Methods of Translating: Written Response

In Violent Phenomena (Barokka, 2022), Khairani Barokka critiques how certain bodies, experiences, and forms of communication are marginalised through translation’s politics of access and refusal. Her concept of “right of refusal” reveals how silence, hesitation, and the unspoken are not neutral absences, but embodied forms of power that structure who is allowed to speak—and who is not. Using Barokka’s framework as a method of re-presentation, I re-translate the Preface of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style (1947), which recounts translator Barbara Wright’s polite but uneasy conversations about her work.

In this re-presentation, I adopt “Translating Absence” as a technique: the process of taking the unspoken, judgmental silence—the “Ah-,” pauses, hesitations, and polite micro-violences embedded in everyday conversation—and rendering them explicitly visible. These translated absences appear as Intrusive Annotations in the form of footnotes, exposing the prejudices, micro-aggressions, and social hierarchies that silently structure the original dialogue. In doing so, the project aligns with Barokka’s insistence that translation must account for what is withheld as much as for what is spoken.

Footnotes, by their very position at the margins of the page, visually and conceptually embody the mechanics of exclusion. They represent information deemed necessary yet structurally secondary—mirroring the way unspoken judgments and social biases remain present but unacknowledged in everyday interaction. In this piece, the intrusive annotations transform casual dialogue into a layered commentary, revealing the micro-aggressions beneath the surface of polite exchange.

By framing these internal, judgmental thoughts as annotations, the work foregrounds the politics of silence and absence that Barokka identifies. The footnotes do not simply clarify the text; they interrupt it. They refuse the smoothness of politeness and instead foreground the embodied tensions that constitute communication. Through this method, the project demonstrates that translating absence is not a subtractive act but a critical one—making visible the unsaid structures of power that shape how we read, listen, and understand.