I am honored to serve as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation, particularly in an institutional context such as UCI, with its proud history of scholarly and literary activity related to and founded on the promise of translation. This being said, I acknowledge that we live in uneasy times. We are witnessing the endangerment and extinction of local, heritage, and indigenous languages. Beyond language, we face ongoing issues such as climate change, systemic racism, and militarization. But I do believe that the work of translation can help us to imagine and also enact more hopeful futures. To that end, I plan to launch a series of initiatives around the theme of “Hope in Translation,” which might be understood in two senses. On the one hand, it could refer to the role of translation in sustaining hope, for instance, in the maintenance of heritage languages or in the revitalization of endangered languages such as indigenous languages. On the other hand, it can refer to the ways in which the concept and practice of hope can be translated across different languages and different community and cultural contexts. I look forward to what the future may hold, in many and all languages.
Jerry Won Lee
Director, UCI International Center for Writing and Translation
