The ‘Stuart Hall in Translation’ series observes Stuart Hall’s ideas in motion. by tracing their resonances and transformations as they oscillate between languages, historical moments, and varying socio-political contexts.  The series, produced in partnership with Cultural Studies journal, invites translators of Stuart Hall’s work from across the world to reflect on the following questions:

• What can be lost and gained when texts are translated into different languages?
• Can ideas form linkages across difference?
• How can ideas transcend spatial and temporal boundaries?
• What are the political implications associated with ideas moving across and between boundaries?

To initiate the project, we invited Bill Schwarz, co-author of Stuart Hall’s memoir ‘Familiar Stranger’, and Liv Sovik, professor of Communication at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, to discuss the nuances of translating ‘Familiar Stranger’ and Hall’s ideas into Portuguese for a Brazilian audience.

You can listen here to the conversation with Bill Schwarz and Liv Sovik, which was recorded in August 2022, and is introduced and hosted by SHF Director Orsod Malik.

In 2024, we extended the invitation to other translators of Hall’s work, asking them to write about their own experiences, and addressing the disparities, challenges, and synergies of translating Hall’s ideas into a different language and national context. These new texts will be published in Cultural Studies Journal and on the Stuart Hall Foundation website in Autumn 2024.

A transcript of the conversation recording is available to view and download here: (read transcript)

Supported by Taylor & Francis, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust.

The speakers

Bill Schwarz is Professor of English at Queen Mary University of London. Bill’s many publications include his Memories of Empire trilogy and his contribution to Stuart Hall’s memoir Familiar Stranger. A Life between Two Islands (2017). With Catherine Hall, Bill is also General Editor of the Duke University Press series, The Writings of Stuart Hall.

Liv Sovik is a full professor at the School of Communication of UFRJ. She is a collaborating professor of the Ethnic and Racial Relations Masters, CEFET-Rio de Janeiro, and researcher of the PACC Advanced Program in Contemporary Culture, UFRJ. She edited a major collection of Stuart Hall’s works into Portuguese, Da Diáspora: identidades e mediações culturais (Editora UFMG, 2003), and is the author of Tropicália Rex (Mauad, 2018) andAqui ninguém é branco [Here No One is White] (Aeroploano, 2009).