Collaborating on The Translator: The aesthetics and politics of screenwriting

A year before production of the narrative feature length film The Translator (2020) was set to begin, Rana Kazkaz, the screenwriter and director, was contacted by Julie Bo & eacute;ri, an interpreter and translation studies scholar, who, intrigued by the film's title, wanted to know more. They met and what ensued was a year-long interdisciplinary dialogue on the process of screenwriting the feature film The Translator. . As a result, significant questions were addressed regarding the nature of translation, plot and character analysis. Therefore, the creation of a two-voice paper became the most effective way to retell the story of how our collaboration brought to bear on both the aesthetics and politics of screenwriting. Adopting a dual focus on screenwriting as a process and a product, our conversation delves into the aesthetic process of fictionalizing activist translation during the writing of the screenplay and examines the multiple political acts of translation activism depicted in the film: interpreting, subtitling, fixing, etc. It reflects on the screening experience for audiences across countries, languages, cultures and disciplines as well as the complexity of translation in high-risk activism and global politics. Ultimately, this collaboration illustrates the ways in which interdisciplinarity mutually enhances creative and academic endeavours.