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https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15530

Abstract: “Get thee behind me Satan, I want to resist”. . . To translate memory across cultures and disciplines is an act of defiance, a proud sign of disobedience, tacitly performed by one of the most celebrated and internationally renowned practitioners and seminal theoreticians of the tasks facing the translator, the Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campos. In “On Mephistofaustic Transluciferation,” he writes: “If it has no Muse, it could be said to have an Angel; translation has an angelical function, that of bearer, of messenger. It is a messianic point or a semiotic place of convergence of intentionality.” Addressed here are the challenges posed in translating memory, memories, as the retrieval, reconstruction, inscription, and leaving of the traces and effects of a markedly memorializing act. The task of the trans(at)l(antic)ator involves not abandoning but suspending certain spontaneous choices of literal translation in favor of inter- and trans-action. The responses are: differ, defer, never with indifference, always without deference; address not only urgently political issues of The Movimento dos Sem Terra, primordial in Brazil, but also the transactions, with and in the Movement, of so many poets and songwriters and now, perhaps even more defiantly, with a Brazilian-inflected countertheory to the rescue. Remembering (belated) versions The invitation to “establish a dialogue with and among scholars working on the intersections between translation studies and memory studies as they are presently configured and might be envisioned in the future,” keynote of this special issue on translating memory across cultures and disciplines, proleptically, had been tacitly accepted avant la lettre and throughout his career by one of the most celebrated and internationally renowned practitioners and seminal theoreticians of the tasks and challenges facing the translator, the Brazilian poet and transcreator, Haroldo de Campos. In “Committing Translation or the Task of the Trans(at)l(antic)ator,” the introductory essay to my translations of the ineradicably political memories and cultural expressions of ideological indignation of the MST (Movement of the Landless Rural Workers in Brazil) in Landless Voices in Song and Poetry. The Movimento dos Sem Terra of Brazil (Vieira and McGuirck 2007, XXI–XXIV), I addressed and now return to the challenges posed in translating memory, memories, as the retrieval, reconstruction, inscription, and leaving of traces and their effects of a markedly “memorializing act” (Vieria and McGuirck 2007); in and for a Brazil confronting its own secular inequalities and injustices, alerted to that sovereign state’s and that nation’s continuing struggle to emerge from the cliché-ridden inscription on its national flag, the ever-ironic “Ordem e Progresso.” Under whose orders and for the progress of whom was national memory to be reinscribed, translated, indeed transferred from the hegemonies of a very recent twenty-year military regime and its transitional legacies in the period of rebuilding a democracy from 1984? Further, on undertaking this commission, I recalled the advice of Umberto Eco as I reflected on the experience of having worked, together with the Brazilian critic and translation theorist, Else Vieira, in preparation of Haroldo de Campos in Conversation (McGuirck and Vieira 2009), the volume that arose, in memoriam, not least from the numerous meetings that, as editors, we held between 1999 and 2002 with Haroldo and his wife Carmen Arruda Campos in the hospitality of their Library of Babel home:1 I frequently feel irritated when I read essays on the theory of translation that, even though brilliant and perceptive, do not provide enough examples. I think translation scholars should have had at least one of the following experiences 1 This volume contains renderings in English of the following Haroldo de Campos essays touching variously on his theories of translation: ”On Translation as Creation and Criticism,” ”Constructivism in Brazil: Concretism and Neo-Concretism. A Personal Post Scriptum,” “On Mephistofaustic Transluciferation,” “On Homerotherapy: Translating The Iliad,” and “The Ex- centric Viewpoint: Tradition, Transcreation, Transculturation.”  during their life: translating, checking and editing translations, or being translated and working in close co-operation with their translators [. . .] Between the purely theoretical argument that, since languages are differently structured, translation is impossible, and the commonsensical acknowledgement that people, after all, do translate and understand each other, it seems to me that the idea of translation as a process of negotiation (between author and text, between author and readers, as well as between the structure of two languages and the encyclopaedias of two cultures) is the only one that matches experience. (Eco 2003, 36) In such “a process of negotiation,” in that multiple “in- betweenness,” here evoked by Eco but previously the subject of an indispensable meditation on a specifically Latin American project, the “entre-lugar” of Silviano Santiago, “between sacrifice and play, between prison and transgression, between submission to the code and aggression, between obedience and rebellion” (Santiago 1978, 11), and as translator of the poems and songs of the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST, or Movement of the landless rural workers), I soon confronted commitment, in various of its encyclopaedic forms. What had they done to my song? The preceding decades had witnessed the revitalizing of popular music as a vehicle for political activisms in Brazil. One obvious source had been the música sertaneja of land-deprived migrant workers, driven to the cities and taking with them their country music, be it traditional or, more recently, influenced by the commercial brands of the southern cultures of the United States. No less influential had been the pagode movement’s samba- esque registering of the violent tensions of poverty in hardly couched critiques of repressive regimes, military or otherwise. The performances echoed, consciously or subliminally, the prosodies—high and low—of Brazilian Portuguese and the broadsheet and cordel strains of popular imaginaries from across and beyond the nation. For Brazil has never ceased to explore and express its sensitivity to the ideological power of the protest song; not least, and latterly, against the imagined and projected versions of what is to come peddled, for many of its displaced, unrepresented and unlikely-to-be-remembered vic- tims, by the invasive myth-makers of a nation awarded the Trojan horses of a World Cup and an Olympic Games.  At the time of committing myself to undertake the translations of unabashedly radical texts, it was the centenary of the birth of the celebrated Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Inspiration of politically committed poetry and song for not a continent but a world, he had long ago been described by Federico García Lorca as being closer to blood than to ink. It was on such a note—often indissociable from tears or from wine—that the anguish and euphoria, the despair and hope that suffuse the texts I translated were approached and embraced. My locus of transcreation was, and is, unavoidably and unapologetically, Anglophone; it is also, though tempered, European. As a critic and translator of, primarily, literatures in Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian, I exploited the availability of translation alternatives from those traditions as well as from any Brazil-specific contexts that informed the choices made. Pace Umberto Eco, I often wrote as both Mouse and Rat, chewing or munching in a further in- betweenness or the negotiated hybridity that I had experienced in tussling with Haroldo de Campos himself.2 For part of our “translating, checking and editing translations, or being translated and working in close co-operation” had been the daunting enterprise of revisiting “o anjo esquerdo da história”; beginning with the resonantly intertextual reference to Walter Benjamin’s “angel of history. His face [. . .] turned towards the past” (Benjamin 1999, 249), broached at once in the title of this long de Campos poem. Written to commemorate the victims of the notorious massacre in 1996 of nineteen protesting members of the MST at El Dorado dos Carajás in the State of Pará, and originally rendered into English by Haroldo as “the left-winged angel of history.” Engagement with the calculatedly syntagmatic disconti- nuity and attendant staccato rhythms of the Brazilian Portuguese text also had to take into account a context of commitment and contributions, to and in the Movement, of such distinguished Brazilian artists as Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, Frei Betto, and many others, including Haroldo de Campos himself, and thus readdress previous tasks of the other—cultural inseparably from linguistic—translator(s). 2See the facsimile of Haroldo de Campos’s scribbled distinction between chewing and munching with reference to my translation of “quoheletic poem 2: in praise of the termite,” in McGuirck and Vieira 2009, 339.  