Date: Mon 31st August
Time: 6.30 - 9.30pm
Location: Multi Story, Level 6
Access: There is step-free access via a lift
How do we decide what counts as 'good language'? How do we preserve endangered languages? How should we understand linguistic hierarchies? And how exactly are marginalised languages kept alive and translated?
Join us, as we discuss with a panel of an expert poet, an expert linguist and an expert translator to see how language is stretched, played with and endangered.
We will discuss all this and more with particular reference to Dr Ugwuanyi's expertise in Nigerian English, Shamim Azad's expertise in Bengali and Sylhet, and Cristina Viti's expertise of political translation.
Speakers:
Dr Kingsley Ugwuanyi is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director (International Foundation Programme) at the Afe Babalola Centre for Transnational Education, King's College London. Kingsley’s work is concerned with how language standards shape access, participation, and legitimacy in global and transnational education. Trained in world Englishes and sociolinguistics, his research has examined linguistic ownership, identity, and the politics of normativity, particularly how speakers from multilingual contexts are positioned in relation to institutional definitions of “standard” academic English.
Shamim Azad is one of the best-known Bengali poets in the UK. She has published nearly 40 books including collections of poems, plays, children’s books, novels and translations, out of which 13 are collections of poetry books. Azad is trilingual- she writes in English, Bengali and Sylheti. Her works and translations have appeared in international anthologies including the New Yorker. She has received the Bangla Academy Literary Award’ in poetry, the highest literary award in Bangladesh. Shamim Azad is a member of artistic advisory board of Rich Mix, advisor to Poetry Translation Centre, UK and the Founder- Chair of the British Bilingual Poetry Collective (BBPC) UK.
Cristina Viti grew up in a trilingual family & started translating & studying languages at a very young age. Over the years she has supported & translated the work of several writers & poets & taken part in a number of international events. Her poetry & translations are published or forthcoming with a number of outfits, from international publishing houses to craft workshops producing limited editions of artists’ books.