Yara Rodrigues Fowler - 1 - Prologue: Translation as survival

28 October 2023

When the children of migrants translate it is because something needs to be done and their parents are powerless to do it. Food ordered from a restaurant menu. Paperwork submitted to avoid deportation. Translation, we learn, is always a negotiation, always about power and, sometimes, a question of survival.

Translation often occurs — or does not occur — at the interface with the state. In 2010s, when a right-wing government implemented austerity policies across the UK, one of the first services cut was translation. At the time, I was the trustee of a women’s refuge for Latin Americans. Without translation, migrant women escaping abusive partners, often with their children, could not access the UK justice system, the UK housing benefit system or UK schools.

Right now, as I write in English, the Israeli state is bombing Palestinians in Gaza. The Israeli state has stopped the supply of food, medicine, electricity and water to Palestinians in Gaza. The UN has called this a crime against humanity and fears it will become a genocide.

By the time Demir has translated this text into Dutch, many more Gazans will have died.

Palestinians in Gaza are being prevented from telling us what is happening to them by the Israeli state. As people with access to electricity and the internet, as people who are not fleeing our homes, as people who are still alive, we must speak for them. We must translate, which is to say we must negotiate with power on their behalf. It is a question of survival.

There must be an immediate ceasefire. And a free Palestine in our lifetimes.

Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine.

WHAT INSPIRED THIS STORY?

More from Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Demir Hilbrands

4 November 2023

Yara Rodrigues Fowler - 3 - We believe that we will win.

This morning, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the UK, has claimed that demonstrations calling for ceasefire in Gaza planned for Saturday 11th November —‘Armistice Day’ in the UK — are ‘provocative and disrespectful’. He called for the police to crack down on protestors. Armistice Day, of course, celebrates the end of fighting in World War I. Last night I wrote a tweet which was shared nearly 95 times: ‘The only coherent feminist position is to be anti-genocide’. Even as I typed it, I felt embarrassed; it was too obvious.

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3 November 2023

Yara Rodrigues Fowler - 2 - Thickened history

There is this idea, coined by Mark Bessinger, of ‘thickened history’, which is when a lot of history happens very quickly. Historians and survivors return to these moments as they try to understand the present, and yearn for alternative presents. They are the moments you’d go to in a time machine. When my ferry to Amsterdam port began moving away from the Tyne into the North Sea, I felt that I was travelling in the wrong direction, away from the sit ins and protests and the people I knew who were organising for a ceasefire in Gaza.

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