The Latin American protest song explosions of the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, of which Robert Pring-Mill reminded us in “Gracias a la vida” The Power and Poetry of Song (1990), had hardly left Brazil unaffected by the echoes, influences, hybridities, and intertexts of contemporary transculturations. He listed civil rights, the peace movement, and the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in the US; Italian CantAcronache; the Greece of Theodorakis; the Catalan Nova Cançó; the Portuguese Nova Canção; Irish songs of “the troubles”; and Asian and African instances from the Philipines, East Timor, and Mongolia, to Mozambique and Angola. Not least of the intertexts of Brazilian protest song and poetry were the Cuban, Argentine, and Chilean expressions that sprinkled the MST artists with inspirations taken from the archives of the Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and nueva canción traditions. If any one element of Pring-Mill’s seminal analysis can be said to have informed the texts of the MST, it is this evocation: “Asked about his own songs (in 1973), the Uruguayan Daniel Vigliette said firmly that they were as much de propuesta as de protesta: designed not merely to protest but to propose—in other words not merely to ‘tear down fences’ (quite literally so in Viglietti’s own anti-latifundista ‘A desalambrar!’) but also ‘to build bridges’ and to be constructive” (Pring-Mill 1990, 10). Pring-Mill identified three functions of such texts: “response to an immediate environment”; “instrument of political and social change”; communicating a “horizon of expectations” and “presuppositions.” Yet he was quick to add a vital rider on cultural difference: “the whole rhetoric of such poems and songs is very different from ours, partly because Spanish [and here read Portuguese] handles issues more violently—more dramatically and emotionally—than English (sometimes in ways which we may find indecorous)” (Pring-Mill 1990, 10–14). He continued: The messages of individual Latin American songs function within the framework of belief they foster and reinforce, in that extremely different social context. In countries where illiteracy is as high as it is in most of Latin America, where censorship and repression are so often at work, and where the official media are so rarely to be trusted, the message-bearing function of poesía de compromiso—sung or unsung—has an importance which it is not easy for a more literate academic audience to appreciate. Its messages perform a varied series of useful social functions [. . .] all of which are doubly  important in the context of predominantly oral cultures. Thus they serve both to report and to record events (interpreting them, naturally enough, from specific points of view, which will strike all those who disagree with them as prejudiced); they praise, or lament, heroes and denounce tyrants; they protest against abuses and propound solutions (whether these are viable or not); and they teach many kinds of practical lessons, which their listeners are encouraged to put into practice. (Pring-Mill 1990, 77) Pring-Mill, a decade or so on, would hardly have been surprised not to have the last word. He might also have smiled at the risky certainty, in respect not only of rhetoric but also of politics, of Perry Anderson, as a heady mixture of denunciation and the recuperation of misappropriated national memories promised to turn to propounded solution in the form of a first left- wing figure, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, democratically elected in 2002, on the crest of the MST wave of popular protest: “the symbolism of a former shoe-shine boy and street vendor achieving supreme power in the most unequal major society on earth speaks for itself [. . .] A climate of popular expectation surrounds Lula that no President of the New Republic has ever enjoyed at the outset of his mandate. Hope of relief from the misery of the last years will not vanish overnight” (Anderson 2002, 21). Get thee behind me Satan, I want to resist. . . The risk of failing to render the textual wrath of a poem written in the indignation of 1996 protest amidst the 2002 days of heady triumphalist expectation—with popular memory of tyranny and criminality and a consciousness of the threat of impunity all too readily fading—seemed but one looming contention. The task of the trans(at)l(antic)ator therefore involved not abandoning but suspending certain spontaneous choices of literal translation in favor of inter- and trans-action. The challenges were: differ, defer, never with indifference, always without deference; address not only issues dear to the MST, primordial in Brazil, but also the transactions, with and in the Movement, of so many poets and songwriters and now, perhaps even more challengingly, but with a Brazilian inflected countertheory to the rescue, of Haroldo de Campos himself, from his essay on “On Mephistofaustic Transluciferation”:  Translation, like philosophy, has no Muse [. . .] says Walter Benjamin (“Die Aufgabe des Uebersetzers”). And yet, if it has no Muse, it could be said to have an Angel [. . .] translation has an angelical function, that of bearer, messenger [. . .] it is even, for the original [. . .] a messianic point or, in lay terms of modern theory of signs, a semiotic place of convergence of intentionality [. . .] Benjamin inverts the relation of servitude which, as a rule, affects ingenuous conceptions of translation as a tribute to fidelity. Fidelity (so-called translation literal to meaning, or, simply, inverted, servile, translation) [. . .] Therefore, in the Benjaminian perspective [. . .] the original is what in a certain way serves the translation, at the moment when it unburdens it from the task of transporting the unessential content of the message [. . .] and permits it to dedicate itself to an other enterprise of fidelity [. . .] the “fidelity to reproduction of form” [. . .] It is oriented by the rebellious slogan of non serviam, of non-submission to a presence which is exterior to it, to a content which remains intrinsically unessential to it [. . .] a satanic enterprise. The “cursed” counterpart of the angelical nature of translation is Hubris, the semiological sin of Satan, il trapassar del segno (Paradiso XXXVI, 117), the transgression of sign limits [. . .] A translator of poetry is a choreographer of the inner dance of languages [. . .]. (Haroldo de Campos 2009, 233–236) How many angels? On the head of opin. . . ionated Manicheans be it, however, whether scholastic or materialist, to limit the inspirers of Brazilian or any other translators to but two angels: the good, the bad. And the ugly configuration of Haroldo’s predecessor poet Drummond de Andrade’s anjo torto (“crooked angel”), in “Poema de sete faces” (Poem of seven faces), as long ago as 1930, should have alerted subsequent and would-be theorists to both the revelations and the dangers of going transcendental in “the retrieval, reconstruction, and inscription” of remembering, as surely as the Shakespearean “seven” it echoes had led to “mere oblivion/Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”3 The figure of the postmodern angel, always and already fallen, was also one too easily overlooked, left behind (Drummond’s “gauche na vida”/ “gauche in life”?), in the long march of historical materialism. . . 3 The caution of such philosophers as Richard Rorty in respect of the temptation to go transcendental in the memorializing of historical events had long ago been poeticized by Drummond de Andrade and, inherited, by Haroldo de Campos, not least in echo of William Shakespeare’s Jaques in As You Like It, Act II scene VII: “Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history.” often the most dogmatic of “the imagined and projected versions of what is to come” on the part of de Campos’s Marxisant Brazilian detractors, as will be revealed in and after a reading of the poem; and of its guest.4 For into the space of neglect—of suppressed memory—Haroldo de Campos had injected “o anjo esquerdo da história,” for him “the left-winged angel of history”; “the angel on the left of history” in my transjection, my inherently “transformative” but necessarily subsequent swerve, my own anxious clinamen). o anjo esquerdo da história the angel on the left of history os sem-terra afinal the landless at last estão assentados na are settled in pleniposse da terra: full possession of the land: de sem-terra passaram a from landless to com-terra: ei-los landed: here they’re enterrados interred desterrados de seu sopro their life’s breath de vida unearthly aterrados earthed terrorizados terrified terra que à terra earth which onto earth torna returns pleniposseiros terra- land-holders pleni- tenentes de uma potentiary of a (single vala (bala) comum: bullet) common grave: pelo avesso afinal outside in at last entranhados no holed deep into lato ventre do the broad-bellied latifúndio acres of the latifundio- que de im- land once barren produtivo re- so sudden- velou-se assim u- ly shown to be most f- bérrimo: gerando pingue ecund: udder-spawning profit messe de crop of sangue vermelhoso reddening blood 4 In ”Constructivism in Brazil: Concretism and Neo-Concretism. A Personal Post Scriptum,” Haroldo de Campos offers his riposte to Roberto Schwarz, as emblematic propagator of the attacks levied against the concretists and de Campos’s notion of a postutopical poetry. My “Laughin’ again he’s awake: de Campos a l’oreille de l’autre celte” addresses the polemic extensively in McGuirck and Vieira 2009, 126–152. lavradores sem un-labored lavra ei- labor: here they’re los: afinal con- larvaed at vertidos em larvas last em mortuá- on mortal rios despojos: remains ataúdes lavrados coffins labored na escassa madeira from the scanty timber (matéria) (timbre) de si mesmos: a bala assassina of themselves: the assassin bullet atocaiou-os stalks them mortiassentados thirst-squatting sitibundos death-settlers decúbito-abatidos pre- decumbents cut down pre- destinatários de uma destined for a agra (magra) meagre (earth) acre a- re(dis)(forme) forma grarian —fome—a- —famine— grária: ei- re (de)(formed) form los gregária here they are: gregarious comunidade de meeiros commune share-cropping do nada: nothingness: enver- shame- gonhada a- faced in goniada agony avexada vexed —envergoncorroída de —shamecorroded by imo-abrasivo re- inmost abrasive re- morso - morse- a pátria landless (como ufanar-se da?) (‘how shall we extol thee?’) apátrida homeland pranteia os seus des- laments its dis- possuídos párias – possessed pariahs – pátria parricida: parricide patria que talvez só afinal a for maybe only at last the espada flamejante fiery sword do anjo torto da his- of the crooked angel of his- tória cha- tory flam- mejando a contravento e ing against the wind and afogueando os burning the agrossicários sócios desse agrokilltural cronies of that fúnebre sodalício onde a somber sodality where morte-marechala comanda uma field-marshal death commands a torva milícia de janízaros-ja- grim militia of janissary-gun- gunços: men: somente o anjo esquerdo only the angel on the left da história escovada a of a history groomed against contrapelo com sua the grain shall manage with its multigirante espada po- multiswirling sword derá (quem dera! ) um dia (if only!) one