Article,
Translating Bilinguality :Theorizing Translation in the Post-Babelian Era'
The Translator, (2002)
Abstract
Translation is often defined as interlingual transfer, with correspondences sought between two languages. But what if the original text is written in more than one language? This paper addresses a number of situations where bilinguality impacts on the translation process and problematizes conventional concepts of translation. Several categories of examples are discussed. The firstofthese involves texts (by Tolstoy and Hemingway) into which isolated stretches of a second language are incorporated. Then there are fictional works where a second language is extensively deployed, but already translatedfor the reader. Examples are works by Buck, Clavell af!d Maugham, where Chinese characters are made to speak English and the novelists have to play the Tole of translators. Finally, there are 'postmodern' texts wherein the author inhabits, as it were, two linguistic realms: those of his or her mother tongue and the acquired tongue. The discussion here will revolve around two distinct groups ofwriters: those who are competent in more than one language and blend the features of two or more languages in their work (like James Joyce) and those who are proficient in one language but have 'mother-tongue' knowledge about another (like Maxine Hong Kingston).
