PAPER TITLES, ABSTRACTS AND BIONOTES

PAPER 1

Title: Rafael Barrett about the mate tea plantations: Speak for the other in my language?

Speaker:Eleonora Barretto, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Abstract:

Chronicles about working conditions in mate tea plantations in the Paraguay-Brazil border by Rafael Barrett (edited in 1908 by El Diario from Asunción) seem to have been written from the perspective of the scholar who accuses, the one meant to speak for the other. Those for whom he speaks would be mostly "guarani workers" – a modern continuity of colonial conquest dedicated to enslave and catechize –, guaranis whose language and culture is only a residue. What I mostly want to apprehend is if Barrett´s texts embrace the ethical task of learning the language of those for whom they allegedly speak and/or if Spanish as a hegemonic language gets interrupted by guarani, the exterminated, banished language of the fatherland; or yet, if the language spoken by Barrett´s texts reenacts the hegemonic process that canvases hierarchies and historic power relations among languages.

From this first analysis of the Spanish -written chronicles, some issues emerge about its translation into Portuguese: if a possible Guarani interference in Spanish language norms would imply in specific difficulties for translation; if the translation is an actualization of the memory of this archive of chronicles that opens up and spreads from the same perspective as was denunciation. Following that line, how does the collection of texts about what the mate tea plantations are of help to think about contemporary times (from working conditions to linguistic policies)? Besides, how can Barrett´s chronicles be read with contemporary textualities which inscribe a sort of inter-language where linguistic boundaries vanish and languages themselves mix, giving shape to something out of their own normative patterns (for example the so-called "portunhol salvagem"). Hybrid poetic languages that could be subtle forms of cultural intervention regarding borderline subjectivities which transcend the geopolitical topographies of National States;languages which become untranslatable because the border limits translation would trespass ceased to be clear.

Bionote: Postdoctoral student (CAPES/PNPD) at UNIOESTE. Doctor in Literature (UFSC); thesis on Roberto Arlt's chronicles and Francisco de Goya's engraves. Master in Translation Studies (UFSC); master thesis on Arlt's translated novels to portuguese. Recent publications on translation studies (2014): portuguese translation of Arlt's chronicles: Arlt e Goya [crônicas e gravuras à água-forte]. Florianópolis: UFSC. Spanish translation of Patricia Galelli's book Cabeça de José. Blumenau: Nauemblu Ciência & Arte/Editora Nave (Bilingual edition). Comented translation of Machado de Assis's short story: "Tradução comentada do conto 'O cônego ou Metafísica do Estilo', de Machado de Assis". Scientia Traductionis.

PAPER 2

Title:Aiming (For) Translation

Speaker:Nicole Nolette, University of Ottawa

Abstract:

I propose to explore translation from the margins within and of bilingual theatre in Canada. More specifically, I will give an analytic account of language and performance games inherent to bilingual theatre from francophone theatres in Western Canada, Ontario and Acadie, before following these games on the road as they are translated for audience members who do not have an equal grasp on French and English. In other words, I will look into how translation from the margins targets spectators from the centers. Using what I call "playful translation," authors, translators, directors and actors collaborate to stage intricate games of inclusion and exclusion of audience members along linguistic lines. These theatre practitioners do not ignore language asymmetries in Canada but play upon and against the power dynamics that enable them. Spectators who understand both French and English gain access to the two languages as well as to the supplement derived from the play of accumulation and substitution of languages. Inversely, spectators without access to both languages are made aware that they do not understand parts of the performance because they are not supposed to; in many cases, they are the target of the jokes and games played by bilingual theatre artists. I propose to expose many of these jokes at the expense of spectators who do not understand both French and English, as bilingual theatre moves, in partial translation, towards Canada's major theatre centres in English (Toronto) and in French (Montréal). I take these two centres as vantage points, but also as targets for the playful attacks launched by francophone theatres through language and performance. Performance practices from Canada's different francophone spaces are taken into account: one show from Western Canada (Sex, lies et les Franco-Manitobains), one from Ontario (Le Rêve totalitaire de dieu l'amibe) and one from Acadie (Empreintes) are analyzed in their production spaces and in the spaces toward which they travel. In sum, I will verify the hypothesis that translation from the margins can mean a play on translation that could redefine what we mean by a target culture(s) in translation.