day to convocar do ror convoke from the nebulous nebuloso dos dias vin- mass of days to douros o dia come the at last afinal sobreveniente do overriding day of the justo just ajuste de adjustment of contas accounts (Haroldo de Campos, 1996 © Translation Bernard McGuirk 2002) The task of transacting—trans/dancing—with Haroldo de Campos’s poetry was made the more challenging by his Mephistofaustic promptings. In the essay, he had willingly reen- gaged with both Marx and Nietzsche in a reminder that translation in particular and writing in general always perform the act of transcreation, a refutation of original (etiology) and target (teleology), not only linguistically but also culturally and, let it be stressed, ideologically. Self-consciously, he had echoed Marx’s precursor complaint against the censuring of his style. Self- mockingly, he had appropriated Nietzsche’s plea for the neces- sarily sublime “maldade”—the “evil”—of mischievous content and form. Radical content radical form radical translation Countless Brazilian artists had reacted, in creative political interventions, to the obscenity of the murderous repressions perpetrated against the MST—as did de Campos, here, to the massacre of Eldorado dos Carajás. Cyclical repetitions of organized violence, the option against the poor—in cynical inversion of the “for the poor” slogan of Liberation Theology— had triggered the indignation and the artistry of such as Frei Betto’s “Receita para matar um sem-terra”/“Recipe for Killing the Landless”, Sebastião Salgado’s (1997) photography, in Terra, and Chico Buarque’s “Levantados do chão” (Raised from the ground). These contemporary artists, however, no less than their predecessors Graciliano Ramos, João Cabral de Melo Neto, or Glauber Rocha, will not be remembered for their indignation alone. Each—and differently—had had to make another option, broadly definable as the style of mischief-making that is the prerogative of any radical art. Style also functions as a sharecropping, a participating in the intertextuality available to the individual artist; or, in de Campos’s formulation, Karl Marx’s “property of form,” inseparable from his “individual spirituality.” Such an option, being for the poor, should never be poor. Even to think as much would be either to neglect the need for creativity or to misread it. To confuse, say, Graciliano Ramos’s calculatedly daring minimalism, in Vidas secas (Barren lives) of 1938, with some unmediated response to the prescriptive exclusions of the Soviet Writers’ Congress of 1934. To ignore João Cabral de Melo Neto’s career-long engagement with the materiality of words or with what Francis Ponge called Le parti pris des choses. To undersell, perversely, the difficulty of his own challenge: “É difícil defender/só com palavras a vida” (It’s hard to defend/only with words life) (Morte e vida severina [Death and Life of Severino]), of 1956. To imagine a tabula rasa (inter-cine-text- less) Glauber Rocha, deprived, in the 1960s, of a dialogical relationship with Italian neorealism. To conceive that, in postmodernity, the compassions of Sebastião Salgado did not reflect, and reflect on, Don Macullin’s 1970s photography of the oppressed. To fail to hear in Chico Buarque’s song the 1990s echo of José Saramago’s “Do chão pode levantar-se um livro, como uma espiga de trigo ou uma flor brava. Ou uma ave. Ou uma bandeira” (From the ground a book can rise, like an ear of wheat or a wild flower. Or a bird. Or a banner). But there is neither need nor time for doubt. The urgent indivisibility of radical content from radical form is better demonstrated by critical artistry than by artless criticism. An unapologetic option for the inseparably transcendental and material underpins the very title of “o anjo esquerdo da história.” Whether God is dead or not (and whether such a dominant metaphysics of absence might be Marxian or Nietzschean in inspiration), the conspiracies of history are still played out amidst the configurations of narrative. Which is not to see history as narrative (that is, only as troped)—for that would be to deradicalize both history’s powers and any reading of it. In Le monolinguisme de l’autre (1996), Derrida elaborated on the “call for an outside.” In “o anjo. . . ,” de Campos called upon a figure, that of the avenging angel, which inhabits, simultaneously, both the inside and the outside of “a história.” He even staked out for it a particular location, the place of enunciation for a nuncio to a nation, for a committed messenger. Yet the call is not voiced until after that necessary delay that enables the poem to revisit, to reinhabit, to relive the arduous struggle for a hearing, paradoxically, on behalf of a voice—that of poetry—no less excluded, traditionally, than the referents of its echoing anger. Thus, by way of (not) analyzing the poem, I prefer to comment on aspects of my own transjection of it. Cheek to cheek. . . and the ear of the other Cast at me as a throw of the dice, the poem impelled me to reject paraphrase. Haphazardly, I projected it, rather, only as recastable. For the game was too serious to stop at a single appropriation. The ear of this other, too, had its particularity, its “properties of form,” its “individual spirituality.” An Irish specific of a past inherited, part-interred (ex-patria), in an England pre- , pro- , and post-Thatcher, suffused and infused my option for an irony that filtered distorted echoes of another, unofficial, “national” anthem: “Land of Hope and Glory.” “How shall we extol Thee?” who were born not of, but only on, Thee. Here I played with another geopolitics, one of parallel clichés, terra firma, “broad acres,” “field-marshals” of a homeland unheimlich and—sublime “maldade”—of the Mal-vinas, with their no less somber soldiery.5 That the translation must speak for, and of, itself is but part of the point. In language, for Bakhtin, the word was always half someone else’s. . . whether spoken or written. Had de Campos not taken but half of Mallarmé’s angelism, appropriating 5“Land of Hope and Glory” operates as a much appropriated English national hymn. It has been adopted as the official anthem and is sung at the annual conferences of the Conservative Party. poetry’s power of memory but adding to it a specifically Brazilian infernal vision (“quem dera!”), that of Canudos, and of Antônio Conselheiro? A post-Blake m(isc)arriage wherein the legacy of revolutionary mysticism assailed, as forcefully as does dialectical materialism, the hell-on-earth of landless utopians yet to glimpse a Brazilian heaven of agrarian reform? Such a politico-poetics could not presume to deprive those sem terra of the configurations, including the martyrs, saints, and avenging angels, of their local narratives, small or grand. . . sem céu? Heaven-less? Who knows? Who would impose? If their collective history had certainly been groomed against the grain (where every day was—is?—a last day), at least the poem leaves its protagonists “lying still” with their theology and with its (dis-) placements.6 Haroldo de Campos was no angel, least of all in his own poetic practice. He was unstintingly confident, certainly enough to lampoon critical and ideological rigidities and excesses. Acutely alert to the fact that Brazilian neo-Hegelians, no less than their counterparts elsewhere, in their determination to confront the brutality of much of Latin American society, have fallen precisely into the lure of a discourse too mimetic of brute reality, too mirroring ever to achieve a cutting edge, Haroldo de Campos convoked the figure of poetry itself. He knew that poetry is a master teaser, a baiter of stiff contemporary realists or the limp lamp bearers of reflection theories past and present. The inter- and intracultural transluciferations of his textual performances had allowed for the inter-action of Brazilians speaking and listening to Brazilians being listened and spoken to; in turn, they inspired that other, the present trans(at)l(antic)ator whose sign/ature shuttles to and fro, ever seeking to perform intra-, but never faithful, ever faith-less, illusorily face-less, scorn-fully masking source, mourn-fully eschewing target, settling (lawlessly), for an ever extra-trans-mission of occupations, pre- occupations, needs, urgencies. 6 The reference is to the 1902 foundational memorializing of the Canudos war of 1896–1897 in the seminal text of Euclides da Cunha, Os Sertões, in which the rebellion and massacre of the sertanejo inhabitants of the Brazilian interior, in the State of Bahia, prefigure the plight, a century on, of the sem terra of El Dorado dos Carajás. Stormy (whether you like it or not. . . ) Whence, for Haroldo de Campos, the “anjo esquerdo da história”? In his unapologetic rejection of “unacceptable cognitive models,” the challenge of de Campos is consistent, not least when addressing the angel as an appropriated icon of the left, inherited from Walter Benjamin’s seminal formulation: This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (Benjamin 1999, 249) His reconfiguration, in poetry, of the readily packaged but not so smoothly imported “anjo,” regarded by Else Vieira as a de Campos “mutation” in the poet’s resistance to allowing Benjamin’s “Angelus Novus” cum “angel of history” to be unproblematically appropriated as emblematic of a Brazilian historical materialism, must also be seen as an instrument of Haroldo’s staunch debunking of those theorists who would unquestioningly identify their ideological stance with “the storm of progress.”7 Most notoriously, Roberto Schwarz, “sociologizing critic, of vocational incompatibility with the new in poetry” (de Campos, in McGuirk and Vieira 2009,197): The basic scheme is as follows: a tiny élite devotes itself to copying Old World culture [. . .] As a result, literature and politics occupy an exotic position, and we become incapable of creating things of our own that spring from the depths of our life and history [....] But why not reverse the argument? Why should the imitative character of our life not stem from forms of inequality so brutal that they lack the minimal reciprocity [. . .] without which modern society can only appear artificial and “imported”? (Schwarz 1992, 85– 89). 