EQUIVOCAL TRANSLATION
"To translate is to situate oneself in the space of the equivocation and to dwell there." Eduardo Viveiros de Castro accentuates that it is fundamental to allow “alien concepts to deform and subvert the translator’s conceptual toolbox so that the intentio of the original language can be expressed within the new one.” To translate, he states “is to communicate by differences, instead of silencing the Other by presuming a univocality.” He narrates the myth of a human lost deep in the forest encountering a jaguar folk. The jaguars invite the human to drink a refreshing manioc beer. When the human happily accepts, it turns out to be “a gourd brimming with human blood.” The jaguars and the human refer with their words to the same thing in different realities, however an “equivocation (...) is not an error nor an illusion (...) instead, the equivocation is the limiting condition of every social relation.” Viveiros de Castro further exemplifies by saying that “blood is to humans as manioc beer is to jaguars, in exactly the same way as a sister to me is a wife to my brother-in-law.”
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds (Chicago, IL: Hau Books, 2015), 62 - 72.
"The role of the translator, rather than to preserve and fix a poem’s semantic content, might involve augmenting and multiplying a text’s potential. (...) The translator, rather than look to make her work invisible, should be understood as a participant in a work’s linguistic migration. Translation then becomes the work of community, one that acknowledges its transformation of sense and intercultural exchange."
Stephen Voyce, Poetic Community: Avant-Garde Activism and Cold War Culture. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 139 - 146.
"In many former colonies, English is the language of elite formation, social inclusion and exclusion. Are there then grounds for referring to English as a lingua frankensteinia? (...) English tends to be marketed as though it serves exclusively laudable purposes (a language of international understanding, human rights, development, progress, etc: Phillipson, 1992: 271–88). Since languages have never been coterminous with state boundaries, and granted the current pre-eminence of English as the most extreme case of a language with international impact, we need to consider which agents promote or constrain English and for what purposes. The elimination of linguistic diversity has been an explicit goal of states attempting to impose monolingualism within their borders: linguicist policies favour the lingua frankensteinia and lead to linguicide."
Robert Phillipson. “Lingua Franca or Lingua Frankensteinia? English in European Integration and Globalisation.” World Englishes 27, no. 2 (2008), 251.
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds (Chicago, IL: Hau Books, 2015), 62 - 72.
"The role of the translator, rather than to preserve and fix a poem’s semantic content, might involve augmenting and multiplying a text’s potential. (...) The translator, rather than look to make her work invisible, should be understood as a participant in a work’s linguistic migration. Translation then becomes the work of community, one that acknowledges its transformation of sense and intercultural exchange."
Stephen Voyce, Poetic Community: Avant-Garde Activism and Cold War Culture. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 139 - 146.
"In many former colonies, English is the language of elite formation, social inclusion and exclusion. Are there then grounds for referring to English as a lingua frankensteinia? (...) English tends to be marketed as though it serves exclusively laudable purposes (a language of international understanding, human rights, development, progress, etc: Phillipson, 1992: 271–88). Since languages have never been coterminous with state boundaries, and granted the current pre-eminence of English as the most extreme case of a language with international impact, we need to consider which agents promote or constrain English and for what purposes. The elimination of linguistic diversity has been an explicit goal of states attempting to impose monolingualism within their borders: linguicist policies favour the lingua frankensteinia and lead to linguicide."
Robert Phillipson. “Lingua Franca or Lingua Frankensteinia? English in European Integration and Globalisation.” World Englishes 27, no. 2 (2008), 251.