Lately I have been translating more and more for museums that attach particular importance to sensitive language – for instance, the Jewish Museum and the Schwules Museum (Gay Museum) in Berlin, the postcolonially oriented RJM… I translate into English as well as into German, although sensitive translation into German is usually more complex. For example, it is difficult to formulate texts about non-binary people, as no pronoun is as established as “they” – still, there are some solutions. “Gendering”, i.e. rendering a text gender-neutral, the way it naturally is in English, remains an issue: by now, clients have stopped resisting it, but I see it as my task to formulate texts in such a way that gender asterisks (“Kund*innen”) do not appear in every sentence while inclusion still prevails. Translating texts about non-binary people and terms like “race” also has its pitfalls, but norms for sensitive translation into German are being established. Some people would say “politically correct translation” instead of “sensitive translation”, but the term “politically correct translation” is not very politically correct.:)
In my work with museums, I also got to know a new field of expertise: audio description (also known as visual description or descriptive narration). I haven’t tried it myself yet, but the idea of describing works of art and other objects for blind people sounds like a kind of translation: from the visual to the linguistic. I think I might try my hand at descriptive writing in English and German…
