Translation as Movement: Migration and Notions of “Home”

Abstract

Notions of “home” in Europe are becoming more fluid, being challenged and reshaped by unprecedented migration. This chapter discusses the impact of migration on these notions by drawing on research produced during our collaborative project Talking Transformations. In Talking Transformations, poetry about aspects of “home” was sent into a linguistic and artistic “migration,” which involved translation into different languages and into film art. Translated poetry and artworks, as well as vocal recordings of the poems, travelled to and from the EU countries that feature most in migration into and out of the UK-for migration to the UK, Romania and Poland; for migration from the UK, France and Spain. The works were exhibited in festivals and other public events in the UK in summer 2018. The use of “translation” as the underpinning framework for our project stems from its critical relevance to “motion”: as practice, translation signifies the process whereby texts move across borders between cultural, geographical and temporal spaces. In this chapter, we discuss the changing notions of home within the framework of the project and present how the discursive and public-facing nature of Talking Transformations can contribute to a more positive and inclusive debate of migration and its impact on identity and culture.

Keywords

• translation
• identity
• movement
• migration
• poetry
• art
• multilingualism
• transformations