7 See the sections “Protean Angels: Shifting Spectres of Walter Benjamin” and “Crooked Angels, Satanic Angels: From Determinism to the Recovery of Revolutionary Possibility” in “Weaving Histories and Cultural Memories. The (Inter)National Materialisms of o anjo esquerdo da história,“ in McGuirck and Vieira 2009, 170–175.  Far from resembling “devoted copying,” such Haroldo de Campos performances as I have dealt with here, whether in his criticism or in his poetry, are, to use his own formulation, “textos de ruptura”(rupture texts). In Panorama do Finnegans Wake (1962), the de Campos brothers, Augusto and Haroldo, had already embarked—for a hybrid genre of transl-iter-ation—on the journey of strenuous excursions demanded, by the modern artist par excellence, Stéphane Mallarmé.8 As has been seen in respect of “o anjo esquerdo da história”, any “angelism” inherited from Mallarmé is supplemented by the daemonic; is traced (as even Roberto Schwarz might admit) by the diabolic. The recuperative moves of the poem play with “fallen” transcendentalism and that corrective shift which—for Haroldo de Campos, no less than for any Marxist—tugs “a história” (history and the story of history) always to the Left. Not “going transcendental,” but refusing to forget that particular -ism (without being “-ista”). Not appropriating an already unbalanced Brazilian history (which ever was and still is on the Right). Rather, engaging with it and in it through concrete performances. Destabilizing the dubious claim that we judge our own time by its politicians, the past by its artists. Searching for poetry’s readmission to a Res Pública Brasileira in which the artist (in academic freedom, pace Roberto et al) might also stage the still-to be-negotiated identities of the nation. Writ(h)ing, in agon, so that sub-alterity (sic) might no longer be a leper’s bell to be hung, by the dark forces of any “sociologizing” thought-police, about the neck of Brazil’s excluded artists. Are Haroldo de Campos’s “o anjo esquerdo da história” and my transjection of it—as not abandoned or to be forgotten, mutilatedly only “left winged” and but formerly “of history,” but rather ever active, whole, uncut, as ”the angel on the left of history”—merely a further negotiated staging? Or just a plea for the performative poet–critic to be heard as also improvising politically against, in counterpoint to, “unacceptable cognitive 8 “The double effort required to allow Mallarmé’s gaps their full disjunctive and destructive power, yet at the same time remain attentive to the multitude of invisible currents which pass back and forth between the separated segments, will strike many readers as inexcusably arduous and unrewarding,” and “such moments are of the essence in Mallarmé [. . .] the type of modern artist [. . .] intent on breaking up ready-made Gestalten and smooth surface textures in order to compel his audience to look elsewhere for artistic coherence, to venture beneath the surface into the difficult, undifferentiated world of unconscious process, to interrupt the easy flow of horizontal perception with strenuous excursions into multi-level, all-at-once ‘verticality’” (Bowie 1978, 6 and 16, respectively). models” of a Brazil in construction. . . though sorely lacking in deconstruction? Trans memoriam To Jacques Derrida’s “there is always something sexual at stake in the resistance to deconstruction” (1987, 196), this particular re- reader—and re-hearer—of Haroldo de Campos would add: “and cultural, and ideological.” But isn’t that where the guest translator came, invited, between 1999 and 2002, by and with Haroldo and Carmen, and with Else, into the hospitality of the Babelic home of Brazil and Brazilian letters? Unheimlich? Years on, I am still questioning the possibility of speaking or hearing “do exterior,” “from abroad”; but, now, it is because I have listened, learned, read, and may even write, that intra- has a history which includes extra-; that il n’y a pas d’hors contexte. At, and beyond, the limits of the languages and the antics of nations—not least in transatlantications—the sting and the contamination of the tse-tse flies in the face of hygienic, much less immune, bodies such as text, context, literary, semiotic, cultural, or translation studies. In aporetic threshold perfor- mances, where differences between some “outside” and some “in” are never abolished but ever undermined, not merely inverted but politically subverted, “transtextuality” is a new wor(l)d. . . but it is readable, habitable, pleasurable; like tsextuality. This place of aporia is before a door, a threshold, a border, a line, or simply the edge or the approach of the other as such Jacques Derrida (1993, 12) Coda: translator’s note The discourse of the author of the above is considered by the journal reviewer to perform that approach to translation theory to which it attempts to give (further) voice. Subsequent to the medium chosen by Haroldo de Campos to deliver a poetic rebuke to the perpetrators of the 1996 massacre at El Dorado dos Carajás, will there have been, will there be, a creative intervention that, similarly or comparably, addresses and challenges the contem- porary social upheavals and political manifestations of the opposition to a contemporary Brazil that projects as heaven-sent the staging of a World Cup and an Olympic Games in the best of all possible wor(l)ds? A diabolic fait accompli; or do post-Haroldo undoings—the transluciferations of successor artists—loom. . . ? The task of the present trans(at)l(antic)ator is to await texts from writers who, also, will have undertaken such “imagined and projected versions of what is to come.” Then, in a necessarily matching performative meditation, will it be conceivable to “update.” Pace academe passim. . . Ite, missa est. The sacrifice (of the masses) in the interim will have found but formulaic, liturgical, expressions of their material—street, stadium, factory, favela, commune, congress—protests, however real, however righteous; whether or not arising from the left of history. Chronicles of a dearth foretold; testimony to a lack of devilishly challenging artistic engagement? The avenging angel of poiesis awaits; translations will follow. References Anderson, Perry. 2002. “The Cardoso Legacy.” London Review of Books 24 (24): 18–22. December 12. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n24/perry- anderson/the-cardoso-legacy. Andrade, Drummond de. 1930. “Poema de sete faces.” In Alguma poesia. Belo Horizonte: Edicoes Pindorama. Reproduced in Alguma Poesia. Carlos Drummond de Andrade: Poesia e prosa, 70. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar, 1979. Benjamin, Walter. 1999. Illuminations. Edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. London: Pimlico. Betto, Frei. 2002. “Receita para matar um sem-terra.” In Landless Voices in Song and Poetry, edited by Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira and Bernard McGuirk, 77–78. Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, 2007. Bowie, Malcolm. 1978. Mallarmé and the Art of Being Difficult. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Campos, Augusto de, and Haroldo de Campos. 1962. Panorama do Finnegans Wake. n.c.: Conselho Estadual de Cultura, Comissão de Literatura. Campos, Haroldo de. [n.d.]1998. “anjo equerdo da história.” In Crisantempo: no espaço curvo nasce um, 69–72. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Originally in ptnotícias. São Paulo: Diretório Nacional do Partido dos Trabalhadores. ———. 2009. “On Mephistofaustic Transluciferation.” In McGuirk and Vieira 2009, 233–236. Translation by Bernard McGuirk. Derrida, Jacques. [1984] 1987. “Women in the Beehive: A Seminar with Jacques Derrida.” In Men in Feminism, edited by Alice Jardine and Paul Smith, 189–203. New York and London: Routledge. Originally published in Subjects/Objects 2 (12). ———. 1993. “Finis.” In Aporias: dying—awaiting (one another at)the “limits of truth”; mourir—s’attendre aux “limites de la vérité”, 1–42. Translated by Thomas Dutoit. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1996. Le monolinguisme de l’autre, ou, La prothèse d’origine. Paris: Galilée. Eco, Umberto. 2003. “Of Mice and Men.” The Guardian Review, November 1. Complete version available at https://free- minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=7425.0. McGuirk, Bernard, and Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira. 2009. Haroldo de Campos in conversation: in memoriam 1929–2003. London: Zoilus. Melo Neto, João Cabral de. 2000. Morte e vida severina e outros poemas para vozes. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira. Pring-Mill, Robert D. F. 1990. “Gracias a la vida”: The Power and Poetry of Song. The Kate Elder Lecture, Queen Mary University of London. An expanded version published London: University of London, Dept. of Hispanic Studies, 1999. Santiago, Silviano. 1978. “O entre-lugar do discurso latino-americano.” In Uma literatura nos trópicos, 11–28. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Salgado, Sebastião. 1997. Terra. Preface by José Saramago, and poetry by Chico Buarque. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. English edition published as Terra: Struggle of the Landless. London: Phaidon, 1997. Schwarz, Roberto. 1992. Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. Edited and with an introduction by John Gledson. London and New York: Verso. Vieira, Else Ribeiro Pires, and Bernard McGuirk. 2007. Landless Voices in Song and Poetry: The Movimento dos Sem Terra of Brazil. Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press. is Emeritus Professor of Romance Literatures and Literary Theory at the University of Nottingham. He is president of the International Consortium for the Study of Post-Conflict and has published widely on and translated literatures in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. His most recent books are Latin American Literature: Symptoms, Risks and Strategies of Poststructuralist Criticism (2013), Poesia de Guerra (1998), Falklands–Malvinas: An Unfinished Business (2007), and Erasing Fernando Pessoa (2017). He has also edited, with Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira, Landless Voices in Song and Poetry: The Movimento Dos Sem Terra of Brazil (2007) and Haroldo de Campos in Conversation: In Memoriam 1929–2003 (2007); and, with Constance Goh, Happiness and Post-Conflict (2007). 

