Translate and carry on

Here, today, we make space for Warsan Shire. She is a British writer, poet, editor and teacher, who was born to Somali parents in Kenya.

A suggestion to keep fit as a translator: to produce at least three good versions of The Unbearable Weight of Staying.

Could you do more? Have you tried yet to be the Raymond Queneau of translation at least every now and then? By their nature, the various retellings of the story employ fine subtleties of the French language, so translations into other languages are adaptations as well as being translations.

The 99 ways to tell a story in Queneau's Exercises in Style, aren't they showing us the way as translators? Discuss.