The Queen's College Record 2020

Reports and College Activities
THE QUEEN’S TRANSLATION EXCHANGE
Charlotte Ryland
Director of the Queen’s
Translation Exchange
When we founded the Queen’s Translation Exchange
(QTE) in 2018, our focus was on establishing in-person
interaction and exchange. We wanted to bring together
people of all ages to discuss and share literature from
across the globe. This kind of personal and creative
interaction, we were sure, would foster a love of
languages and encourage participants to engage with
international culture, to learn new languages and – in
the case of our youngest members – to go on to study
languages at university.
The pandemic posed a clear challenge to this focus
on real-life encounters, but we were determined
that school closures should not prevent pupils from
engaging creatively with other languages and cultures,
nor lockdown stop adults from reading and writing together. To this end, during spring
and summer 2020 QTE developed a series of virtual creative encounters that have
changed forever how we run.
The year began with our very first residency, with Canadian poet and translator Erín
Moure and Galician poet Chus Pato spending time at Queen’s and running a lively
series of events for every contingency from school pupil to postgraduate and beyond.
Their visits culminated in a stirring bilingual reading in the Shulman Auditorium, together
with Alba Cid (poet and Director of the John Rutherford Centre for Galician Studies).
Visa delays and the looming lockdown did not dampen the excitement of our Hilary
term residency, with Russian poet Galina Rymbu and British translator Helena Kernan,
which gave the pair their first opportunity to collaborate and perform in person.
The Book Club choice for
May, with its translator
Jenny McPhee who joined
the online discussion from
New York
60 The Queen’s College | College Record 2020