Spain: Translator Fired for Not Being a Black Woman (“Translating While White” is Now Officially a Thing)

Victor Obiols tried to culturally appropriate the translation of some gibberish

Previously on “Translating While White”: Netherlands: Black Tranny Cancels White Female’s Translation of Black Person’s Book

It was a black tranny in the Netherlands who kicked off the “translating while white” phenomenon, after black poet Amanda Gorman had handpicked a white woman to translate her gibberish.

Now this is apparently going to be the standard.

The funny part is that it’s going to cost black authors a lot of money.

The Guardian:

The Catalan translator for the poem that American writer Amanda Gorman read at US president Joe Biden’s inauguration has said he has been removed from the job because he had the wrong “profile”.

It was the second such case in Europe after Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld resigned from the job of translating Gorman’s work following criticism that a black writer was not chosen.

“They told me that I am not suitable to translate it,” Catalan translator Victor Obiols told AFP on Wednesday. “They did not question my abilities, but they were looking for a different profile, which had to be a woman, young, activist and preferably black.”

Gorman, a 23-year-old African American, was widely lauded for her reading of her poem “The Hill We Climb” at Biden’s 20 January inauguration. The poem was inspired by the US Capitol attack and touched on how democracy “can never be permanently defeated”.

…

Obiols, who has translated works by William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, received a request from Barcelona publisher Univers three weeks ago to produce a Catalan version of Gorman’s poem with a foreword by US television personality Oprah Winfrey. After he had finished, his publisher received a message to the effect that he “was not the right person”, said Obiols.

He does not know if the rejection came from the original publisher or from Gorman’s agent.

“It is a very complicated subject that cannot be treated with frivolity,” said Obiols, a resident of Barcelona.

“But if I cannot translate a poet because she is a woman, young, black, an American of the 21st century, neither can I translate Homer because I am not a Greek of the eighth century BC. Or could not have translated Shakespeare because I am not a 16th-century Englishman.”

Yeah the implications are very large.

I can’t wait for blacks to start saying that the mechanics that work on trains that are ridden by a majority people of color have to be black.

Their cellphones should also have to be designed and manufactured by black people, I think.

Whites really have no place in the lives of blacks.

Finally, I’m really agreeing with these people.