Unimi Open Journals

translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15531

Abstract: “I have invented very little in the stories and voices that weave through this book. Some of them I was told and have carried in my memory for a long time. Others I found in books.” These words—from the Author’s Note of Muñoz Molina’s Sepharad—could be said to be the starting point of my article. Muñoz Molina’s novel illustrates a good example of what Michael Rothberg defines as “multidirectional memory” since the memory of the Holocaust, the multiple exiles that have taken place in Europe, and the memory of postwar Spain coexist—like the tesserae of a mosaic—in the structure of this novel. In this sense, Sepharad can be seen as a landmark in recent Spanish literature, being the first novel that provides a juxtaposition of these formerly isolated memories in a fictional work. It is, therefore, the aim of this article to explore the manner in which Muñoz Molina manages to translate into fiction the shared European memory of the twentieth century, also paying attention to the narrative techniques used by this Spanish author. 1This paper is a result of the METAPHORA research project (Reference FFI2014-53391-P), funded by State Secretariat for Research, Development and Innovation of Spain.  Cómo atreverse a la vana frivolidad de inventar, habiendo tantas vidas que merecieron ser contadas, cada una de ellas una novela, una malla de ramificaciones que conducen a otras novelas y otras vidas”.2 Antonio Muñoz Molina, Sefarad (2003, 720-721) “De te fabula. The story is about you”. Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture (1976, 186) One of the most revealing passages that the reader of Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad (first published in 2001) may encounter in this so-called “novela de novelas” occurs in the “Author’s Note,” which brings this novel to its end: “I have invented very little in the stories and voices that weave through this book. Some of them I was told and have carried in my memory for a long time. Others I found in books” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 383). This passage could be said to be the starting point of this essay since it helps explain the complex relationship which we find in this novel between memory and imagination, as well as between storytelling and memoir. Sefarad is described by Muñoz Molina as “un mapa de todos los exilios posibles” (a map of all possible exiles) (Valdivia 2013, 26), and in this sense the novel represents a manifold and heterogeneous approach to this theme. Similarly, this novel constitutes a landmark in Spanish literature, as it juxtaposes in a fictional work both the Spanish and European shared history of the twentieth century in an unprecedented manner (see Valdivia 2013; Hristova 2011; Baer 2011). As it could be claimed that Sefarad is founded on a multidirectional approach to memory (Valdivia 2013, 13), it is my purpose to explore the manner in which this approach is translated into fiction in this novel. Similarly, I would like to pay attention to those narrative techniques used by Muñoz Molina that enhance this multidirectional approach. In this sense, both polyacroasis (that is, the plural interpretation of discourses), as 2 All quotations in Spanish from Sefarad are from the 2013 edition (see References list) and referenced in parentheses as such in the text. All quotations in English are from the 2003 edition of Margaret Sayers Peden’s translation (see References list). The English translation will be offered throughout in footnotes, except where only short passages are cited in-text. “How, when there are so many lives that deserve to be told, can one attempt to invent a novel for each, in a vast network of interlinking novels and lives?” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 365) defined by Tomás Albaladejo (1998, 2011), and the empathetic turn of Muñoz Molina’s novel, account for an effective translation of memory, as I will try to demonstrate. Multidirectional Memory in Sefarad Instead of the idea of collective memory as competitive memory (Rothberg 2009, 3), in Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization a new conceptual framework is proposed which “consider[s] memory as multidirectional: as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross- referencing [. . .] as productive and not privative” (Rothberg 2009, 3). In other words, this model of competitive memory should be replaced by a dynamic multidirectional model that allows the interaction of different historical memories (Rothberg 2009, 2–3). In Rothberg’s study, the work of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs is considered crucial, since for him “all memories are simultaneously individual and collective” (Rothberg 2009, 14–15) so that an effective transmission of the past depends on the manner in which the interaction and juxtaposition of both individual and collective memory is understood. In this sense, as Pablo Valdivia has stated in his edition of Sefarad, the structure of Muñoz Molina’s novel could be said to represent a good illustration of what Michael Rothberg has defined as “multidirectional memory” (Valdivia 2013, 13). The memory of the Holocaust, the multiple exiles that have taken place in Europe, including the Spanish republican exile, and the memory of postwar Spain coexist in the structure of these seventeen intertwined chapters or “novelas” that shape Sefarad. Thus, Sefarad constitutes a landmark in recent Spanish literature since, before this novel was published in 2001, the juxtaposition of the Spanish and European shared memory of the Holocaust and its aftermath, along with the memory of the Spanish republican exile, its Civil War, and its postwar period has never been staged in a fictional work (Valdivia 2013, 14; see also Hristova 2011). As a result of this, Muñoz Molina’s novel also constitutes an attempt to connect the Spanish and European shared culture so as to fill the voids of our shared history3 (Baer 3 As Pablo Valdivia has suggested in his edition of Sefarad, in the article “Escuchando a Canetti,” published in the Spanish newspaper El País in 1997, we can clearly appreciate Muñoz 2011; Valdivia 2013). In order to illuminate those cultural links, the Spanish author creates a complex and ambitious fictional artifact haunted by voices rather than characters in the traditional sense (Valdivia 2013). Actually, voices (“voces”) is the word Muñoz Molina uses in the “Author’s Note” to refer to the characters who weave through the book. Some of these voices are fictional and others belong to real people who bore witness to their atrocious experiences, and they all constitute an “imagined community of voices” (Herzberger 2004, 85; Valdivia 2013, 15). Hence, in Sefarad we read the testimonies and listen to the voices of Victor Klemperer, Margarete Buber-Neumann, Primo Levi, Francisco Ayala, Evgenia Ginzburg, José Luis Pinillos, Franz Kafka, or Milena Jesenska, to name but a few. Marije Hristova (2011) has referred to these characters as “iconic characters” or “iconic writers”—that is, historical figures appearing in the novel who in turn have bequeathed to us their “iconic testimonies.” According to Baer, the weak connection between Spain and the memory of the Holocaust is not historical but cultural (Baer 2011, 114). In this sense, this cultural disjointedness is also suggested in the “Author’s Note,” when Muñoz Molina reveals that many of the testimonies and memoirs of victims of totalitarian regimes that led him to write Sefarad were not translated into Spanish by the time he was writing and published his novel. This is the case of Margarete Buber Neumann’s Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler. Eine Welt im Dunkel ([1947] 1997), Victor Klemperer’s “Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten.” Tagebücher 1933–1945 (1995), Jean Améry’s Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwäl- tigten (1997), and Evgenia Semyonovna Ginzburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind (1967), whose memoirs the author could only read in their French and English translations. In fact, it was Antonio Muñoz Molina himself who inserted in the novel his own translation of passages taken from the memoirs we have Molina’s reflections on what he considers a certain lack of interest in Spain regarding the international discussions on the Holocaust memory: “Me llama la atención lo poco que se ha escrito en nuestro país sobre el Holocausto, y el eco tan débil o simplemente nulo que tienen entre nosotros los grandes debates internacionales sobre ese acontecimiento que, junto a la tecnología de la guerra total y el terror de las tiranías estalinistas, ha definido este siglo [. . .] se diría que a nosotros tales cosas no nos afectan, como si España fuera ajena a la historia judía de los últimos cinco siglos, o como si nuestro país no hubiera padecido durante casi cuarenta años una dictadura que debió su triunfo, en gran parte, a la ayuda del mismo régimen que provocó el Holocausto y arrasó Europa entera” (Muñoz Molina 2007, 377–380). previously mentioned. Thus, in Sefarad the creative writer and the translator meet, as will be analyzed in the last section. In Sefarad, the author introduces a variety of testimonies and memories that had been previously overshadowed by other memories, to the extent that they were unknown for many Spanish readers, an aspect which suggests a parallelism between Rothberg’s multidirectional memory model and Muñoz Molina’s novel (Valdivia 2013, 13). In this sense, Sefarad can be contemplated as a mosaic made of many tesserae, every one of which is part of an imagined community of voices. Needless to say, every tessera is required to understand the whole picture. In “Münzenberg,” one of the seventeen chapters that make up Sefarad, Muñoz Molina’s “basic narrator” (Hristova 2011) reveals his plans to write a novel, which, quite startlingly, seems to be inspired by the same approach to fiction that Rothberg proposes for history (Valdivia 2013): He intuido, a lo largo de dos o tres años, la tentación y la posibilidad de una novela, he imaginado situaciones y lugares, como fotografías sueltas o como esos fotogramas de películas que ponían antes, armados en grandes carteleras, a las entradas de los cines [. . .] Cada uno cobraba una valiosa cualidad de misterio, se yuxtaponía sin orden a los otros, se iluminaban entre sí en conexiones plurales e instantáneas, que yo podía deshacer o modificar a mi antojo, y en las que ninguna imagen anulaba a las otras o alcanzaba una primacía segura sobre ellas, o perdía en beneficio del conjunto su singularidad irreductible. (Muñoz Molina 2013, 383)4 This passage is highly revealing since we are told that the narrator’s plan for writing his novel consists of juxtaposing snapshots in order to create a pattern where no image nullifies or overshadows the others, since each of these images is unique and necessary to produce a true and coherent mosaic. This is what we find precisely in Sefarad; different testimonies and memoirs from victims of any political regime or from any kind of exile, each of which are equally significant in a clear multidirectional approach to memory (Valdivia 2013). 