At VUB, Professor Sepp Explores the Power of Translation

Speed-read

• When we translate a text, we are not just converting words from one language to another—we are transferring ideas, histories, and worldviews.
• Translation creates new possibilities. Some texts gain new interpretations when read in another cultural context. Shakespeare, for example, has been reimagined in many different languages, each version indicative of the respective literary tradition and literary field in a particular period and space.
• We can see that translating literary works by Holocaust survivors presents unique ethical and linguistic challenges. These texts are not just historical documents but media of trauma, where language itself is often fractured by traumatic experiences.
• The key is transparency about the translator’s choices and a commitment to accuracy over political expediency.
• Still today, or even particularly today, these narratives resonate beyond history, offering lessons in resilience for modern crises like refugee displacement. They remind us that even in dehumanizing conditions, the act of bearing witness—through writing—can affirm dignity and hope.
• AI’s limitations—such as its inability to grasp irony, puns, or cultural realia—mean that human translators will remain essential, particularly for literary and historical texts.

In the world today, there are approximately 7,159 languages in use, spoken by billions of people across diverse communities. Every year, more than 2.2 million books are published globally, making translation an essential tool for sharing knowledge.

Translation is a process that allows us to access and understand ideas, stories, and knowledge written in languages we do not speak. In the human brain, reading and translating words activate multiple regions responsible for language, memory, and emotion, sparking imagination and empathy. Translation is an essential means of communication, and of life itself, just as translation is a foundational biological process, essential not only to all forms of life but also to the development and functioning of our brains. The 2023 study “Dynamic effects of bilingualism on brain structure map onto general principles of experience-based neuroplasticity, highlights how bilingualism, through intensive and long-term language learning experiences, shapes the brain, emphasizing the importance of language education and the promotion of multilingualism for cognitive development and learning ability.

Professor Arvi Sepp, co-director of the Center for Literature in Translation (CLIV, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University) and chair of the Center for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (CLIC, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB), bridges worlds, from translation to teaching and writing. In this interview, Professor Sepp highlights the power of translation in promoting political resistance, fostering reconciliation, and ensuring that personal and collective histories endure. He also emphasizes that human translators remain indispensable for literary and historical texts.

Professor Sepp studied German and English Philology, Sociology, and Literary Theory. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Fritz Halbers Fellowship (Leo Baeck Institute), the Tauber Institute Research Award (Brandeis University), the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Award, the Prix de la Fondation Auschwitz, and the Prize for Research Communication of the Royal Flemish Society of Belgium for the Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on translation studies, autobiography studies, German-Jewish literature, and literary theory. He is the author of the monograph Topographie des Alltags.

Sepp’s monograph Topographie des Alltags offers a Cultural and German Studies analysis of Victor Klemperer’s Third Reich Diaries (Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum Letzten). “My book Topographie des Alltags offers an analysis of Victor Klemperer’s Third Reich diaries. Klemperer, a German-Jewish professor of French Literature in Dresden, kept a diary for most of his life, offering a meaningful and insightful look into the day-to-day workings of the Nazi dictatorship,” Sepp explained.

He examines how National Socialism and its consequences—anti-Semitism, humiliation, discrimination, and persecution—are inscribed in the diaristic text, highlighting Klemperer’s German-Jewish self-perception, his reflections on Nazi society, and the functions of diary writing during the Holocaust.

The future is multilingual

As translation continues to play a vital role in connecting ideas, cultures, and knowledge, the education of future translators takes on ever greater significance. Universities and academic programs offer students the chance to develop not only their linguistic and analytical skills, but also a profound understanding of how language shapes thought, perception, and communication. In February 2024, VUB signed its official “Charter on Multilingualism and Linguistic Diversity.” The document promotes multilingualism as an essential skill for facilitating communication across linguistic and cultural boundaries and creating a more inclusive society.

Professor Sepp also contributed to the study Change and Transformation in the Linguistic Autobiographies of Translation Students in Brussels, published in the book Translation Practices as Agents of Transformation in Multilingual Settings. The research, conducted at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), explored how language learning shapes identity among multilingual translation students, reflecting Professor Sepp’s broader interest in translation, multilingualism, and identity.

Translation as a tool for critical awareness, cultural mediation, and political engagement

How do you teach students to recognize ideological biases in translated texts?

