Hortus Semioticus 13 / 2026 – Review-2

Keywords: translation, objects, contemporary art, migration, materiality, María Carmen África Vidal Claramonte 

“Let me touch the table – so – and thus recover my sense of the moment. A sideboard covered with cruets; a basket full of rolls; a plate of bananas – these are comfortable sights”. (Woolf 1960: 189) Our senses create the world around us. Tough emotional times may cause our sense of identity to fluctuate, making familiar objects reassuring. Such “comfortable sights”, as Rhoda describes in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, can be especially crucial to migrants, whose only fragment of home and safety could be a very pair of shoes, a photograph hastily brought along, or a pebble found on the beach. In her book, Translation and Objects: Rewriting Migrancy and Displacement through the Materiality of Art (2024), María Carmen África Vidal Claramonte discusses this emotional connection to certain objects and masterfully intertwines the topic with translation studies and contemporary art. The monograph shifts the borders of the conventional understanding of translation as a linguistic phenomenon, allowing the reader to travel to seemingly more distant lands of signs, art, senses, and emotions, only to realise these lands were never that far in the first place.

This interdisciplinary journey Vidal Claramonte takes us on is composed of five chapters. The introductory chapter “Translating beyond words” paves the way for thinking about translation in broader terms than strictly linguistic by proposing that “in the world today, translation is everywhere” (Vidal Claramonte 2024: 2). Based on previous studies on the intersection of translation studies and other fields, such as Ciribuco and O’Connor’s (2022) and Goldfajn’s (2023) research, Vidal Claramonte (2024: 5) highlights the materiality of translation, explaining the role of objects as the intermediators (or, perhaps, “translators”) of migrants’ stories. In the second chapter, “Traveling”, she, precisely, continues with the role of the translator, who is responsible for meaning creation. Vidal Claramonte (2024: 22–24) argues that meaning is a multifaceted concept with which time, culture, and politics intervene, thus making perfect translation, the ideal transference of meaning, impossible. Rather, the translator acts as a traveller who constantly has to adapt to new, sometimes sensitive, circumstances and environments. 

Having pondered translation in general and the role of the translator, in the following chapter, “Migrant objects”, Vidal Claramonte (2024: 38–75) discusses the deep emotional value of the objects migrants carry with them that remind them of home and keep them in touch with their identity, as well as help tell the stories of migrants’ journeys through the way the objects are displayed in the museums, for instance. She also reaches a connection with art in this chapter. Among other examples, Vidal Claramonte (2024: 66–75) introduces the art of a British-Palestinian artist, Mona Hatoum, whose works depicting distorted domestic objects aim to visually translate the feelings of a displaced person. 

The chapter “Translationality and translation in contemporary art” digs even deeper into the power of art and artists as translators-mediators of migrants’ stories through objects. Namely, it underlines the possibilities in art to create works not merely meant for looking at but requiring the cooperation of all the senses, since artists apply translatio, the medieval “transfer”, in rewriting stories through different artistic media, giving the once silenced migrants a voice. (Vidal Claramonte 2024: 76–118) 

With the final chapter, “Terra infirma”, the journey comes to an end (or does it?) as Vidal Claramonte (2024: 124–125) calls for the further exploration of ethical translation issues and concludes that translation can be seen as an infinite journey since everything in this process, from stories to be rewritten to objects with emotional value, is constantly on the move.

Translation and Objects is certainly very touching and personal. Whereas other works in translation studies have focused on conveying certain images, stances, and emotions as well, such as Dimitriu’s (2012) article on intercultural communication in travel books on Romania or Mereu’s (2016) research on depicting Italianness in movies, this book’s contribution to the field of translation studies lies in the fact that it exploits objects to illustrate the materiality of translation in contemporary art. This helps envision translation as tangible rather than showing it as something overly theoretical or mechanical. 

What makes Vidal Claramonte’s work especially genuine is her ability to find pieces of stories and examples and make them interact in a wider narrative to which readers can relate, whether they are immigrants or occasional travellers. For instance, she introduces a children’s story about the refugee crisis, Wendy Meddour’s Lubna and Pebble (2020), which shows the emotional connection between a girl and a pebble she found on the beach that provides her comfort in difficult times. The author then subtly reminds the reader of Lubna and Pebble as she mentions a Syrian artist, Nizar Ali Badr, who translates the stories and emotions of Syrian war refugees through stone figures. (Vidal Claramonte 2024: 53, 86) Thus, Vidal Claramonte manages to create a masterful dialogue between stories that translate a range of emotions. 

Nevertheless, there is still a certain aspect of the book that could be improved on. The richness and thoroughness of examples are definitely noteworthy; however, given the monograph’s focus on art and senses, it could benefit from having illustrations rather than only descriptions of artworks, such as Hatoum’s Grater Divide (2002)¹, which would possibly leave an even more lasting imprint on the reader’s mind. Despite this lack of visual material, Vidal Claramonte’s Translation and Objects is packed with enriching outlooks on the intersection of translation and art.

In conclusion, the monograph is a clever interdisciplinary exploration of the borders of translation studies, which connects signs, contemporary art, senses, and emotions with translation. Vidal Claramonte has produced a thought-out book, whose one, of many great strengths, is connecting various individual or personal examples into a wider, relatable narrative. Her work could be of great interest to translation scholars aiming to investigate translation through the lens of other disciplines; students in the fields of humanities and, perhaps, social sciences, who are at the beginning of their research careers and wish to gain an overview of compelling approaches in translation studies; as well as anybody keen on learning about the affect of objects and their representation in contemporary art. Therefore, it is worth putting on your best shoes and following in Vidal Claramonte’s footsteps to catch a glimpse of why a pebble might be someone’s most valued possession.

References

Ciribuco, Andrea; O’Connor, Anne. 2022. Introduction. Translating the object, objects in translation. Theoretical and methodological notes on migration and materiality. Translation and Interpreting Studies 17(1): 1–13.

Dimitriu, Rodica. 2012. When ‘we’ are ‘the other’. Travel books on Romania as exercises in intercultural communication. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 20(3): 313–327.

Goldfajn, Tal. 2023. Tanga, Tunic, Cleaver: On Things in Translation. PMLA 138(3): 454– 470.

Meddour, Wendy; Egnéus, Daniel. 2020. Lubna and Pebble. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mereu, Carla. 2016. Italians in films: Opposing and negotiating hetero-constructed images of Italianness. In: van Doorslaer, Luc; Flynn, Peter; Leerssen, Joep (eds.), Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 127–142.

Vidal Claramonte, María Carmen África. 2024. Translation and Objects: Rewriting Migrancy and Displacement through the Materiality of Art. London and New York: Routledge. Woolf, Virginia. 1960. The Waves. London: The Hogarth Press.