The World Overheard 1

The World Overheard is a series of conversations about journalism, translation, and power, developed by Translator – an independent magazine of translated journalism and non-fiction from beyond the Anglosphere – in dialogue with Ibraaz. 

We begin with a roundtable that asks how exile reshapes voice, how displaced media sustains community, what it means to translate across borders – in more than language – and what happens when the conditions of exile begin to change. Speakers include Alaa Abd el-Fattah, Ricardo Avelar, Lotfullah Najafizadah, Vanessa Tsehaye and Galileo Cheng. The panel is moderated by Charles Emmerson, editor of Translator.

Exile has become one of the defining structures of independent media. Governments have grown sophisticated in their efforts to silence critical coverage – not only through imprisonment and censorship, but through legal frameworks, financial pressure, and digital surveillance that follow journalists and activists across borders. The tools of silencing do not distinguish cleanly between the press and those who simply insist on being heard. From Hong Kong to El Salvador, Russia, Afghanistan, Egypt and beyond – what does it take to keep a story alive when everything around it is working to silence it? What is lost, and what is made, in the process?

Doors open at 5.30pm; events starts at 6pm and ends at 8pm.