Social Justice Warriors Are Starting to Get Out of Hand

A Spanish translator says his version of a poem read at President Joe Biden's inauguration was rejected because he had the wrong "profile".

22-year-old Amanda Gorman was the youngest poet ever to perform at a presidential inauguration in January.  Her five-minute poem ("The Hill We Climb"), received praise from around the world following months of debate about racial justice in the US and abroad.  Víctor Obiols, whose previous work includes translations of Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, was asked to translate Gorman's poem and a foreword by Oprah Winfrey into Catalan. But after he completed the project, the publishers said they wanted a translator who was "a woman, young, activist and preferably black".

The poem's Dutch translator also recently stepped down after online criticism.  Dutch poet Marieke Lucas Rijneveld was a "dream candidate", who at 29 became the youngest author to win the International Booker prize in 2020 with debut novel The Discomfort of Evening. Outspoken on issues including gender equality and mental health, Rijneveld identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them.  But we was forced out after an outcry because the renowned author is not black.

The editor of Barcelona publisher Univers told reporters that after the translation was complete, the company received a request from the U.S. publisher Viking Books for the work to be carried out by a female activist with African-American origins, if possible.  The decision came after a controversy in the Netherlands that a white poet had been chosen to translate The Hill We Climb into Dutch.

"They did not question my abilities," Víctor Obiols said, noting that the publisher had promised to pay him for his work.  "But if I cannot translate a poet because she is a woman, young, black, an American of the 21st Century, neither can I translate Homer because I am not a Greek of the eighth century BC. Or could not have translated Shakespeare because I am not a 16th-Century Englishman," he added.

No new translator has been announced for the project.