Translating Silence: How to Carry What Isn’t Said

Translating Silence How to Carry What Isn’t Said Some truths cannot be spoken — they can only be carried. In this five-part series, translator Shelly Bryant explores how silence itself becomes a language, and what it means to render the unspoken across cultures. Drawing from her internationally acclaimed translations of Zhang Ling’s A Single Swallow (《劳燕》) and Aftershock (《余震》), Shelly examines moments when words fail — when trauma, dignity, or reverence demand quiet instead of speech. From Ah Yan’s voiceless endurance in wartime China to the slow breaking of silence decades later in Canada, this series traces how culture, language, and gender shape our understanding of what can — and cannot — be said. Each episode unfolds as a meditation on a different kind of silence: - When Language Breaks — the limits of expression after trauma - The Voice That Isn’t Heard — strength through restraint - Too Many Words — when articulation overwhelms understanding - The Ritual of the Unspeakable — gesture as language, and silence as reverence - When Silence Becomes Voice — from repression to release, and the courage to speak Together, they form an inquiry into how translators carry silence without turning it into noise — and how language itself evolves as silence transforms into voice. The program concludes with a live session, “The Ethics of the Unsaid,” reflecting on the translator’s deepest responsibility: to listen, to withhold, and to let silence travel faithfully between worlds.