Bionote: Nicole Nolette is a postdoctoral fellow (SSHRC 2014-2016) associated with Harvard University and part-time professor at the University of Ottawa. She has a Ph.D. in French language and literature from McGill University. Her current research explores the intersection between translation studies, performance studies and French-Canadian literatures. She is particularly interested in the linguistic and theatrical games played by French and English in translation. She has contributed to numerous journals and collective works; her monograph will be published with the University of Ottawa Press in May 2015.

PAPER 3

Title:Translation at the Crossroads of a National Literature: The Case of Woolf, Borges and Ocampo

Speaker:Josefina Coisson, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

Abstract:

In the 1930s and 1940s, the literary system in Argentina was greatly influenced by American and European literature. A leading figure in this transformation of the national literature was Victoria Ocampo, who founded the literary journal Sur in 1931 and two years later created a publishing house by the same name. Driven by her goal to enrich and expand the literature that was being produced and read in Argentina at the time, she brought together a series of prominent writers/translators (such as Borges, García Márquez, and García Lorca, just to mention a few) to publish their own writings and their translations of outstanding foreign authors (who were not yet canonical at the time) like V. Woolf, V. Nabokov and J. Kerouac, among others.

Considering that literature is a system ruled by norms and that ideologies underlie any social practice, we can infer that what is being written, and read and translated depends on the coexisting social practices which, in turn, may be strengthened and expanded through the incorporation of new literature (and the displacement of old literature in many cases). This is made possible because, although established values and codes may be strong and consolidated: any hegemony is a living process which, as such, exerts and is exerted by changing pressures and is thus continually renewed, recreated, resisted and challenged by other pressures.

A Room of One's Own, published in 1929, is composed of a series of speeches given by Virginia Woolf in October 1928 at two schools for women at Cambridge University. Born in a context where a patriarchal tradition was the hegemonic discourse, A Room of One's Own can be considered a feminist text that analyzes women's (literal and figurative) space both as writers and as fictional characters. Commissioned by Victoria Ocampo, the task of translating this work fell in the hands of Jorge Luis Borges and was published in 1936 as Un cuarto propio. Both the English source text and its Argentinean translation were produced from the cultural margins – as they were non-canonical works at the time. How and why did a marginal text come to be translated, published and read in a system with a different set of norms? What were the "dogmas, fetishes and taboos" regarding the feminine identity in the early 20th century? Did the translated text transmit the same feminist ideas as those expressed by Woolf in the source text?

This paper analyzes A Room of One's Own and Un cuarto propio from the perspective of translation studies and sociosemiotic discursive theories to untangle these questions and discuss how, and to what extent, Borges contributed to the development of a national literature by importing models of English modernism that eventually built the new literary repertoire.

Bionote: Josefina Coisson is Professor of Literary Translation and Journalistic Translation at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. She co-directs the SECyT-funded research group "La traducción literaria desde los márgenes culturales: campos de intervención política". She has coedited several books on literary translation. An anthology of essays on translation from the cultural borders is forthcoming in 2015. Her translations of books include Voces del Norte and Qué onda Canadá (both co-translated with Guillermo Badenes in 2009 and 2011), 50 Metres Distance or More (Notes on Represention Vol. 4). Her academic articles have appeared in Mutatis Mutandis, Eco-crítica, and Lenguas en context, among others.

PAPER 4

Title:Translating sexual violence at wartime in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region: a minority within the minority Poets

Speaker:Anissa Daoudi, University of Birmingham

Abstract:

Narrating and translating rape/sexual violence in war times in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is the core theme of my paper, aiming to present a comparative study between what has been translated and narrated about war veterans of the Algerian revolution (1954-1962) against narratives and translations about raped women during the civil war in Algeria in the 1990's. Unlike during the Liberation War (1954-1962) where the perpetrator was the French Coloniser and where war veterans were 'celebrated' as heroes. Conversely, raped women of the 1990's, where the perpetrator is the Algerian, are silenced and little has been written about them. Women are minority (despite their big numbers) in the Arabic-speaking region and raped women are a minority within the minority. These lesser-known narratives started to re-appear in a fragmented way, not contributing to accrual of the shared/collective 'master plot' on women's role in both wars; liberation and civil wars.

The paper will ask the following research questions: 1.1 What does translation reveal when we travel across and between generations, cultures, media and genres through different vehicles? 1.2 How can the translator mediate between marginal and dominant cultures? 1.3 How can translation help peeling off untold stories, particularly, of/about minorities? 1.4 To what extent language can dis/empower in translating minority stories, particularly in the MENA region? 1.5 In what manner do translated minority discourse(s) contribute to the collective narrative?