4 “For two or three years I have flirted with the idea of writing a novel, imagined situations and places, like snapshots, or like those posters displayed on large billboards at the entrance to a movie theatre. [. . .] Each became a mystery, illuminating the others, creating multiple links that I could break or modify at my whim, patterns in which no image nullified the others or gained precedence or lost its uniqueness within the whole” (Muñoz Molina 2003,140).  Thus, one of the essential questions that are raised while reading Sefarad is how appropriate literature may be as a vehicle for bearing witness to history (Gilmour 2011, 840). The main narrator of Sefarad does not evade this issue, something which is reflected on many occasions throughout the novel. This is the case of the chapter “Narva,” in which the narrator meets a friend of his for lunch, the Spanish psychologist José Luis Pinillos. Pinillos enlisted in the Blue Division, the Spanish Army that served in the German Army during the Second World War. The testimony that the Spanish psychologist bequeaths to the narrator is that of his dramatic experience in the Estonian city of Narva. There, Pinillos met a Jewish woman who asks him to bear witness to the extermination of the Jewish population. At a certain point of the narration, the Spanish psychologist admits that “[y]o no sabía nada entonces, pero lo peor de todo era que me negaba a saber, que no veía lo que estaba delante de mis ojos” (Muñoz Molina 2013, 630) (“I didn’t know anything then, but worst of all was my refusal to know, what was before my eyes” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 307)), attracted as he was by what German civilization represented during his student years: “no quiero ocultarlo, ni quiero disculparme, creía que Alemania era la civilización, y Rusia la barbarie” (Muñoz Molina 2013, 630) (“I don’t want to hide anything or try to excuse myself, I thought that Germany was civilization and Russia barbarism” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 307)). After that meeting, he would never see the Jewish woman again and the experience of that meeting haunted him for many decades, until the very day the narrator and the Spanish psychologist met for lunch. This chapter contains essential reflections on the role of literature as a vehicle for transmitting the memory of the past. Moreover, the very mechanisms of storytelling are unveiled in a remarkable manner. After hearing Pinillos’s testimony, and particularly what meeting the Jewish woman meant for him, the basic narrator has an epiphanic revelation, which is reflected in the following passage: Él, que no quiso ni pudo olvidarla en más de medio siglo, me la ha legado ahora, de su memoria la ha trasladado a mi imaginación, pero yo no quiero inventarle ni un origen ni un nombre, tal vez ni siquiera tengo derecho: no es un fantasma, ni un personaje de ficción, es alguien que pertenecía a la vida  real tanto como yo, que tuvo un destino tan único como el mío aunque inimaginablemente más atroz, una biografía que no puede ser suplantada por la sombra bella y mentirosa de la literatura [. . .] (Muñoz Molina 2013, 637)5 As the previous passage reflects, Muñoz Molina is aware of the risks involved in transmitting and translating memory into fiction. He is aware, in other words, of the limits of literature and invention (Gilmour 2011, 840),6 which is probably why Muñoz Molina declares in his “Author’s Note” that there is very little invention “in the stories and voices that weave through [Sefarad]” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 383). On the other hand, Sefarad never stops questioning the legitimacy of literature to approach memory. Perhaps, José Luis Pinillos’s testimony faithfully illustrates the author’s approach to memory: [. . .] si yo estoy vivo tengo la obligación de hablar por ellos, tengo que contar lo que les hicieron, no puedo quedarme sin hacer nada y dejar que les olviden, y que se pierda del todo lo poco que va quedando de ellos. No quedará nada cuando se haya extinguido mi generación, nadie que se acuerde, a no ser que alguno de vosotros repitáis lo que os hemos contado. (Muñoz Molina 2013, 644)7 At the very end of this passage, the Spanish psychologist appeals to the narrator and asks him to narrate what he has just told him (an idea that is lost in the English translation we offer below). In this sense, it is relevant to refer to Cristina Demaria’s study Semiotica e Memoria. Analisi del post-conflitto. In this study, Demaria refers to the necessity of exploring what Lotman defined as the process of translating experience into the text (“processi di traduzione dell’esperienza in testo”) when we transmit the past, paying special attention to the interaction 5 “He who has not been able to forget her for more than half a century has bequeathed her to me now, transferring the memory of her to my imagination, but I won’t give her an origin or a name, I haven’t the authority, she isn’t a ghost or a fictional character but someone who was as real as I am, who had a destiny as unique as mine although far more cruel, a biography that can neither be supplanted by the beautiful lie of literature” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 312). 6 Concerning the issue of how legitimate it is for fiction to transmit memories of traumatic experiences, Gilmour has observed that “the dilemma of how to keep memories of these experiences alive and to transmit them to future generations has become a pressing question in contemporary cultural studies, in particular in relation to the Holocaust” (Gilmour 2011, 839). 7 “[. . .] because I’m alive I have the obligation to speak for them, say what was done, so that the little that remains of them in people’s memories will not be lost for all time” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 317). between individual and collective memory (Demaria 2006, 37).8 Hence, I would affirm that the inclusion of the iconic characters’ testimonies in Sefarad accounts for this sort of translation of experience into the text. The issue of the legitimacy of literature as a vehicle for the transmission of memory and traumatic knowledge is an essential feature in Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad, which, I feel, is effectively carried out (Gilmour 2011, 840). On the other hand, it should not be overlooked that the transmission of memory may function—as we consider it does in Sefarad—as “a spur to unexpected acts of empathy and solidarity” (Rothberg 2009, 19). Empathetic polyacroasis as a narrative principle in Sefarad One of the most remarkable aspects of Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad is the importance of storytelling as a principle that articulates the novel (Herzberger 2004, 85; Valdivia 2013). As Herzberger has pointed out Sefarad “is a novel of multiple narrators, characters, and plots that turns inward to celebrate the construction of its stories.” (Herzberger 2004, 85). It is important to highlight how significant storytelling, listening, and reading are in the construction of this novel. In this sense, the inclusion of the iconic characters’ testimonies in a novel where storytelling and listening is vital accounts for what Herzberger defines as “a hybridized narrative rooted in imagination and reference” (Herzberger 2004, 86). A fruitful tension that contributes to trigger an empathetic response from the reader (Herzberger 2004, 86). On the other hand, one of the most remarkable achievements of Sefarad is its “basic narrator”—that is, the oscillating narrative voice underlying the seventeen chapters or “novelas” (Hristova 2011; Gilmour 2011; Valdivia 2012, 591– 592). Actually, this basic narrator constantly changes the grammatical person from “yo” to “tú,” “él,” “vosotros,” or “ellos” (Valdivia 2012, 591–592; see also Gilmour 2011). Thus, orality and storytelling are essential features for this basic narrator to 8 Cristina Demaria affirms in her study that “[l]a trasmissione del significato del passato, la trama in cui si intrecciano alcuni eventi che divengono così rilevanti, può cioè trovarsi a dipendere dal modo in cui, di volta in volta, memoria individuale e memoria collettiva interagiscono. È necessario dunque indagare più a fondo quelli che Lotman definisce come processi di traduzione dell’esperienza in testo, l’interazione e anche il conflitto fra una memoria individuale e una collettiva, culturale e sociale” (Demaria 2006, 37). develop his narrative possibilities. Characters, be they iconic or fictional, tell each other stories and transmit their testimonies to those who are willing to listen, to the extent that the manner in which their identities may be perceived depends to a great extent on those stories (Herzberger 2004; Gilmour 2011; Hristova 2011; Valdivia 2012; Valdivia 2013). Hence, both orality and storytelling allow us to establish a connection with the rhetorical concept of polyacroasis (Valdivia 2012, 593–594). The term polyacroasis (polyakróasis)—that is, a plural hearing, plural interpretation of an oral discourse—has been proposed by Tomás Albaladejo “to refer to the characteristic consisting of the differences between the hearers of rhetorical discourse” (Albaladejo 1998, 156). Thus, polyacroasis contributes to illuminate and elucidate the mechanisms of the plural reception of discourses taking place in a given rhetorical event (Albaladejo 1998). As this reception is not only restricted to oratorical events, Albaladejo has also proposed this concept to analyze literary works, especially those at the very core of which literary communication lies (Albaladejo 2009, 2). Polyacroasis therefore contributes to elucidate the strong link between literature and orality (Albaladejo 2009, 3–4). In this sense, Sefarad constitutes a rhetorical event where the characters or voices that dwell in the novel narrate to each other the novel they take with them.9 Yet the reader is also appealed to and turned into another character of the novel by means of empathy, to the extent that readers may experience what Northrop Frye affirmed the final message of the genre of romance was—that is, “de te fabula: the story is about you” (Frye 1976, 186). In this sense, the use in the novel of the rhetorical figure of apostrophe reinforces the sense of empathy the novel conveys, since the reader’s attention is drawn in a very effective manner (Valdivia 2013): Y tú qué harías si supieras que en cualquier momento pueden venir a buscarte, que tal vez ya figura tu nombre en una lista mecanografiada de 9In Sefarad, there are multiple references to Benito Pérez Galdós’s Fortunata y Jacinta. Muñoz Molina introduces in Sefarad a famous quotation taken from that novel, “Doquiera que el hombre va lleva consigo su novela,” which Margaret Sayers Peden translated into English as “Wherever a man goes, he takes his novel with him”(Muñoz Molina 2003, 44).  