 Arvi Sepp: An important objective of teaching literary translation, at least as I see it in my practice, is to create an awareness to uncover ideological biases. Historical translations are always embedded in the power dynamics of their time. When we analyze paratexts—introductions, footnotes, and publisher blurbs—we can see how a text is framed in ways that skew its reception. A modern edition of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, e.g., might include a neoliberal critique in its preface, subtly shaping readers’ perceptions before they even encounter the text. My goal in teaching is trying to shape a critical habit of skeptical reading, recognizing that no translation is neutral.

This textual sensitivity goes beyond the mere discipline of Literary Studies or Translation Studies; it is, more generally, a genuine academic attitude that is central to the Humanities. This is where I see the continued relevance and necessity of the Humanities in a post-truth era.

What is lost, and what could be gained, in translation?

Arvi Sepp: The question of ‘loss’ and ‘gain’ in translation has been debated since Antiquity. On the one hand, certain elements are almost inevitably lost: puns, rhythm, metre, cultural idioms, and the musicality of the original language. For instance, Heinrich Heine’s poetry in Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen relies on rhyme and meter that may not be rendered in translation. Similarly, Kafka’s bureaucratic nightmares in e.g. The Trial are tied to the German language’s syntactic capacity for labyrinthine sentences—a feature that can be difficult to replicate.

Yet, translation also creates new possibilities. Some texts gain new interpretations when read in another cultural context. Shakespeare, for example, has been reimagined in many different languages, each version indicative of the respective literary tradition and literary field in a particular period and space. Moreover, translation can recover obscured meanings. A classic example is the retranslation of feminist or postcolonial texts, seen as a way of ‘Writing Back’, where earlier translations may have diluted their radical edge. By revisiting and reimagining these works, translators can restore the relevance of original works in the contemporary literary field.

Can translation be a tool for political resistance or reconciliation?

Arvi Sepp: Translation has long been a weapon in political struggles. During the Cold War, Samizdat literature circulated in Eastern Europe, undermining communist state censorship. Similarly, today, translators play a key role in amplifying dissident voices from authoritarian regimes, whether by rendering Belarusian protest poetry into English or Ukrainian war diaries into German. On the other hand, translation can also foster reconciliation. In post-conflict societies like South Africa or Rwanda, translating testimonies from different sides of a conflict can build empathy and shared understanding. The act of translating trauma narratives—say, from Bosnian survivors of the Srebrenica massacre—requires ethical care to avoid retraumatization while ensuring historical accuracy. However, translation can also be co-opted for propaganda. Governments may selectively translate foreign texts to fit nationalist narratives or mistranslate speeches to justify aggression. This underscores the need for critical, ethically engaged translators who resist manipulation.

How can cooperation between translators, journalists, and scholars be improved in the fight against, say, political propaganda?

Arvi Sepp: To combat propaganda, collaboration between translators, journalists, and scholars can play an important role. Translators possess the linguistic and cultural competence to decode the nuances embedded in propagandistic discourse as it circulates transnationally. Scholars, on the other hand, can trace genealogies of propaganda, its literary forms, and its social functions, thus informing both journalistic storytelling and translational choices with an understanding of power, ideology, and reception. The fight against propaganda is not simply a matter of correcting misinformation but a cultural and epistemic struggle where translation, journalism, and scholarship converge to produce critically engaged, transnational audiences. Translators, in this context, can be seen as partners, not just service providers, in the fight against disinformation.

How does the cultural literacy of the translator affect the integrity of the translated text?

Arvi Sepp: A translator’s cultural literacy—which I understand as their understanding of the social, historical, and ideological contexts of both the source and target languages—is crucial for maintaining the adequacy of a translated text. Without this awareness, even a linguistically accurate translation can misrepresent the original meaning. Cultural literacy also involves recognizing untranslatable elements. German concepts like ‘Heimat’ or ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’  carry historical weight that may not have direct equivalents. A translator tries to find creative solutions—paraphrasing, footnotes, or contextual framing—to convey these concepts without oversimplifying them. In this light, literary translators are researchers and writers alike, having a keen hermeneutic awareness of the historical and cultural backdrop of every text they work with.

How do you see the role of translation in the preservation and transformation of cultural heritage?

