Thursday, May 1, 2008

"The PEN is mightier than the sword."

The quote above as coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his play, Richelieu, Or the Conspiracy, has never lost validity overtime. Revolutions, ideological movements, and propaganda all fuel action through written word. Written words often instigate wars.

Adding even more truth to Lytton's phrase are governments who imprison writers and journalists for their work or their public appeal. Why do many governments feel the need to imprison or censor writers if they are just telling a good story or expressing ideas in a poem? Because many of those same governments came to power by means of the written word. Karl Marx never actually participated in a coup or revolution, but his writings, translated into multiple languages, altered history. Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin used words to not only fuel colonial fury against the British, but also unite the colonies toward fighting for independence.

This is another reason why translated literature is so important. Many of the world's "closed" societies imprison and censor their writers. Translated literature provides a means for suppressed writers to call out to the world, and it provides a crack in the wall of these closed and oppressive socities. Alaa Al Aswany, as featured in a previous post, is currently fighting with the Egyptian government to have his next novel, Chicago, published. Tahar Djaout's Last Summer of Reason had to be smuggled out of Algeria into France for publication.

There are several organizations who work to not only translate and publish censored writers, but also petition governments for their release if imprisoned. PEN International, established in 1921, is an example of such an organization. I encourage to visit their site, which has listings of foreign authors. PEN America's site has a list of imprisoned writers and various petitions. They are sponsoring festival of international writers in New York City this weekend. They will be having a panel discussion on literature translation tonight.

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