Translation and Education

What should we make of how dramatically neurological differences and neurological disturbances impact the ways in which we act, think, live, learn, and feel? This is a question that many have wrestled with throughout time. This chapter opens with Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a book in which he translated his own pathological experience with locked-in syndrome. Julian Schnabel’s award-winning commercial film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly followed. Translations of stereopsis, strabismus, stroke, dyslexia, and other conditions into art forms are also examined. The benefits of translation and education are further discussed in terms of healing, academic projects, and outreach provided by community centers. All of these cases demonstrate that a translation of a subjective experience into another form opens a gateway for learning and communication.