Collaborating on The Translator: The aesthetics and politics of screenwriting

A year before production of the narrative feature length film The Translator (2020) was set to begin, Rana Kazkaz, the screenwriter and director, was contacted by Julie Boéri, an interpreter and translation studies scholar, who, intrigued by the film’s title, wanted to know more. They met and what ensued was a year-long interdisciplinary dialogue on the process of screenwriting the feature film The Translator. As a result, significant questions were addressed regarding the nature of translation, plot and character analysis. Therefore, the creation of a two-voice paper became the most effective way to retell the story of how our collaboration brought to bear on both the aesthetics and politics of screenwriting. Adopting a dual focus on screenwriting as a process and a product, our conversation delves into the aesthetic process of fictionalizing activist translation during the writing of the screenplay and examines the multiple political acts of translation activism depicted in the film: interpreting, subtitling, fixing, etc. It reflects on the screening experience for audiences across countries, languages, cultures and disciplines as well as the complexity of translation in high-risk activism and global politics. Ultimately, this collaboration illustrates the ways in which interdisciplinarity mutually enhances creative and academic endeavours.