Dr. Asma Rasheed, EFLU gave a talk on In Other Wor(l)ds: Reflections on Translating Children’s Stories on 6 March.

Asma is the Head of the Department English Language and Teaching at English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) and is currently engaged in co-editing Urdu translations of Different Tales, a series of children’s stories from marginal cultures and vernacular contexts, towards publication.

Translation may be termed an attempt to find a way of saying something in one language that means the same as what has been said in another. However, the task involves more than negotiating the meaning of a text. The worlds and the words of a text are intimately connected to questions of representation and language. In her talk, Asma shed light on how we understand the play of these issues in the contexts of children’s literature, particularly when it involves life-worlds of communities one rarely reads about in mainstream literature. Her presentation reflected on some of these issues by way of sharing her ongoing work on translating and editing a series of children’s stories into Urdu, titled in English as Different Tales. She shared examples of the considerations that must be made while translation and the issue of finding appropriate titles. She reiterates in her talk that translation cannot assume linguistic and cultural commensurability, as one must keep in mind that the aim is to translate the effect of the story for these children.

March 2024