Animal's Babel
Animal's Babel by Yoko Tawada is a post-apocalyptic satire translated from the Japanese by Victoria University of Wellington postgraduate students, with images by renowned contemporary artist Kenji Yanobe.
Animal’s Babel was launched by Nicola Gilmour, head of school, School of Languages and Cultures, on Thursday 14 November, at an in-person and Zoom event complete with a dramatic reading featuring performers in Wellington and Japan.
Project coordinator and dramaturg, Professor Dennitza Stefanova Gabrakova, Institute of Global Initiatives, Wakayama University, Japan—formerly senior lecturer, School of Languages and Cultures, Victoria University of Wellington—says, "The Babel project has many levels, an allegory in the work of bilingual author Yoko Tawada, whose work I have been following and profoundly enjoyed; the reckless idea of involving six advanced level students in a collaborative translation; the even more reckless idea to represent this work as a new style tutorial for foreign language teaching self-adapting to the ecology of the liberal university; the Babel project as the formal publication of a script.
"The gravity that holds this together, as a comedy against a bleak background, was the effervescence, adventurous idealism, which feeds the recklessness, ensuring some stubborn restoration of creative and academic life in landscapes of destruction."
We graciously acknowledge our funders, the New Zealand Japan Exchange Programme.