The Queen's College Record 2023

Reports and College Activities
translator Polly Barton. ‘The Visible Translator’ residency was co-funded by the
Humanities Cultural Programme at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
(TORCH), making Polly the first translator to become a Visiting Fellow in Oxford.
Polly curated an outstanding series of 18 events for University members and the
public, ran workshops for local school pupils, and organised a series of events with
Aiko Matsuda, a leading Japanese author who visited Queen’s from Tokyo. My
personal highlight was a ‘translation duel’ at Oxford Literary Festival. This translation
match between two stellar Spanish translators, chaired by Polly, attracted a multigenerational
audience, with many attending a translation/international literature
event for the very first time. The buzz in the room throughout was palpable, and
numerous people told me afterwards that it had radically changed how they think
about translation, about writing, about language, and communication itself.
The visual also played a role in our partnership with Professor Karen Leeder, now
based at Queen’s as the new Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German. Karen translates
the work of German poet and spoken word artist Ulrike Almut Sandig, and at the
beginning of Michaelmas Term we hosted Ulrike and her pan-European poetry
collective, Landschaft. On stage Ulrike is joined by Ukrainian poet and rapper
Grigory Semenchuk and German video artist Sascha Conrad, and together they
produced a feast of words, video art, and music in an unforgettable performance
at Oxford’s Old Fire Station. We also partnered with the sub-faculty of Czech and
Slovak for two very exciting events with visiting authors and translators, including
leading Czech novelist Jáchym Topol: hence the appearance of the Shulman
Auditorium on primetime Czech TV!
Advocacy for Languages
Making translation and international culture visible and interactive and inviting people
of all ages into our languages community are key to our wider mission of increasing
the numbers learning languages across the UK. This year we have taken this work
a step further by launching a research project on the impact of creative and cultural
approaches to language learning, and early conversations with policy officials at
the Department for Education and with the brand-new National Consortium for
Languages Education have been very promising. We look forward to developing
these conversations in the year to come, and to involving more Old Members in
our work as we expand. If you would like to find out more about how you can get
involved with and support our work at the Translation Exchange, we would love to
hear from you.
www.queens.ox.ac.uk/translation-exchange
50 The Queen’s College | College Record 2023