About thirty people attended a keynote lecture titled "Translating Haitian Thought and Creation into English, Why and How?" on Thursday, October 22, at the Rectorate of the State University of Haiti (UEH). The speaker, Nadève Ménard, a professor at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), was joined by discussant Darline Alexis, the Secretary General of Quisqueya University and a professor at ENS.

The speaker first acknowledged an advantage of translating into English. A Haitian text published in French and then in English circulates more widely and is cited more often by foreign researchers. She then raised the inverse difficulty. Does translating into English not reinforce the dominance of this language in the academic world, and should one not encourage those working on Haiti to read in French or Creole? She indicated that she would return to these questions later.