presos o de muertos futuros, de sospechosos, de traidores. (Muñoz Molina 2013, 243)10 Clearly, the use of apostrophe triggers an empathetic response from the reader, who may experience a total identification with the voices that dwell in Sefarad (Gilmour 2011, 851). In addition to this, empathy is similarly stimulated by manipulating the voice of the basic narrator (Gilmour 2011, 851; Valdivia 2012). What Gilmour has described as “a constant oscillation between the third person, él or ella, and the first person, yo,” (Gilmour 2011, 852; Valdivia 2012; Valdivia 2013, 258) creates a web of empathetic connections among the main narrator, the gallery of multiple voices that weave through the book, and an empathetic reader. As we have seen before, Muñoz Molina tells us in the “Author’s note” that both the testimonies he listened to and stored for a long time in his memory and the books he read were vital while plotting and writing Sefarad: the rest was invention. However, it could be affirmed that the part of the novel that stems from invention completes full circle this web of empathetic links (Gilmour 2011). In other words, as Gilmour has pointed out, the use of an empathetic imagination accounts for the manner in which Muñoz Molina, via his basic narrator, translates into fiction other people’s memories (Gilmour 2011, 847). This basic narrator has been referred to by Valdivia as a “yo fluido,” a sort of flowing manifold narrator whose nature is clearly explained in the following passage taken from the chapter “Dime tu nombre”: Nunca soy más yo mismo que cuando guardo silencio y escucho, cuando dejo a un lado mi fatigosa identidad y mi propia memoria para concentrarme del todo en el acto de escuchar, de ser plenamente habitado por las experiencias y recuerdos de otros. (Muñoz Molina 2013, 680)11 This multiple oscillation among different grammatical persons is accompanied by the use of direct speech, as we can appreciate when Muñoz Molina provides his own translation into 10 “And you, what would you do if you knew that at any moment they could come for you, that your name may already be on a typed list of prisoners or future dead, or suspects, or traitors?” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 45). 11 “I am never more myself than when I am silent and listening, when I set aside my tedious identity and tedious memory to concentrate totally on the act of listening, on the experiences of another” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 340). Spanish of the iconic characters’ testimonies he has read in books. In the following passage we can appreciate a clear example of this flowing oscillating narrator: Evgenia, te están tendiendo una trampa, y es preciso que escapes mientras puedas, antes de que te partan el cuello. Pero cómo voy yo, una comunista, a esconderme de mi Partido, lo que tengo que hacer es demostrarle al Partido que soy inocente. Hablan en voz baja, procurando que los niños no escuchen nada, temiendo que el teléfono, aunque está colgado, sirva para que les espíen las conversaciones. (Muñoz Molina 2013, 258)12 The quotation that appears in italics is an excerpt, translated into Spanish by the author himself, and taken from Evgenia Ginzburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind, a memoir that had not yet been translated into Spanish when Sefarad was being written. Then, after that passage, without using quotation marks, the first person is used and we are told what the “basic narrator” imagines Evgenia Ginzburg might have said in the very moment she learnt she was under threat. In other words, the basic narrator haunts Ginzburg’s mind and empathetically imagines how Ginzburg might have reacted. Finally, in the last sentence, the basic narrator shifts to the third person plural (Valdivia 2013, 258). Needless to say, this masterly use of narrative technique requires an empathetic imagination on the author’s part (Gilmour 2011; Valdivia 2013, 258). The manner in which polyacroasis functions in this novel can not be explained if we are unaware of that web of empathetic connections—or “malla de ramificaciones”—among the different voices, the reader’s response, and the empathetic imagination deployed by Muñoz Molina. Therefore, a new question should now be raised. Is empathy an effective vehicle for both transmitting and translating memories? Does the author’s empathetic involvement in retelling and translating testimonies account for a successful transmission of memory? According to Rothberg, remembrance and imagination can be seen as both material and fundamentally human forces that 12“Eugenia, they’re setting a trap for you, and you must run away while you can, before they have your head. But why would I, a Communist, hide from my Party? I must show the Party that I’m innocent. They speak in low voices, trying not to let the children hear, afraid that the telephone, even though the receiver’s down, will allow someone to listen” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 53). “should not lead to assumptions of memory’s insubstantiality” (Rothberg 2009, 19). It is possible that, as Sefarad reflects, translating multidirectional memory into fiction acquires a more significant and enriched dimension when empathetic imagination is present. Translating the Other culturally in Sefarad The role of translation in postconflict cultures is an aspect that has been taken into consideration in Nergaard’s “Translating the Other: Journalism in Post Conflict Cultures” (Demaria and Wright, 2006). In this article, Nergaard analyzes examples where one culture translates another (Nergaard 2006, 189). In this sense, Nergaard proposes an understanding of translation “as the process through which concepts and discourses in one culture are interpreted and transformed in order to be introduced into another” (Nergaard 2006, 189). Translation is also referred to as “one of the privileged spaces where cultures meet [. . .] in terms of alterity and difference” (Nergaard 2006, 189). Translation thus allows us to represent the Other, a complex process that Nergaard calls cultural translation (Nergaard 2006, 191). In this epigraph I would like to explore the presence of cultural translation in Muñoz Molina’s novel, and to what extent fiction may contribute to an effective translation of the Other and, as a result of that, can contribute to create and shape knowledge. When the so-called basic narrator declares that he is never more himself than when he sets aside his identity to concentrate on the experiences of another (Muñoz Molina 2013, 680), he is suggesting that “he is never more fully himself than when experiencing both self and other” (Gilmour 2011, 849.) In this sense, it seems that the very idea of representing and translating the Other appears to be one of the engines of Sefarad, being the other and the translation of his or her experiences one of the key motifs that articulate the novel. We have previously referred to the manner in which Muñoz Molina translates into fiction the iconic characters’ testimonies. In some occasions the author himself translates passages into Spanish, which lend verisimilitude to the novel. In other occasions, the iconic characters are haunted by the oscillating narrator (“yo fluido,” as proposed by Valdivia) who imagines empathetically what these “iconic characters and writers” might have thought or said (Valdivia 2013). This exploration of the characters’ thoughts appearing in Sefarad, via an oscillating narrator, constitutes an example of what could be defined as an empathetic cultural translation. The most significant instance of this representation of the Other in Sefarad appears in the chapter “Eres.” In this chapter, Muñoz Molina appeals empathetically to the reader by means of the use of apostrophe. Thus, the chapter triggers in the reader a sense of identification between him or her and the Other (Valdivia 2013, 601). In this sense in Sefarad “the possibility of becoming ‘the other’ is a recurrent theme” (Hristova-Dijkstra and Adema 2010, 74), something that is illustrated when the reader is asked the following question: “Y tú qué harías si supieras que en cualquier momento pueden venir a buscarte, que tal vez ya figura tu nombre en una lista mecanografiada de presos o de muertos futuros, de sospechosos, de traidores”(Muñoz Molina 2013, 243) (“what would you do if you knew that at any moment they could come for you, that your name may already be on a typed list of prisoners or future dead, or suspects, or traitors?” [Muñoz Molina 2003, 45]). In the following passage from the chapter mentioned above, we encounter a representative example of the manner in which the virtual identification between reader (Self) and the Other is triggered: Eres quien mira su normalidad perdida desde el otro lado del cristal que te separa de ella, quien entre las rendijas de las tablas de un vagón de deportados mira las últimas casas de la ciudad que creyó suya y a la que nunca volverá. (Muñoz Molina 2013, 619)13 The effect these words have on the reader is that of fostering a total identification with the Other, to the extent that we come to recognize how “the ‘totally other’ constitutes one’s identity” (Hristova-Dijkstra and Adema 2010, 74). * 13 As Margaret Sayers Peden’s 2003 translation into English of the 2001 Spanish edition of Sefarad is being used throughout this article, and as this translation omits many passages from the original 2001 Spanish edition, including the passage I have just cited, no English translation is being provided in this instance. Sefarad has been described by its author as a “mapa de todos los exilios posibles” (a map of possible exiles) (Valdivia 2013, 26). In this sense, it could be affirmed that the theme of exile constitutes a subtext in Sefarad since it is the place where the narrator and the reader empathize imaginatively with the Other (Gilmour 2011, 854): Aún despojándote de todo queda algo que permanece siempre, que está en ti desde que tienes memoria [. . .] el núcleo o la médula de lo que eres [. . .]: eres el sentimiento del desarraigo y de la extrañeza, de no estar del todo en ninguna parte [. . .] (Muñoz Molina 2013, 609)14 In the Introduction to Translation and Power (2002) Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler assert that translators “as much as creative writers and politicians, participate in the powerful acts that create knowledge and shape culture” (Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002, xxi). In this sense, in Sefarad both the translator and the creative writer meet. The fact that some of the books containing the iconic characters’ testimonies were not translated into Spanish implied an obvious lack of knowledge of vital testimonies that has shaped postwar Europe. Thus, the Spanish author’s decision to insert and translate passages from the previously mentioned testimonies accounts for a strong desire to create knowledge both as a creative writer and as a translator. If we take into consideration, for instance, the passages taken from Victor Klemperer’s I will Bear Witness. 1933–1941. A Diary of the Nazi Years (1999), we can appreciate a clear illustration of Muñoz Molina’s masterly use of historical reference and empathetic imagination. In “Quien espera,” a gallery of “iconic characters” weaves through this chapter, which includes Victor Klemperer himself, Margarete Buber-Neumann, Eugenia Ginzburg, Jean Améry, and even fictional characters such as Josef K. from Kafka’s Der Prozess. In the following passage we can appreciate the narrative technique deployed by the author: 14“Something persists that has been inside you for as long as you can remember [. . .] it is the marrow of what you are [. . .] You are uprootedness and foreignness, not being completely in any one place [. . .]” (Muñoz Moina 2003, 295).  