Shetland Voice

With the support of LSI's CIALL project, Shetlandic versions of the short documentaries for all five writers in the Island Voices "Extensions" series have now been completed.

Glasgow-resident Shetland poet, Christie Williamson, has been an enthusiastic participant in the Island Voices initiative to extend its reach into new contexts, new languages, and new genres. Among other things, the Extensions project has featured the work of four other poets alongside Christie - Donald Murray, Martin MacIntyre, Ifor ap Glyn, and Audrey West. Between them, they have produced work in English, Gaelic, Jamaican, Shaetlan, and Welsh. The project has also enabled Catalan translations of all five introductory documentaries by Martin's "Running between two dragons" collaborator Noèlia Diaz-Vicedo.

Christie's Shaetlan versions of the documentaries complete the set. In the Island Voices blogpost which links the films together Christie offers a fascinating poetic perspective on multilingualism, translation, and the use of one's mother tongue:

"Any translation project is best approached with a healthy degree of trepidation – language is tricky, is core to us, is more or less entirely arbitrary symbolism..."

The full range of the work of the "Five Writers" can also be accessed through a single link via the Island Voices Extensions page.