The paper will present novels in Arabic and their translations, e.g., the novel by the Algerian writer Fadhila Al Farouq Ta'a al Khajal تاءالخجل (2003), Memory of the Fleshذاكرةالجسد (1993) by the Algerian writer Ahlem Mostaghanmi, memoirs in Arabic and in French, e.g., Mémoires d'une combattante de l'ALN, by Zohra Drif (War Veteran, in French) vs. Memoirs of a Doctorيومياتطبيبة (2013). The paper will highlight the role of 'language' in dis/empowering women. In fact, it adds the use of a new variable; 'hybrid language' which I call e-Arabic as a medium used in popular culture, to highlight the 'minority' within the mainstream Arabic literature. The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is complex, on-going negotiation that seek to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation. The constant negotiations create various discourses. In order to conceptually support the reasoning on the construction process of narratives, the researcher will adopt an interdisciplinary approach, combining theories on discourse analysis bearing in mind the distinction in translation studies between 'discourse' on the one hand, and 'genre' and text on the other. Discourse here refers to the material out of which interaction is negotiated and themes are addressed. The three-way distinction shows that discourse is seen as institutional-attitudinal framework both genre and text cease to be mere vehicles of communication and become operational carriers of ideological meaning. Issues related to the role of the translator mediating between marginal and dominant cultures will be discussed.

Bionote: Dr. Anissa Daoudi. Lecturer in Arabic and Translation Studies, University of Birmingham. Her publications include her monograph on translating figurative language; Cultural encounters: a linguistic study of EFL Arab learners encoding and decoding idioms. Peter Lang. Her latest project focuses on the impact of globalization on the Arabic language (both Standard and Vernacular Arabic). Her most recent publications include a themed issue on e-Arabic and minority voices in the MENA region, and an edited volume La Langue Arabe face au Défis Technologiques. She is currently working on a new project 'translating and narrating rape/sexual violence in the MENA region'.

PAPER 5

Title: As Queer as Queer Can Be? William Burroughs' Novella through Rose-Tinted Glasses

Speaker: Guillermo Badenes, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract:

In translation studies, the cultural margins have acquired a key importance as dynamic spaces of political action in defense of the literatures of the oppressed. However, beyond the interest in these literatures, the question remains whether translators focus their energy in expressing loyalty toward these source, oppressed cultures or whether their craft is permeated by mainstream subjectivities which condition them socially in the target culture, such as the case of translations into English.

Using tools from the cultural studies, linguistics and translation studies, I have studied William Burroughs' novella Queer (written in 1953 and published in 1985). The fact that the work did not enter the English literary system for over 30 years because its author feared legal prosecution due to the sexually-explicit nature of his text is in itself thought-provoking. Moreover, its translation was published in Spanish only in 2013, 60 years after it was written and almost 30 years after its first edition.

In principle, my paper tackles the historical differences in 1953, 1985 and 2013 to frame the context of production and ponders on the two literary systems which the work entered to discuss it reception. Considering that in the sixty years that elapsed from its English version to its Spanish version, the Stonewall riots and the gay liberation movement occurred as well as the advent of AIDS and the birth of queer theory (milestones that shook the very foundations of gay literature), this synchronic analysis may shed some light on the reasons for its publication. Additionally, while at times Burroughs' novella steps away from traditional "gaylese," which Burroughs reportedly despised, some other times it sinks deep into "camp" or at least flirts with it profusely. In Marcial Souto's translation, "butch" and "camp" blend while some of the sexual power of the source is lost in translation.

The translation of Queer into Queer may prove to be a benign (or self-censored) rendition of a pivotal work that was expected to raise havoc in the literary world (or worlds) where it was published. Tapping into Souto's translation, we may see how far (or near) queer studies and queer translation have gone in the last sixty years.

Bionote: Guillermo Badenes (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba) is an instructor and researcher in Córdoba, where he teaches Literary Translation and Translation of the Humanities at undergraduate and graduate levels. As a researcher, he directs the research project "Literary Translation from the Cultural Margins: Fields of Political Intervention". He has published translation theory (Traducción periodística y literaria) and translated anthologies such as El viejo sofá azul, Voces del norte and Qué onda Canadá. His numerous academic studies have been published in Argentina and abroad. Prof. Badenes is an active advocate for the recuperation of silenced voices in literature.

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