On April 8, 2022, the UW Translation Studies Hub welcomed Zakiya Hanafi for a workshop on globalization, localization, and design-thinking approaches to translation. Hanafi teaches in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington, is the current Vice President of the Northwest Translators & Interpreters Society, and translates scholarly works from Italian, among the many other professional roles she holds.
This workshop focused on how design-centered thinking relates to translation (especially translation pedagogy), answering the question “how do we make products or texts speak to the world?”. Hanafi sees design thinking as a mindset that allows for creative, collaborative, and experimental thinking. Participants had the opportunity to put this into practice during a group activity which consisted of reverse-engineering a cultural artifact, the artifact being a Clif Zbar granola bar for kids. During this exercise, participants observed the Clif Zbar and considered several questions related to safety conventions, cultural values or standards, business, and literacy skills as if the granola bar were an unknown object.
Hanafi also introduced the concept of “glocalization”, a combination of globalization and localization through which a product is made neutral and acceptable for all consumers. To achieve this, either the product should be different depending on the target consumer (such as Japan’s baked KitKat) or it should be marketed differently (Hanafi gave the example of Ikea’s March 2022 “Ramadan Kitchen” advertisement).
For the second part of the workshop, participants were tasked with redesigning the Clif Zbar for distribution in a refugee camp. Some of the factors to consider were packaging materials, nutrition content, values, name, flavors, and storage. Using the design-thinking mindset, participants “translated” the Clif Zbar for consumption by a different audience. To provide an example, one group decided that the flavors of the granola bars, which are traditionally flavors such as chocolate brownie or iced oatmeal cookie, should instead reflect the culinary traditions and values of the refugees for which they are intended.
Zakiya Hanafi’s workshop was not only informative and enlightening but entertaining as well. Through interactive activities, participants learned the principles of design-centered learning and how to apply it to their work as translators in an increasingly globalized world. Zakiya Hanafi can be found at http://www.zakiyahanafi.com/.