Creative Workshop: Manifestos for Activism in Translation
This event is free, but registration is required. Register here.
In this creative workshop, participants will put together mini manifestos for themselves on the subject of activism in translation. Whether they are practising translators, or avid readers of translated literature, this session will be an opportunity to reflect on their positioning and the things they might do to engage and resist, actively and consciously, in the social, political and economic dynamics of literary translation.
The session will open with a discussion on the practical aspects of activism in translation, to support participants in identifying the ways they might want to bring activism into their reading and writing of translations. This might relate to linguistic and creative choices, or the selection of texts to read and translate, the publishers they work with and buy from, for example. Participants will then be able to make zine-style manifestos for themselves, using an array of fun, colourful materials to inspire them. There will also be photocopies of websites, articles and social media posts from translators and organisations working on these issues, which will be used for the discussion and which participants way wish to quote from or cut up and stick into their mini manifestos.
Alyssa Ollivier-Tabukashvili is a current DPhil student at the University of Oxford. Her thesis addresses the need and potential for decolonising literary translation, with a focus on francophone Algerian writing, through the subjects of World Literature, plurilingualism, and transnational feminism in conversation with the activist role of the translator and the pursuit of justice. More broadly, she is interested in literature and expressions of resistance from the Maghreb and southern/eastern Africa, including its queer and feminist intersections. She has been awarded the 2025 Javett-UP BRIDGE Fellowship, where she will be researching artistic and literary representations of the self in cross-temporal and transnational resistance movements.
