Literature in Motion
Translating Multilingualism Across the Americas
Published on 18. January 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-0-231-20303-6 (ISBN)
Description
Literature is often assumed to be monolingual: publishing rights are sold on the basis of linguistic territories and translated books are assumed to move from one "original" language to another. Yet a wide range of contemporary literary works mix and meld two or more languages, incorporating translation into their composition. How are these multilingual works translated, and what are the cultural and political implications of doing so?
In Literature in Motion, Ellen Jones offers a new framework for understanding literary multilingualism, emphasizing how authors and translators can use its defamiliarizing and disruptive potential to resist conventions of form and dominant narratives about language and gender. Examining the connection between translation and multilingualism in contemporary literature, she considers its significance for the theory, practice, and publishing of literature in translation. Jones argues that translation does not conflict with multilingual writing's subversive potential. Instead, we can understand multilingualism and translation as closely intertwined creative strategies through which other forms of textual and conceptual hybridity, fluidity, and disruption are explored.
Jones addresses both well-known and understudied writers from across the American hemisphere who explore the spaces between languages as well as genders, genres, and textual versions, reading their work alongside their translations. She focuses on U.S. Latinx authors Susana Chavez-Silverman, Junot Diaz, and Giannina Braschi, who write in different forms of "Spanglish," as well as the Brazilian writer Wilson Bueno, who combines Portuguese and Spanish, or "Portunhol," with the indigenous language Guarani, and whose writing is rendered into "Frenglish" by Canadian translator Erin Moure.
In Literature in Motion, Ellen Jones offers a new framework for understanding literary multilingualism, emphasizing how authors and translators can use its defamiliarizing and disruptive potential to resist conventions of form and dominant narratives about language and gender. Examining the connection between translation and multilingualism in contemporary literature, she considers its significance for the theory, practice, and publishing of literature in translation. Jones argues that translation does not conflict with multilingual writing's subversive potential. Instead, we can understand multilingualism and translation as closely intertwined creative strategies through which other forms of textual and conceptual hybridity, fluidity, and disruption are explored.
Jones addresses both well-known and understudied writers from across the American hemisphere who explore the spaces between languages as well as genders, genres, and textual versions, reading their work alongside their translations. She focuses on U.S. Latinx authors Susana Chavez-Silverman, Junot Diaz, and Giannina Braschi, who write in different forms of "Spanglish," as well as the Brazilian writer Wilson Bueno, who combines Portuguese and Spanish, or "Portunhol," with the indigenous language Guarani, and whose writing is rendered into "Frenglish" by Canadian translator Erin Moure.
Reviews / Votes
Literature in Motion is a landmark work on translation, multilingualism and writing, by a seasoned and brilliant scholar and translator. Ellen Jones provides an invaluable assessment of literary writing in various spaces of linguistic contact and friction across the Americas. -- Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado, author of <i>Strategic Occidentalism: On Mexican Fiction, the Neoliberal Book Market and the Question of World Literature</i> Literature in Motion offers a bold and compelling argument for why multilingual writers and translators should be at the center of our debates about contemporary literature in the Americas. Skillfully combining close readings of literary texts with a broad mapping of the hemispheric literary terrain, Jones shows how recent writer-translator collaborations have produced a series of novel linguistic and narrative effects. This book is an important contribution to the fields of comparative literature, translation studies, Latinx literary studies, and hemispheric studies. -- Jeffrey Lawrence, author of <i>Anxieties of Experience: The Literatures of the Americas from Whitman to Bolano</i> Jones writes with admirable clarity, elegantly navigating areas of conceptual difficulty and drawing out points of textual detail. Literature in Motion builds on recent scholarship in translation studies and world literature, opening out and exploring themes such as the 'untranslatable' and the potential conflict between multilingualism and translation. -- Laura Lonsdale, author of <i>Multilingualism and Modernity: Barbarisms in Spanish and American Literature</i> Jones makes a compelling argument that not only is the relationship between multilingual writing and translating fluid, but it is ever-expanding and generative. -- Tess O'Dwyer * World Literature Today * A powerful monograph brimming with rich theoretical discussions. -- Lucia Collischonn * Oxford Comparative Criticism & Translation Review * A groundbreaking study of multilingual writing in the Americas and its use of translation. -- Sarah Booker * Translation Studies * Highly recommended. * Choice *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-231-20303-6 (9780231203036)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
03/2023
1st Edition
Columbia University Press
€34.49
Available for download
Person
Ellen Jones holds a doctorate from Queen Mary University of London. Her recent literary translations from Spanish include Ave Barrera's The Forgery (2022, co-translated with Robin Myers), Bruno Lloret's Nancy (2020) and Rodrigo Fuentes's Trout, Belly Up (2019). Her critical writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Guardian, and elsewhere.
Content
Acknowledgments
A Note on Translations
Introduction: Translation and Multilingualism in Contemporary American Literature
1. "Mi lengua es un palimpsesto": Susana Chavez-Silverman's Palimpsestuous Writing
2. Censorship and (Pseudo-)Translation in Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
3. "I Want My Closet Back": Queering and Unqueering Language in Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing!
4. Fluid Trajectories in Two Versions of Wilson Bueno's Mar Paraguayo
Coda: Beyond America: Multilingualism, Translation, and Asymptote
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A Note on Translations
Introduction: Translation and Multilingualism in Contemporary American Literature
1. "Mi lengua es un palimpsesto": Susana Chavez-Silverman's Palimpsestuous Writing
2. Censorship and (Pseudo-)Translation in Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
3. "I Want My Closet Back": Queering and Unqueering Language in Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing!
4. Fluid Trajectories in Two Versions of Wilson Bueno's Mar Paraguayo
Coda: Beyond America: Multilingualism, Translation, and Asymptote
Notes
Bibliography
Index