Translation and Postcolonial Encounters

Abstract

The challenges presented to literary scholarship in postcolonial contexts partly arise from the fact that this criticism consists of an act of translation in its own right, in the sense that it is transcultural. Because this scholarship aligns itself with cultural and political enterprises, it demands a comprehensive rethinking of translation. For postcolonial critics translation needs to be understood in relation to processes of, on the one hand, transculturation (as emphasis is placed on borders, migration, hybridization, plurilanguaging and multiculturing) and, on the other hand, resignification (as in these ‘sensitive’ contexts translators act as agents whose function is culturally, politically and historically determined). And if translated texts are always versions of an original which is ‘rewritten’ under new circumstances, then translation practices that are inscribed within nation-building processes (in which originals must undergo significant transformations in order to facilitate their acceptance within the national repertoire) prove to be essential mechanisms in the conformation and legitimization of literary canons and cultural discourses. Through a case study of the 1964 translation of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in post-revolutionary Cuba, this essay reflects on the strategies of symmetry and naturalization deployed by the politically motivated revolutionary translator as he foregrounds the Irish themes of struggle for freedom from colonial oppression and the fight for independence, which, not surprisingly, also formed the basis of Cuban national identity for the ideologues of the revolution.