The unbelievable ability of words to turn smooth skin into one of bump terrain. To cause an electrifying pang of ice down your spine. To feel both summer and winter simultaneously. Lina Mounzer has changed my vision of refugees and the emotions that come as a package deal with war. Previously, I thought I empathized with the concepts of war, but I realized now how superficial that assumption was. The battle between language being both the voice and the weapon was so powerful it left me speechless, as how can i be so ignorant to use such magic casually after seeing what power words possess.

Lina Mounzer’s writing style is one of such beauty that grinds your heart to a pulp. A beautiful quote within her article is :  “Gayarti Spivak qualifies the act of translation as “erotic,” but there is something too gentle about that word to ring true for me. The word captures the act of surrender, and the abundantly physical communion with the text, but there is something messier and bloodier that is elided. More agonized and agonizing too. There is a violence in undoing someone’s words and reconstituting them in a vocabulary foreign to them, a vocabulary of your own choosing.”

I love how she frames language as something precious and intimate. Every person’s choice of words feels like an extension of their soul, something that must be nurtured, protected, even held sacred. When she changes their words, she doesn’t just revise a sentence; she alters the rhythm of the writer’s heartbeat and replaces it with her own. How, then, can the heart ever beat the same? This idea truly resonated with me because it made me question everything we think we understand. We only “know” history because it has been translated into forms we can comprehend. Yet in that translation, something is inevitably lost, half the treasure stripped away in the process. It is like selling gold for half its worth. How many entire worlds have been softened, reshaped, or erased simply to make them more digestible?

This connects beautifully to Lina’s comparison of translation to transplantation. It is such a precise metaphor, because every word, spoken or written, is chosen intentionally. With an ocean of words available, why select that specific one? That choice carries weight, context, and emotion. Therefore, in the process of translation, this intentionality cannot be overlooked.

As Lina explains:

“Translation is not just about transposing words from one language to another, but transplanting a feeling, a way of seeing the world, from one vocabulary of experience to another. I think of the verb, to transplant. A seedling from soil to soil. But also an organ from body to body. The procedure must be as delicate, as cognizant of the original conditions of creation in order to nurture and ensure a continuation of life.”

Her metaphor emphasizes that translation is not mechanical but organic. It requires sensitivity to the original environment in which the words were born, cultural, emotional, and historical. Just as a transplanted organ must be handled with care to survive in a new body, meaning too must be treated with precision and respect if it is to live on in another language. 

To me, this is what makes it so beautiful. Language, something we so often take for granted, holds immense power, enough to demand careful and conscious handling. It is not just a tool for communication, but a vessel of memory, identity, and emotion. With that kind of power comes responsibility, the responsibility to preserve, to honor, and to protect what lives within each word.

Lastly, Lina spoke about her friend’s observation of the definition of transport in Greece being ‘Metaphoros’. She said “You must bear the words, no matter how heavy or foreign or grotesque or strange, you must bear them with their full weight and allow them to carry you where they will, carry you so far into yourself you finally emerge into an understanding beyond.” Her reflection was gorgeous as it means that all this magic and power found within words means nothing if you don’t open your heart to it, otherwise it is pure passivity. Allowing language to infiltrate your mind and transport you to another level of either empathy, acknowledgement or state being is where the magic lies as it has the power to transform oneself. But like a caterpillar has to go inside the cocoon to evolve, we must take the act of truly engaging to evolve too.  

Within Lina’s article, she offers a truth that feels both unsettling and necessary to confront. When she writes, “We know how language can be used to beat the rhythm of the war drum, mustering ranks upon ranks of public support. We know how language itself can wage war against us, by mimicking the same casual dehumanization of a bomb,” she exposes the dual nature of words, their ability not only to describe violence, but to participate in it. Language can mobilize nations, justify destruction, and strip people of their humanity long before any physical harm occurs. The comparison to a bomb is especially striking; just as explosions destroy cities, words can quietly erode dignity, empathy, and truth. Reflecting on this makes me realize that awareness is a form of protection. To recognize the weaponized nature of language is to guard oneself against manipulation, to question rhetoric that incites fear or division, and to resist becoming complicit in harm. It reminds me that words are never neutral, they either build or break, and that we carry responsibility not only in how we speak, but in what we choose to believe.

When Lina declares, “But my English is a war wound. It is a result of the roughshod amputation of my mother tongue,” the imagery is both violent and vulnerable. A war wound suggests survival, but not without loss. An amputation suggests necessity, but also irreversible absence. In describing her English this way, she reveals the cost of being heard in a world that privileges certain languages over others. To fight marginalization and speak to a global audience, she must distance herself from the very language that first held her memories, her rhythms, her sense of self.

This forces me to sit with an uncomfortable question: must we compromise our identity in order to preserve it? In trying to protect what we are, do we sometimes reshape ourselves into something more palatable, more translatable, more acceptable? In the modern world,where the media has the power to erase, distort, or rewrite truths to fit calculated narratives, there seems to be pressure to “level” with dominant systems in order to survive within them. Yet doing so risks internal fragmentation. 

In class, we discussed a quote by Shirley Chisholm: “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” Her words feel like both a challenge and a response to Lina’s pain. Chisholm’s statement suggests agency, refusing exclusion without surrendering identity. But Lina’s metaphor complicates this idea. What if, before you can even step into the room, you are required to soften your accent, reshape your words, or filter your truths? In that case, is bringing a folding chair really enough, if the very language spoken at the table already asks you to surrender a piece of yourself just to be heard?

Lina’s words make me reflect on the quiet negotiations many people make daily,adjusting accents, simplifying stories, softening truths,just to be understood. It makes me wonder whether survival within dominant structures is a form of resistance, or whether it slowly distances us from the core of who we are. 

https://lithub.com/war-in-translation-giving-voice-to-the-women-of-syria/