2022 Day of Translation Panel 2 – Word + Image: Where Meaning Collides

What is the relationship between what we say, how we read, and why we create? Mexican artist Verónica Gerber Bicecci and Syrian calligraphic artist Abdulrahman Naanseh join translators Heather Green and Alta L. Price, both of whom specialize in art and aesthetics, to interrogate the thin traces of shifting meaning we find in and between words and images.
Panelists: Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Heather Green, Abdulrahman Naanseh, Alta L. Price

The Center for the Art of Translation presented its annual Day of Translation at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, on Friday, September 30. Returning in person for the first time since 2019, the daylong symposium of provocative panels on language and literature concluded with a keynote address delivered by novelist, playwright, and literary translator Jeremy Tiang.

This year’s panels included: “Le Mot Juste: Reading and Reviewing Literature in Translation,” an exploration of the ways in which we engage with international writing; “Word + Image: Where Meaning Collides,” a stirring talk about the tension between what we say, how we read, and why we create; “Advocating for Literary Translation,” a lively discussion of the most pressing topics in the field; and “Children’s Literature in Translation,” a timely topic in honor of #WorldKidLitMonth and an opportunity to celebrate brilliant illustrators from around the world.

Panelists:
Claudia Zoe Bedrick, publisher of Enchanted Lion Books; Mexican artist Verónica Gerber Bicceci; Writer and professor of art and aesthetics Heather Green; Literary translator and editor of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature, Daniel Hahn; Writer and literary translator Anton Hur; Madhu Kaza, Kitchen Table Translation editor and founding director of the Bard Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library; Julian Lucas, staff writer at The New Yorker; Julia Marshall, publisher of Gecko Press; Writer and literary translator Lily Meyer; Syrian artist Abdulrahman Naanseh; Poet and literary translator Sawako Nakayasu; Emma Raddatz, Elsewhere Editions and Archipelago Books editor; Julia Sanches, winner of the 2022 PEN Translation Prize; Writer and critic Rhian Sasseen; Amy Stolls, children's literature enthusiast and director of literary arts for the National Endowment for the Arts; Novelist, playwright, and literary translator Jeremy Tiang; and Frank Wynne, winner of the 2022 Dublin Literary Award and chair of the judges for the 2022 International Booker Prize.