Poet Amanda Gorman's Catalan Translator Dropped for Not Being a 'Black Woman'

The Catalan translator for the poem that American writer Amanda Gorman read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration said Wednesday that he has been removed from the job because he had the wrong “profile”. “They told me that I am not suitable to translate it,” Catalan translator Victor Obiols told AFP. “They did not question my abilities, but they were looking for a different profile, which had to be a woman, young, activist and preferably black.” Gorman, a 23-year-old African American, was widely lauded for the reading of her poem “The Hill We Climb” at Biden’s January 20 inauguration. Obiols, who has translated works by William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, received a request from Barcelona publisher Univers three weeks ago to produce a Catalan version of Gorman’s poem with a foreword by US television personality Oprah Winfrey.