Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2016

This article proposes the translatological approach called intracultural translation, that is, translation within the same language-culture, coined by Desrine Bogle (2014), with specific reference and application to the Creole language using H. P. Grice’s conversational implicature, Venuti’s application to translation, and Roman Jakobson’s intralinguistic translation as theoretical frameworks. Mirroring the approach of the translator working within Romance languages who employs the Latin roots of these languages to judiciously resolve difficult translation issues, the concept of intracultural translation reinforces the notion of a Creole world view, product of a shared history, as evidenced through a shared linguistic and cultural heritage or “storehouse” from which translators of Creole texts can freely select elements to undertake their activity of intercultural transfer. In seeking to affirm and maintain the cohesiveness of Creole identity against the homogenizing effect of globalization, intracultural translation, currently underexplored and underexploited, is presented as a viable translatological approach to texts in Creole. Intracultural translation is exemplified through a case study of the English translations of three French Creole proverbs in the French Caribbean novel Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle by Simone Schwarz-Bart.

This case study uses tools from Critical Discourse Analysis and Translation Studies to explain the translation of Creole aesthetics in thirty-two written folktales of Trinidad, after World War I. The serial publication of these local folktales within the Trinidad Weekly Guardian and the Argos newspapers coincided with a period of cultural transformation in Trinidad, when local newspapers became the caretakers of a national literature in print. The researcher uses translation as a metaphor to critically analyze the process and function of intercultural transfer between oral and written folktale cultures, while showing how intercultural translation was effected in the folktale, at this time. In the final analysis, the study traces the forward reach of translating creolization beyond the period of WWI, into a period that is better known for the foregrounding of the Creole under class, in the short stories of Beacon and Trinidad of 1929 to 1930. It is a significant study because it identifies many translation shifts in Creole culture towards establishing the conventions of the modern short story of the 1930’s. In particular, the re-writing of oral tales enabled a discursive shift in focus in favor of the ordinary class, race-relations in society, the melding of folk mythologies for didactic purposes, and a language shift from the folktale’s French-Creole language base to an English-oriented literate culture. In this way, it perpetuated a neo-colonial agenda of translating creolization as the discursive recolonization of Creole folktale culture with exocentric conventions.

This paper explores the use of Creoles in Caribbean English Literature and how it tends to be translated into Spanish by analyzing the Spanish translations of two novels written by Caribbean author, Oonya Kempadoo. Kempadoo is a relatively new and unknown author. She was born in England to Guyanese parents and grew up in the Caribbean. She lived in several of the islands, including St. Lucia and Trinidad and at present resides in Grenada. Apart from being a novelist, she is a freelance researcher and consultant in the arts, and works with youth and international organizations, where she focuses on social development.

Her first novel, Buxton Spice, was published in 1998. Described as a semi-autobiography by Publisher’s Weekly, it has also been praised for being original and universal in the portrayal of its themes. It is the story of a young girl growing up in Guyana during the Burnham regime. It is written as a series of vignettes, which contributes to the seemingly quick development of Lula from childhood to adolescence, as she learns to explore her sexuality. This novel has been published in the United Kingdom and the United States, and has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese and Hebrew. The version used for this investigation was translated by Victor Pozanco and commissioned by Tusquets Publishers.

Kempadoo’s second novel, Tide Running, also forms part of this investigation. As the 2002 winner of the Casa de las Américas Literary prize for Caribbean English and Creole, this novel was translated into Spanish by a Cuban translator as a part of the award. It is the story of an unambitious Tobagonian youth who becomes entangled in a bizarre relationship with an interracial couple. The story highlights several issues, such as poverty, race and social class differences, sex and right and wrong. As a researcher, I felt that it would be enlightening to see how a Caribbean translator, from a country (Cuba) with limited access to mass cultural currents commonplace elsewhere, handles this piece of prose which is so heavily steeped in Trinbagonian culture.

Stemming from the belief in both the potential transformative power of art and the intellectual’s role in social struggles, this article foregrounds the figure of the literary translator as an intellectual that holds the potential to contribute to the advancement of Caribbean narratives through his or her ethically and politically motivated translations. The article uses Pierre Bourdieu’s theorizing to emphasize on the necessarily collaborative nature of the role of literary translators of West Indian literature. Furthermore, since most frequently than not Creole languages are an integral part of West Indian texts, this article pinpoints the translator’s ability to both discern and understand Creole as a crucial aspect for translations to be engaged and participate in regional ideological struggles.

This article is a study of the proximity between the processes of creolization and translation, which share the opportunity of bringing our languages, our cultures and our literatures to a creative encounter. After a discussion of all the meanings these terms carry, the article will focus on two works by Derek Walcott: his rewriting of Tirso De Molina’s El burlador de Sevilla, and his unpublished translation of Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, to understand what directions these works have taken through Walcott’s intervention. Looking at these two different kinds of adaptation, I will try to reach a new understanding of creolized and creolizing translation. This kind of translations could in fact serve as maps to allow readers to orientate in the original text, and to bring it further, to unpredictable destinations, rather than simply reproducing a copy of the original in another language.