Arvi Sepp: I believe one of the major premises to bear in mind is that translation is not merely a linguistic act but primarily a cultural negotiation. When we translate a text, we are not just converting words from one language to another—we are transferring ideas, histories, and worldviews. This process plays a dual role: it preserves cultural heritage expressed in texts by making it accessible beyond its original context, while simultaneously transforming it, as every language system imposes its own grammatical, syntactic, and idiomatic structures and connotations. For example, translating a medieval German epic like  Nibelungenlied into nowadays English requires decisions about how to handle archaic concepts, discourses, images, metaphors, and philosophical and religious references.

A literal translation might preserve the original phrasing but lose its emotional impact, whereas a freer adaptation could make the text more relatable but risk distorting its historical essence. This tension between preservation and transformation is central to Translation Studies and – more generally – to every reflection on translation in the West since Antiquity. Moreover, translation can revive forgotten or suppressed voices. Works by marginalized authors—like e.g. linguistic minorities or political dissidents—often reach wider audiences only through translation, ensuring that their cultural legacy endures. This way, translation acts as both a guardian and a catalyst for cultural evolution.

Ethical translation of Holocaust diaries

What are the challenges of translating works by or about Holocaust survivors?

Arvi Sepp: We can see that translating literary works by Holocaust survivors presents unique ethical and linguistic challenges. These texts are not just historical documents but media of trauma, where language itself is often fractured by traumatic experiences. Preserving the survivor’s voice—idiosyncratic speech patterns, hesitations, and shaken tone—is central to the translation. Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, for example, uses deliberate, clinical prose to convey the dehumanization of Auschwitz. A translation that smoothens his syntax would risk neutering its impact. German Nazi terminology also poses dilemmas: words like ‘Lager’ or ‘Selektion’ carry specific connotations that may lack direct equivalents.

Culture-specific references further present a challenge, as many testimonies refer to pre-war Jewish life—customs, jokes, Yiddish or Hebrew phrases—unfamiliar to modern readers. In some cases, footnotes can help, but over-annotation risks turning the literary text into a textbook. These challenges underscore that translating Holocaust literature is not just interlinguistic labour but a cultural act of ethical remembrance.

Could you explain to readers how the life of Jews in the city of Breslau is portrayed in personal writings from the period of Nazi Germany? Also, space influenced the way these experiences were represented in the texts. Do you think this topic has been sufficiently researched? On the other hand, how can we use these experiences today, as the world faces numerous challenges?

Arvi Sepp: Personal writings from Breslau (now Polish Wrocław), like the diaries of Willy Coh, offer poignant insights into German-Jewish life under Nazism. They reflect the perspective of persecuted Jews, whose daily life in the German Reich from 1933 to 1945 was characterized by destitution, discrimination, persecution, expropriation, isolation, material hardship, and harassment. The history of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and war is embodied in the distress experienced in private life, which in turn can only be understood in the context of the general course of history. The personal diaries thus show how contemporary history in crisis corresponds to a time of crisis in private life. They depict synagogues, cafés, and schools as pillars of community before their destruction during ‘Kristallnacht’. Later accounts describe the situation in so-called ‘Jewish houses’ (‘Judenhäuser’), where cramped rooms became sites of covert resistance. The diaries attest to writing as defiance against anti-Semitic persecution.

In research, gaps still remain, particularly in the inclusion of women’s and children’s perspectives and the focus on everyday practices and experiences in the context of persecution and discrimination. Still today, or even particularly today, these narratives resonate beyond history, offering lessons in resilience for modern crises like refugee displacement. They remind us that even in dehumanizing conditions, the act of bearing witness—through writing—can affirm dignity and hope.

Can translations conceal or change the meaning of someone’s suffering, especially in war zones?

Arvi Sepp: Translation can indeed conceal or distort suffering, like in war zones, as you ask. This is a critical issue in, e.g., translation ethics, trauma studies, or postcolonial literature, where the stakes of misrepresentation are high. When someone’s suffering is translated, it involves a shift in voice from the witness/victim to the translator as intermediary. In cases of war and persecution, the cultural meaning of suffering can be only partially translatable. This is the case when the source language has specific terms for political violence, state terror, or references to collective memory that the target language lacks. The translator may also not share the socio-historical background of the speaker, leading to misalignment of worldviews. Conversely, ethical translation can amplify suffering truthfully by prioritizing minimal intervention, using footnotes to explain unavoidable changes. The key is transparency about the translator’s choices and a commitment to accuracy over political expediency.

