Stories in the Air – Voice, Translation, and Immersive Audio

Join literary translator Natascha Bruce, audio director and writer Jo Tyabji, and NCW’s virtual translator-in-residence Yaqi Xi for a conversation on storytelling at the meeting point of literary translation and immersive audio. From the craft of translating fiction to the choices involved in turning literature into immersive sound worlds, this event explores how stories are re-voiced, reimagined, and brought to life for new readers and listeners.

This event will take place online. Please book in advance to receive a streaming link.

Part of Visible Communities, a programme offering a range of professional development opportunities to UK-based Black, Asian and Ethnically Diverse literary translators, and literary translators working from heritage, diaspora and community languages. Our international work is generously supported by the Hawthornden Foundation.

Yaqi Xi is a literary translator and postgraduate researcher based in Coventry, UK. Her practice-based PhD adopts an aurally attuned, ecological approach to translating and audio-remediating post-socialist and post-industrial Chinese fiction, creating ambient digital literary narratives embedded in the cultural soundscapes that shape these stories. Working with multimodal and intermedial methods – including field recordings, performative narration, and experimental sound design – she explores how ambient audio literature can generate affective atmospheres, amplify under-represented voices, and facilitate situated encounters for transnational audiences. Her work also positions literary translators as creative producers, engaging with digital-audio practices that open new pathways for how translated literature can be made and experienced. She is currently working on translations of Ban Yu’s fiction; her English translation of his short story ‘Chorus’ (歌队) appeared in Eunoia Review in 2025. Beyond translation and audio-making, she also reads YA fiction for young audiences in community arts spaces.

Natascha Bruce translates from Chinese and Italian. Her recent fiction translations include the existentialist horror novella Mystery Train by Can Xue, and the two novels Owlish and City Like Water by Hong Kong writer Dorothy Tse. After several years in Hong Kong, she currently lives in Amsterdam.

Jo Tyabji is a director, writer and performance maker. Her recent work in audio includes dramas Becoming Meg Dashwood by Rebecca Humphries, and Bleak House by Charles Dickens, dramatised by Marty Ross, both for Audible. More widely she combines the intimacy of audio with live performance, with or without a performer present: her audio walk Mouthful of Salt and Soil turned the listener into the performer and their journey through their local landscape into a performance. Her work in theatre includes Antigone by Inua Ellams at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, and multiple collaborations with poet Jay Bernard. Her next theatre show is Creatures, a play for 3-6 year olds about the wonder of the living world and how the Climate Crisis is changing it, premiering at the Unicorn in London in 2027.