Day of Translation 2024: Typography and Translation
Arielle Burgdorf, Bo-Won Keum, Omar Mohammad, and the Bye Bye Binary Collective examine how design can be used to address issues in translation.
On September 26, 2024, the Center for the Art of Translation presented its annual Day of Translation, co-hosted by The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn and livestreamed worldwide. This panel, featuring Axxenne, Arielle Burgdorf, Bo-Won Keum, Omar Mohammad, Marouchka Payen, and Léna Salabert-Tribyz, examines how design can help literary translators in their craft.
Graphic designer and curator Ellen Lupton once said, “Typography is what language looks like.” This panel explores intersections between the arts of typography and translation. Typography combines form and function, semantic and visual. Thus, it is important for translators to consider the political implications of their chosen aesthetics. Bringing together typographers, educators, artists, and translators working with different scripts, we will discuss how interventions in typography can be used to address issues in translation such as accessibility, gendered binaries, language preservation and revival, and colonial histories.
Axxenne is a graphic designer, writer, and performer based in Saint-Étienne, France. She mainly works with non-profit organizations, striving to bring queer experiences to life through her work.
Arielle Burgdorf is a writer, scholar, and literary translator from the French. Their writing and translations have appeared in Lambda Literary, Broken Pencil Magazine, Amsterdam Review, Maximum Rocknroll, and elsewhere. They are the author of the novel Prétend, published by End of the Line Press and a forthcoming UK edition from Cool Moist Books. They were a THI Summer Fellow with The Center for the Art of Translation and are currently pursuing a PhD in Literature at UC Santa Cruz focused on queer and feminist experimental writers from Québec.
Bo-Won Keum is a multidisciplinary designer, researcher, and educator living and working between New York City and Boston. Her design writing has appeared in Slanted and Triple Canopy, and she holds fellowships and residencies from Maharam STEAM and the U.S. National Parks Service. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and an MFA in Graphic Design from RISD, and currently teaches visual communication at the MIT School of Architecture.
Omar Mohammad is a first-generation Afghan-American Muslim. He designs physical and digital artifacts that relate to Afghan culture, Islam, and the natural environment.
Marouchka Payen is a Belgian graphic designer, member of Bye Bye Binary collective, and DJ. She focuses her practice on open source type design and research into queer/feminist circles in the graphic and musical fields.
Léna Salabert-Triby is a graphic designer, typographer, and tattoo artist whose work oscillates between graphic creations (posters, flyers, editions, etc.), visual identities (graphic charters, logos, etc.), typographic creation (custom typo, fork, etc.), and 3D form (3D creation software). Léna is also part of a Belgian-French collective, Bye Bye Binary, which works on the evolution of language and research and experiments around inclusive and post-binary writing.