Preserving meaning in a digital era

The researchers examined how the rise of machine translation, especially since the release of Google Translate in 2010, has affected translator employment and wages, as well as the demand for foreign language skills across various jobs. The findings show that the wider use of machine translation is associated with fewer translation jobs and a reduced need for skills in languages such as Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, French, and German.

At the beginning of the year, a research article was published that aimed to investigate how translation and interpreting students approach modules dedicated to their mother tongue, how aware they are of its importance for their future careers, and how interested and engaged they are in these modules. The study notes that there is no empirical research examining the attitudes of translation students towards their mother tongue within the framework of translation studies. This is particularly important because students’ attitudes towards learning their own language are likely to differ significantly from their attitudes towards learning a foreign language, and they may perceive the role of their mother tongue in professional development differently.

How do you foresee the impact of artificial intelligence and digital humanities on the field of literary translation?

Arvi Sepp: There are clearly particular literary texts that resist translation altogether, I do believe, whether due to sacred or ritual language, trauma, or aesthetic experiments. Trauma narratives, for instance, like Holocaust literature with fractured grammar, defy translation without distortion. Ethical concerns also arise with indigenous, culture-specific knowledge, where translating without community consent can perpetuate exploitation. Even literary experiments, such as in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, with its multilingual wordplays, are often deemed “untranslatable”; existing versions are essentially new creations. Such cases remind us that translation may be highly challenging and that texts are inextricably tied to their original language and context. Translation, however, is always also cultural transfer that encompasses ideologies, aesthetics, literary norms, social structures, and power relations embedded in texts and their circulation.

Where do you see the future of translation studies in the next decade?

Arvi Sepp: Given the current changing societal, geopolitical, and technological context, the field of Translation Studies is rapidly moving into different directions. On the one hand, one important focus in Literary Translation Studies is the decolonization of the literary canon and its translation by prioritizing non-Western traditions and challenging the dominance of English as a ‘hypercentral’ language. Projects like the Global South Collective exemplify this shift away from the still dominant Eurocentric emphasis—and bias—in Translation Studies. On the other hand, the rise of generative AI is clearly reshaping the practice and profession of literary translation, like all other realms of society. However, AI’s current limitations—such as its inability to grasp irony, puns, or cultural realia—mean that human translators remain essential, particularly for literary and historical texts.

The enduring power of translation

“The value of language learning has been questioned by many, including policymakers, due to the recent emergence of generative artificial intelligence technology,” according to a study published in September 2025. So the scientists conducted a systematic review to examine the contribution of multilingualism to personal development and highlight the importance of language learning. 105 scientific papers published between 2020 and 2025 were analyzed. The results showed that language learning not only enables individuals to develop in multiple ways but also contributes to social inclusion and equality in different educational, institutional, and societal contexts.

However, the importance of translation is highlighted by a study on the impact of the Nobel Prize, the first to publish extensive data on the translations of major works by all Germanophone literary laureates. The findings show that the prize itself functions like a global brand: it increases the number of translations, broadens the accessibility and recognition of the author, and significantly shapes their position in world literature. At the same time, however, the effects are not unambiguous—while on one hand it strengthens authority and opens the door to canonization, on the other it can lead to pressure, reduced productivity, or the so-called ‘Nobel disease,’ when winners struggle to continue their work after receiving the award.

Translation is much more than a linguistic exercise – it is a vital cultural, cognitive, and ethical practice that shapes the way we understand the world, connect across communities, and preserve human knowledge

As Professor Sepp points out, translation has enormous social and political significance: it can amplify dissenting voices, foster reconciliation, preserve cultural heritage, and ensure that personal and collective histories endure. Education remains crucial to preparing future translators for this complex landscape. The multilingual environment at VUB, while promoting linguistic diversity, is an example of how education can foster transformative experiences and a deeper sense of identity in students.

Image courtesy of Professor Arvi Sepp

These publications were produced as part of the Maria Leptin EMBO Fellowship, which allowed us to spend two months exploring the world of science at VUB in Brussels. Importantly, all articles were the result of our own choice of topics and in accordance with our interests.