A Translational Turn: Latinx Literature into the Mainstream

by Marta E. Sanchez

Overview

No contemporary development underscores the transnational linkage between the United States and Spanish-language América today more than the wave of in-migration from Spanish-language countries during the 1980s and 1990s. This development, among others, has made clear what has always been true, that the United States is part of Spanish-language América. Translation and oral communication from Spanish to English have been constant phenomena since before the annexation of the Mexican Southwest in 1848. The expanding number of counter-national translations from English to Spanish of Latinx fictional narratives by mainstream presses between the 1990s and 2010 is an indication of significant change in the relationship. A Translational Turn explores both the historical reality of Spanish to English translation and the “new” counter-national English to Spanish translation of Latinx narratives. More than theorizing about translation, this book underscores long-standing contact, such as code-mixing and bi-multilingualism, between the two languages in U.S. language and culture. Although some political groups in this country persist in seeing and representing this country as having a single national tongue and community, the linguistic ecology of both major cities and the suburban periphery, here and in the global world, is bilingualism and multilingualism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822986409
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	01/22/2019
Series:	Latinx and Latin American Profiles
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Marta E. Sánchez is professor emerita of Chicano and Latino literature at University of California San Diego and Arizona State University.

Table of Contents

Table of Content:

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction: Setting the Stage
Chapter 1: Reverse Cross-Over Latinx Narratives: English to Spanish Translations in a U.S. Market
Chapter 2: The “New” Status of Spanish in the United States
Chapter 3: Pocho En Español: The Anti-Pocho Pocho
Chapter 4: Unforgetting the Forgetting: The Sonics of Jíbara Dialect in Esmeralda Santiago’s Cuando era puertorriqueña
Chapter 5: “I may say ‘wetback’ but I really mean mojado”: Ramón ‘Tianguis’ Pérez’ Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant
Chapter 6: Afterword
Works Cited
Appendix
Index
 

Editorial Reviews

An astute, timely, and ground-breaking contribution that brings Latino/a studies and translation studies together for the first time. Sánchez, distinguishing between inter-national and intra-national translation practices, analyzes Latino/a literature in the U.S. written in English and translated almost simultaneously into Spanish, brilliantly locating the problems (misreadings, untranslatability) that arise when translation occurs within the same nation-state. Moving beyond ‘translation as betrayal,’ this book proposes inventive ways of approaching bi/multilingual texts and imaginaries in an increasingly connected world.” —Norma Klahn, University of California, Santa Cruz
 

“Sánchez’s A Translational Turnis the first monograph to explicitly put contemporary Latinx literature in conversation with translation studies. . . . It is a pathbreaking book, laying the groundwork for further inquiry into complex aspects of international and transnational translations of Latinx literatures.” —Latino Studies

“Sánchez’s A Translational Turn is the first monograph to explicitly put contemporary Latinx literature in conversation with translation studies.” —Latino Studies
 

“A detailed and well-researched account of the development undergone by Latinx and Hispanic literature in the United States in order to fit the needs of market trends . . . a well-structured and developed examination, reviewing important notions related to theories of translation per se, as well as structuring terms (bilingual, multilingual, multicultural, internal and external translations, code-shifting, Spanglish).” —Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature

From the Publisher