For this episode, we’re bringing you a fantastic audio piece called We Are Always Translating, featuring interviews and soundscapes.

The piece asks: What is translation and how is it experienced? In the piece, three translators explore their experiences of inhabiting multiple languages in a portrayal of life in translation, of translation as a part of everyday life, of translation as survival, and of people as translated beings.

The piece includes interviews with Kavita Bhanot, Yovanka Paquete Perdigão and Nariman Youssef and was made by Gitanjali Patel and Miia Laine as part of the Visible Communities residency here at the National Centre for Writing.

Gitanjali Patel is a translator and social researcher. She was in virtual residence from May to August 2021. She graduated from Oxford University in Spanish and Portuguese and has been translating from these languages since 2010. She translates in a range of media, from film scripts and radio programmes to fiction, including stories by Luisa Geisler, Miriam Mambrini, Fernanda Torres and, most recently, Evando Nascimento. In 2016 she co-founded Shadow Heroes, an organisation which engages secondary school students in critical thought using the art of translation.

Our Visible Communities programme aims to:

• Diversify access routes to literary translation
• Strengthen links between the literary translation community and diaspora communities
• Contribute to the debate around decolonising literary translation
• Expand the range of literature published in translation
• Visible Communities is funded by Arts Council England. The virtual residency programme was supported by the Jan Michalski Foundation.