonial nature of their own work speaks to what makes a work truly decolonial. These writers are aware of both the ways they are marginalized and the ways they are privileged, and the tension between the two worlds allows them to challenge their own worldviews.
 
So much of the act of translation must focus on the musicality, flow, and lyricism of a language, and this comes through with how the authors write about their various translation practices. The language from essay to essay is incredibly poetic. For example, Yasmine Haj opens up her essay, “Rast,” by writing: “every act of translation should strive to be a first. It should try and eliminate words, premade maquettes, leaving nothing but music.” Haj goes on to musically write: “To love Palestine is to love a trick one never touches, yet keeps constructing time and again, in the hope that one day the translation will hold, for longer than a split second.”
 
Across the various essays, the authors emphasize the plurality embedded within translation. In “Elegiac Moods: Letters to Agha Shahid Ali,” Rahat Kurd writes about a messiness of translation: “I no longer want the smooth gloss of ‘world literature’ sealed in transatlantic English. If I can’t read poetry in its original language, then I’d like the messy effusions of notes handwritten in the margins, with multiple synonyms for multiple possible contexts.” In “Translating Courageously,” Norah Alkharashi explains how “I had to search in botanical dictionaries to learn the names of the plants and trees that Danticat mentions in her stories. Then, I had to dig deeper to discover the significance of such plants in Haitian culture. And since I still needed to consider my Arabic readers, I also looked into the works of other fellow translators to see how they had rendered similar words.” Both of these authors understand that translation goes beyond simply finding equivalent or parallel words. The context of a work informs its reading. Through this collection, one can understand the intricacies of translation, whether on the page or in real life.
 
The tie between landscape and writing seems to be a primary concern for translation because of the way the land is embedded within political contexts. In “Crossing Terrains: Unsettling Tinai While Translating Tamil,” Nedra Rodrigo writes how she “came to understand the Tamil struggle in terms of a lived terrain” in her translations. Whether in Sri Lanka, Palestine, Kashmir, Sudan, Turtle Island, or beyond, understanding the relationships between land, language, and people is necessary to embody decolonial feminism. The authors in these essays do so, as Verges proclaims in her foreword, because their practice goes beyond translation as a process of equivalency into translation as an act of reciprocity. In a world that often feels hopeless, reading river in an ocean feels empowering, as though there is a revolution brimming from the pages. 

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​Manahil Bandukwala is a writer & visual artist. She is currently Coordinating Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine, & Digital Content Editor for Canthius. She is a member of Ottawa-based writing collective VII. Her collaborative chapbook with Conyer Clayton, Sprawl | the time it took us to forget (Collusion, 2020), was shortlisted for the bpNichol Award. Her debut collection, MON̶U̶MENT, was published with Brick Books in 2022. Her second poetry collection, Heliotropia, is forthcoming with Brick Books in 2024.