Various forms of media—including visual art, messages carved in stone, and manufactured artifacts—can serve as tools to apprehend the complex phenomena of migration, displacement, and detention. While these materials are not normally used as instruments of communication by translators and interpreters, art and artifacts often express emotional trauma or convey the workings of institutions in ways that words alone cannot in the current climate of mass global migration.

Moira Inghilleri is a professor and director of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she also directs the Translation and Interpreting Studies program. Inghilleri is the author of Translation and Migration (2017) and Interpreting Justice: Ethics, Politics, and Language (2012).