On Multilingualism, Literature and Translation Defining the Self in Interlingual Discourse

MARÍA LAURA SPOTURNO

Dublín

Congreso; III International Conference?Language, Identity and Education in Multilingual in Contexts?; 2018

Marino Institute, Trinity College,

This paper explores the relation between multilingualism, literature and translation in a corpus of texts which belong to the now consolidated body of literature by US Latina writers. Often classified as border writing, the literary production of US Latina writers is characterized by a unique discursive and cultural, interlingual nature. In effect, Latina literature, which is typically written in English, stands as a markedly heterogeneous discourse celebrating an aesthetics of translation as well as of untranslatability. Understood as a discursive practice, translation becomes a powerful genre in the construction of cultural and literary identities, both within the sphere of so-called ?originals? and the sphere of translated texts (Lefevere and Bassnett, 1990; Tymoczko, 1999 Gentzler 2008). Two specific goals will be pursued: (1) to investigate the relation between multilingualism, translation and cultural identity in a set of US Latina texts in order to assess its relevance in forming a certain intercultural, multilingual, feminist image or ethos; (2) to examine the potential of translation as a strategy in the creation of literary discourse and as a medium to reenact such relation in translation practices including the case of self-translation.