Translation Theory and Latin American Literature: A Story of Requited Love?

DELFINA CABRERA

Cambridge

Congreso; American Comparative Literature Association; 2016

ACLA

The growing use of the concept of translation in the humanities has given rise to a larger variety of perspectives on translation than those allowed for by linguistic paradigms. No longer confined to a single discipline, translation has turned into a babelic concept that crosses a wide range of fields and that provides a rich interface for the study of the cultural transfers that have forged modern societies. In this sense, as postcolonial criticism has shown, translation played a central role in the production of collective identities within the geopolitics of the modern world system. Nonetheless, the crossing between translational processes and literature in the Latin American context still remains to be traced. This paper is located in this blind spot and aims at reflecting upon the following questions: How has the articulation of literature and translation been addressed by Latin American literary and cultural studies? What tensions arise when analyzing translation practices in Latin American literature with the definitions of translation that have been enunciated by Western translation discourses? Which other definitions emerge when reading translation practices in contemporary texts such as Sangre de amor correspondido (1982) by Manuel Puig or Shiki Nagoaka: una nariz de ficción (2001) by Mario Bellatin? How do these authors rethink the idea of community once the transcendent principles that functioned as the basis of modern political organization (such as a national language) have been questioned? What epistemological challenges do they pose for Latin American criticism?