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My Soul Language

Bonaventure Balla (Norfolk State University)

Bonaventure Balla’s favorite word in any language is “cornucopia.” And that’s saying something, because Balla is a translator who speaks seven languages.

13 mins

The Universal Language

Sophia Serghi (William & Mary)

As a composer, Sophia Serghi sees her work as translation. She says music is the universal language that can translate our most painful, vulnerable experiences. 

15 mins

Cross-cultural Translation

Kyoko Mori (George Mason University)

On some level, every book is an act of translation. Kyoko Mori has spent her career as a writer looking back at her Japanese upbringing through the lens of her American life. And she understands that writers have very little control over how a reader will translate a story into their own context.

13 mins

Translating Colonialism

Rebecca Hightower-Weaver (Virginia Tech)

Over the centuries, the same images and themes occur again and again in settler colonial literature. Rebecca Hightower-Weaver explores how these themes were used to translate unknown lands to colonies–and ultimately sell a harmful myth to would-be settlers.

11 mins

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