Life Stories in Translation: Community Translators as Cultural Mediators

Amid increased global migration movements due to violence and crises, asylum seekers are often portrayed in the media in a depersonalised and negative way. However, refugee advocacy organisations across the globe provide a platform for asylum seekers to engage in activities that help them integrate into the local community, including sharing their personal narratives through the use of community translation. This chapter investigates asylum seekers’ life stories in translation and the role of translators as cultural mediators based on interviews and analysis of a cookbook and a graphic novel used in Hong Kong. The analysis reveals how these spaces and community translation can serve as tools for intercultural mediation, allowing asylum seekers to communicate their culture and negotiate their place in the local community thus helping establish meaningful connections with the English-speaking local population in Hong Kong. However, more needs to be done to present these translations in Chinese as the predominant language of Hong Kong.