A note from the Editor-in-Chief

Hello,

Welcome to the Winter 2020 edition of the UC Review, dedicated to the art, science, and very human activity of ‘translation.’

As the Editor-in-Chief of the Review for the 2019–2020 academic year, it has been my privilege to create a space for student art and creative expression. In January, the Ontario provincial government announced its Student Choice Initiative (SCI) policy, which relegated many postsecondary student levies as “non-essential.” As a result, students were able to opt-out of fees that previous generations of students had democratically voted to hold mandatory for the overall health of the student experience.

At the time of writing, this mandate has been deemed overreaching by the Divisional Court of Ontario, but the consequences of that legal decision are not yet clear.We may face another newly upgraded form of the SCI in the future, or we may not. It’s hard to say.

Either way, I remain deeply grateful to everyone who chose to stay opted-in this year. You are the reason we at the Review can keep doing what we do: giving students a platform for the literary and visual arts. In this issue, we survey the many forms of translation in modern life. Poetry draws our attention to the perils of linguistic translation and what is lost in the process. Our visuals bear on the translation of space—across rooms and seas and entire planets. Day shifts to night and back again.We cross geographic and cultural barriers through student prose, and memories, dreams, and perspectives change in that transition.

We are communicative creatures.That’s why we tend to think of translation as an act between two persons: I say something, you receive it, and an understanding is formed. But even more fundamentally, translation is the act of self-communication. Of drawing meaning from an experience.

Viewed this way, no experience and act is free of an element of translating.The same holds for art. So as you read this issue, I encourage you to pay attention to what you are getting from the experience.Are you able to appreciate something that others might not? Is there anything lost in translation?

Yours sincerely,
Tahmeed Shafiq
Editor-in-Chief, 2019–2020