One approach

In Germany, publisher Hoffmann and Campe chose three women to work as a team on translating Amanda Gorman’s piece: Hadija Haruna-Oelker, a Black journalist; Kubra Gumusay, a German writer of Turkish descent; and Uda Strätling, a translator, who is white.

Their challenge was not only to preserve Gorman’s voice but also to make clear the political and social significance of the piece, and to avoid anything that might exclude people of color, people with disabilities, women, or other marginalized groups. The team worked nearly two weeks, occasionally emailing Gorman for clarification.

A couple examples: In the poem, Gorman described herself as “a skinny Black girl.” The translators spent a long time discussing how to translate “skinny” without conjuring images of an overly thin woman, Gumusay said.

They also debated how to bring a sense of the poem’s gender-inclusive language into German, in which many objects — and all people

— are either masculine or feminine. A common practice in Germany to signify gender neutrality involves inserting an asterisk in the middle of a word, then using its feminine plural form. But such accommodations would be “catastrophic” to a poem, Strätling said, as it “destroys your metric rhythm.” They had to change one sentence where Gorman spoke of “successors” to avoid using it, she added.

“You’re constantly moving back and forth between the politics and the composition,” she said.