Is this the end of translation?

Responding to the controversy created by author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld pulling out of translating Amanda Gorman’s poetry into Dutch, after their publisher was criticised for picking a writer for the role who was not also Black, I make the case that this escalating polarisation is ultimately going to sound the death-knell of translation practice. Tracing a genealogy from the two oldest and biggest global translation movements, the Graeco-Arabic and the Indo-Persian, I argue that the challenge of cross-cultural and inter-lingual elements are much more important in producing a work of translation. The contemporary efforts to ensure redress for unrepresented creative communities is absolutely necessary, but this is now coming at the cost of the creative enterprise itself.