Fighting at the frontline, expecting someone in captivity, living on occupied territories, loneliness in a frontline town — the war created numerous experiences which are impossible to “express” and “translate.” How to understand each other then? And how to deal with the “internal translation,” when your own experiences are constantly variable? Can a language contend with this translation?

What does it mean for a writer to give up a native language? To translate her-or-himself? To re-create oneself in a different language also one’s own? To what extent are Russophone Ukrainian writers’ renunciations of Russian a metaphorical amputation, an act of solidarity with the literal amputations all around them?

How is literary translation an intervention in a war? Can translation serve as an antidote to imperialism? And what does the role of translation between East and West mean for a place like Ukraine, where–as Adam Zagajewski wrote–”both sides of the border face east”?