Diaspora Leicester in Translation
The seed of the project, ‘Diaspora Leicester in Translation: Living Heritage and Memory in Sayings, Poems and Songs’ (DLiT in short), was planted when my teenage daughter asked me about my immigration history for her school project. She knew the timeline and facts of my journey, like the list on my CV, but she wanted to know more, the story, the emotions, the questions “what is it like?”, “what does it feel like?”. I fumbled in the back rooms of my memory; I stumbled as I tried to translate my Chinese experiences for my English-speaking child. And I felt a pang of regret that I never asked my late mother these questions.
LIAS’s ‘Into the City’ call was a perfect chance to explore these questions collectively – to connect stories across generations, languages and communities. Together with poet and community activist, Ambrose Musiyiwa, and Dr Michelle Harrison, who did a fantastic project on multilingualism in Leicester’s Golden Mile, we launched DLiT in May 2024.
Rooted in these personal and shared experiences, DLiT celebrates Leicester, one of the UK’s ‘superdiverse’ cities, with no single ethnic majority and residents who speak 87 different main languages. It is not a scene of a collapsed Tower of Babel; these languages carry multicultural heritage and memories that enliven and enrich this historical East Midlands city.
Translation is connection. We take translation as a means of starting conversations and linking generations and communities. It also helps develop a sense of global Leicester through the City’s memory space created and demonstrated by its diaspora residents. In just a short time, our collection brought together sayings that share wisdom across different cultures, songs that echo the tenderly loving voices of our early years, and poems that crystallise the beauty and power of our languages.
After the funding period, DLiT has continued. We held a multilingual poetry workshop with local schools and communities on International Mother Language Day (21 February 2025). Participants wrote poems incorporating different languages. On 15 May, we were invited to an event organised by Somali Community Parents Association, where one of the key activities was to share sayings. Again, we exclaimed in delight: we have a similar one in our language! On another beautiful day in May, we took a group of ladies from Leicester City of Sanctuary to the Botanic Garden. Seeing a yam plant was a delightful little surprise for one of the ladies – an everyday staple crop growing in the sandy soil of Africa is now thriving in a pot in a greenhouse.
Connection in and through translation demonstrates that the superdiversity of Leicester is more enriching than dividing, more convivial than isolating, more meaningful than fragmented. LIAS has enabled a project that is personal, communal and global.