Proposal-paper

XXXIV Aedean Conference (Almería 2010)

PANEL: TRANSLATION STUDIES (Coordinator: Roberto A. Valdeón)

SESSION 1 (ROUND TABLE)

Lost in the Translation Zone?

Alejandra Moreno Álvarez (University of Oviedo)
Participants: Alejandra Moreno Álvarez (Chair) (University of Oviedo), Humberto Burcet Rojas (University Rovira i Virgili), Paloma Fresno Calleja, Irene Pérez Fernández (University of Illes Balears)

SESSION 2 (ROUND TABLE)

More Memory and Greater Gaps: Growth in the Grid of Postwar Spain
Jacqueline Anne Hurtley Grundy (University of Barcelona)
Participants: Jacqueline Anne Hurtley (Chair), Mercè Cuenca, Marta Ortega and John Stone (University of Barcelona)

SESSION 3

The Fictional Turn, Translation and the Invention of the Americas
Roberto A. Valdeón (University of Oviedo)

TRANSLATION STUDIES
ABSTRACTS

Lost in the Translation Zone?

Alejandra Moreno Álvarez (University of Oviedo)
Participants: Alejandra Moreno Álvarez, Chair (University of Oviedo), Humberto Burcet Rojas (University Rovira i Virgili), Paloma Fresno Calleja (University of Illes Balears)

In The Translation Zone: a New Comparative Literature, Emily S. Apter (2006) includes affirmations that go from “nothing is translatable” to “everything is translatable”. Within this continuum, we will find different degrees of translatability, a term that in Walter Benjamin’s words, is “an essential quality of certain works” (254). Past perspectives of translation render the source text as the original to be faithful to, while the translation is a mere copy, reproduction or clone expressed in another language, and therefore it will always be inferior to the original work. The Benjaminean perspective sees translation as complementing the source, joining it (like two fragments of a broken vase) in order to give it an “afterlife”. With the coming of descriptive translation and studies, skopostheorie and the cultural turn, though, the focus has shifted from the source text to the target text. Equivalence had been the working concept of translators, who had to be faithful to the source text and the author. But equivalence was challenged from an interdisciplinary approach to translation: other paradigms such as Marxism, feminism and postcolonial studies have enriched the debate in the last decades, together with discussion of the ethical position of translators in their decisions (Pym, Sales). Our proposal considers the intersections between translation studies and postcolonial theories and tackles some of the following questions: What is the translator’s role nowadays? What approach do they take? Is Lawrence Venuti’s invisibility of the translator so invisible? How do they deal with those cultural terms or linguistic expressions that are singular to the source culture and absent in the target culture? What ethical issues arise in the act of translation? How do translators deal with the presence of other languages? How do they help construct identities and portray representations for a target readership? How does the translator work to transpose the heterolingual work into a target literary system? What strategies are used when you are able to work from the matrix language but you are not trained to do so from the indigenous one? How do readers react to the presence of the vernacular language? After a brief theoretical introduction of these issues, led by Burcet Rojas, the participants in this round table will discuss these questions in relation to a number of short stories they have recently translated into Spanish for the collection Bilingual Chapbooks in Contemporary Literatures (published by KRK editions). Each work shows a different aspect of translation that will shed light on this discussion. Firstly, Fresno Calleja has translated the short story “Declaration of Independence” by Samoan author Albert Wendt. In this case, the original heterolingual source text employs Samoan words. Following Suchet’s terms, English is the matrix language while Samoan is the embedded one. This heterolingual phenomenon can be framed under Zabus’ relexification process, by which an indigenous language appropriates the colonial one through its lexicon, morphology and syntax. In literature we can also include oral literary features and genres influencing the written form. This is done in order to raise the voice of the native through the vernacular while still being able to reach a major audience. Moreno Álvarez has translated “A Movement, a Folder, Some Tears”, short story written by Ambai (1944), one of the finest contemporary short-story writers in Tamil, and translated into English by Lakshmi Holmström. In this case, the source text for the Spanish translation is the English translation from a first original written in Tamil; thus, the source text is at the same time a target text. This English version, though, includes Tamil words, expressions and cultural elements that are kept in Tamil language. The options for the translator are to be found again throughout the ends of a continuum: foreignization/domestication. The former implies the presence of foreign terms as they appear; the latter implies the translation into the target language or the substitution by target cultural elements. Finally, Irene Pérez has translated Maggie Gee’s short story “The Artist”. In this case the source text is entirely in English and does not make use of other languages. Yet, the text incorporates non-standard expressions in an attempt to convey the language spoken by Eastern European immigrants not fluent in the English language. Gee portrays, therefore, the difference between “English” and the various “englishes” nowadays spoken in London. This British author has dealt in her writing with the multiple ethnic relations of London society, and in this case Eastern European and native White British characters come into play. Gee is giving voice to communities she does not belong to. Or does she? What is the validity of ethnic categories in relation to the creation process? We ask if a non-member of a particular community can speak about other identities. What is the role of the translator in this debate?

The proposed Round Table is related to work on translators, translated texts and illustrators being carried out in a research group currently financed by the Universitat de Barcelona. Our pursuit develops a task originally embarked on in a team financed by the Catalan Government which covered the early Franco period (1940-1950), findings from which were presented at a Round Table at the Aedean conference in 2008 (“Mulling over memory: gaps in the grid of postwar Spain”). Four members of the team, who focus on literature in English, (Mercè Cuenca, Jacqueline Hurtley, Marta Ortega and John Stone) will deal with material they have been working on in connection with the following writers, translators, illustrators and related texts over a period which stretches from 1940 to 1960: Carson McCullers and/or Tennessee Williams (Cuenca); Manuel Bosch Barrett and/or Guillermo Vilallonga (Hurtley); Vita Sackville-West and/or Radclyffe Hall (Ortega); Xavier Zengotita and/or the illustrators of Ediciones Reguera.

The Fictional Turn, Translation and the Invention of the Americas
Roberto A. Valdeón (University of Oviedo)

This paper starts from Gentlzer’s proposal (2008) of a fictional turn in translation studies and stretches it to use the concept of “fictionalizing twist” in connection with the “invention of America”, as mentioned by historians. The notion of the invention, rather than the discovery or conquest, of America (O’Gorman 1958, Rabasa 1993) runs parallel to the existence of Europe as a cohesive geopolitical power that influenced and shaped the New World. In fact, it has been argued that the political and cultural confrontation between these two areas has contributed to the development of an American identity, often as result of the very attempt to reject that influence. Moreiras (1999), for instance, underlines that Eurocentrism serves the purpose of creating an alternative approach to literature, not so much derived from the European traditions as from American experience. The paper explores these issues in connection with the translation of Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brevíssima relación de la destruyción de las Indias by John Philips.

Keywords: Fictional turn, fictionalizing twist, invention, Americas, Bartolomé de las Casas, John Philips