Language is your Skin. Latina Writers and the Problem of Translation and Identity

MARÍA LAURA SPOTURNO

Erfurt

Jornada; Research Colloquium of Romance Literary Studies; 2017

Universidad de Erfurt

This presentation introduces the problem of translation and identity in connection with self-translation, retranslation and self-retranslation in the body of US Latina literature. The fact that translation inescapably implies a cultural operation has by now been largely established. The notions that culture should be fundamental in the discussion of translation and that translation should be at the centre of cultural debate, have informed much of the thinking on translation within the field of Translation Studies since the 1990?s, particularly when the interest has fallen on the relation between translation and identity. In dealing with the issue of translation and identity, translation scholar Michael Cronin (2006) claims that translation must be at the core of any reflection on identity in contemporary societies, identity having taken the place of ideology in political communication and debate with issues of marginalization, dispossession, and powerlessness being mediated [translated] by discourses of identity. Examples are drawn from our corpus of study.