El jueves 30 de marzo de 1933 el profesor Victor Klemperer, de Dresde, anota en su diario que ha visto en el escaparate de una tienda de juguetes un balón de goma infantil con una gran esvástica. Ya no puedo librarme de la sensación de disgusto y vergüenza. Y nadie se mueve; todo el mundo tiembla, se esconde. (Muñoz Molina 2013, 247)15 The journal entry corresponds to March 30, 1933. In fact, the sentence that we encounter at the end of that journal entry— that is, “In a toy shop a children’s ball with the swastika” (Klemperer 1999, 10)—occurs unexpectedly, as a juxtaposed image with no apparent connection with the rest of the paragraph.16 Thus, Muñoz Molina is clearly retelling what he has read in the diary, after which he introduces in italics his own translation of a passage extracted from the English translation of Klemperer’s diaries. Hence, Muñoz Molina sets a boundary between real testimonies and literary recreation. Yet, it should be noticed that the passage in italics does not correspond to the same day Klemperer saw the child’s ball with the swastika (that is, March 30) but to May 17 of the same year. This narrative device—which we can appreciate in other iconic testimonies throughout the novel—has significant implications from the point of view of translation, since it reveals a concept of translation that Tymoczko and Gentzler have described as “not simply an act of faithful reproduction but, rather, a deliberate and conscious act of selection [and] assemblage” (Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002, xxi). In other words, Muñoz Molina’s choice constitutes a conscious act of juxtaposing his own empathetic retelling of the journal with real testimonies extracted from it (that is, “I can no longer get rid of the feeling of disgust and shame. And no one stirs; everyone trembles, keeps out of sight” (Klemperer 1999, 7) (“Ich kann das Gefühl des 15 “On Thursday, March 30, 1933, Professor Victor Klemperer, of Dresden, notes in his diary that in a toy-shop window he saw a child’s balloon with a large swastika. I can no longer rid myself of the disgust and shame. Yet no one makes a move; everyone trembles, hides” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 47). 16 We provide in this footnote the English translation of Victor Klemperer’s diaries and the original German: “Yesterday a wretched statement in the Dresdener Neueste Nachrichten—‘on your own account.’ They are 92.5 percent founded on Aryan capital, Herr Wollf, owner of the remaining 7.5 percent, has resigned as chief editor, one Jewish editor has been given leave of absence (poor Fentl!), the other ten are Aryans. Terrible!—In a toy shop a children’s ball with the swastika.” (Klemperer 1999, 10); „Gestern jämmerliche Erklärung der Dresdener NN ‚in eigener Sache’. Sie seien zu 92,5 Prozent auf arisches Kapital gestützt, Herr Wollf, Besitzer der übrigen 7,5 Prozent, lege Chefredaktion nieder, ein jüdischer Redakteur sei beurlaubt (armer Fentl!), die andern zehn seien Arier. Entsetzlich! – In einem Spielzeugladen ein Kinderball mit Hakenkreuz” (Klemperer, 1995: 15–16). Ekels und der Scham nicht mehr loswerden. Und niemand rührt sich; alles zittert, verkriecht sich.” [Klemperer 1995, 12]). In “Quien espera” we encounter a web of testimonies or voices that are intertwined throughout this chapter, including Buber-Neumann’s, Ginzburg’s, and Klemperer’s. In the last paragraph of this chapter the testimonies of both Klemperer and Buber-Neumann come together. In a masterly juxtaposition of voices and testimonies, the oscillating narrator concludes this chapter in the following manner: Llegaron una mañana muy temprano, del 19 de Julio, y al comprobar que esta vez sí que venían de verdad por ella [Margarete] no sintió pánico, sino más bien alivio [. . .]. El 12 de julio el profesor Klemperer recuerda en su diario a algunos amigos que se marcharon de Alemania, que han encontrado trabajo en Estados Unidos o en Inglaterra. Pero cómo irse sin nada, él, un viejo, y su mujer una enferma [. . .]. Nosotros nos hemos quedado aquí, en la vergüenza y la penuria, como enterrados vivos, enterrados hasta el cuello, esperando día tras día las últimas paletadas. (Muñoz Molina 2013, 267)17 The responsibility that translation may have in creating knowledge has been previously mentioned. I agree with Tymoczko and Genztler when they affirm that “translation [. . .] actively participates in the construction of knowledge [. . .] and that the act of translation is itself very much involved in the creation of [it]” (Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002, xxi). Leaving aside the enormous literary value of a novel like Sefarad, I would affirm that this novel is also an example of how a fictional work can participate in that construction of knowledge through an empathetic imagination. Conclusion Throughout this article I have tried to analyze the manner in which Muñoz Molina juxtaposes in Sefarad the shared European and Spanish memory of the twentieth century via a multidirectional memory approach to fiction. In this sense, I would affirm that Michael Rothberg’s approach helps explain the narrative mechanisms underlying Sefarad. In other words, Rothberg’s 17 “They came one morning very early, on July 19, and when she realized that they had finally come for her, [Margarete] felt only a kind of relief [. . .]. On July 12, Professor Klemperer refers in his diary to some friends who left Germany and found work in the United States or England. But how do you leave when you don’t have anything? He, an old man with a sick wife [. . .]. We have stayed here, in shame and penury, as if buried alive, buried up to our necks, waiting day after day for the last spadefuls of dirt” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 60). dynamic multidirectional model accounts effectively for the interaction of different historical memories which we can appreciate in Sefarad (Rothberg 2009, 3). Muñoz Molina thus translates into fiction previously isolated memories and presents a map of all possible exiles in an unprecedented manner in recent Spanish literature. In this sense, I would state that one of Muñoz Molina’s greatest achievements is the manner in which he carries out a translation of experience into a fictional text. There are multiple instances of that translation of experiences into Sefarad, such as the iconic characters’ testimonies. In addition to this, I would like to point out that empathetic polyacroasis contributes to a great extent to this effective translation of experience. Thus, I believe that the presence of polyacroasis in Sefarad enhances that empathetic translation and transmission of memory, since it allows both a plural interpretation and a powerful interaction among the different “voices” that dwell in the novel, and it also increases the readers’ empathetic response. In my opinion, translating multidirectional memory into fiction becomes more effective when empathetic polyacroasis takes place. Needless to say, this “hybridized narrative rooted in imagination and reference” (Herzberger 2004, 86) clearly contributes and participates in the construction of knowledge. Finally, I would like to conclude this essay with an excerpt from Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad that, to a great extent, may function as a concise summary of the argument I have presented: No eres una sola persona y no tienes una sola historia, y ni tu cara ni tu oficio ni las demás circunstancias de tu vida pasada o presente permanecen invariables. El pasado se mueve y los espejos son imprevisibles. (Muñoz Molina 2013, 596)18 18“You are not an isolated person and do not have an isolated story, and neither your face nor your profession nor the other circumstances of your past or present life are cast in stone. The past shifts and reforms, and mirrors are unpredictable” (Muñoz Molina 2003, 288). References Albaladejo, Tomás. 1998. “Polyacroasis in Rhetorical Discourse.” The Canadian Journal of Rhetorical Studies/La Revue Canadienne d’Études Rhétoriques 9: 155–167. ———. 2009. “La poliacroasis en la representación literaria: Un componente de la retórica cultural.” Castilla. Estudios de Literatura 0: 1–26. PDF available at http://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/12153. Améry, Jean. 1997. Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag. Baer, Alejandro. 2011. “The Voids of Sepharad: The memory of the Holocaust in Spain.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 12 (1): 95– 120. doi:10.1080/14636204.2011/556879. Buber-Neumann, Margarete. [1947] 1997. Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler. Eine Welt im Dunkel. Berlin: Ullstein Buchverlage. Demaria, Cristina. 2006. Semiotica e memoria. Analisi del post-conflitto. Roma: Carocci. Demaria, Cristina, and Colin Wright. 2006. Post-Conflict Cultures. Rituals of Representation. London: Zoilus Press. Frye, Northrop. 1976. The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. Gilmour, Nicola. 2011. “The Afterlife of Traumatic Memories: The Workings and Uses of Empathy in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies: Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America 88 (6): 839–862. doi:10.1080/14753820.2011.603491. Ginzburg, Eugenia Semyonovna. 1967. Journey into the Whirlwind. Translated by Paul Stevenson and Max Hayward. London: Harcourt. Herzberger, David K. 2004. “Representing the Holocaust: Story and Experience in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad.” Romance Quarterly 51 (2): 85–96. doi:10.3200/RQTR.51.2.85-96. Hristova, Marije. 2011. “Memoria prestada. El Holocausto en la novela española contemporánea: Los casos de Sefarad de Muñoz Molina y El Comprador de aniversarios de García Ortega.” MA thesis, University of Amsterdam. PDF available at http://dare.uva.nl/document/342563. Hristova-Dijkstra, Marije J., and Janneke Adema. 2010. “The exile condition. Space–time dissociation in historical experience. A reading of Sefarad.” Krisis, 1: 62–76. Klemperer, Victor. 1995. “Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten.” Tagebücher 1933–1941. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag. ———. 1999. I Will Bear Witness. 1933–1941. A Diary of the Nazi Years. Translated by Martin Chalmers. New York: The Modern Library. Muñoz Molina, Antonio. 2003. Sepharad. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. London: Harcourt. ———. 2007. Travesías. Edited by Jorge F. Hernández. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. ———. 2013. Sefarad. Edited by Pablo Valdivia. Madrid: Cátedra. Nergaard, Siri. 2006. “Translating the Other: Journalism in Post-Conflict Cultures.” In Cristina Demaria and Colin Wright 2006, 189–207. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Tymoczko, Maria, and Edwin Gentzler, eds. 2002. Translation and Power. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Valdivia, Pablo. 2012. “Poliacroasis, memoria e identidad en la articulación de los discursos de poder: el caso de Sefarad de Antonio Muñoz Molina.” In Retórica y política. Los discursos de la construcción de la sociedad, edited by Emilio del Río Sanz, María del Carmen Ruiz de la Cierva, and Tomás Albaladejo, 591–604. Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos. ———. 2013. Introduction to Muñoz Molina 2013. obtained his BA in English Philology and his PhD from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is currently lecturer in Contemporary Literature, English Literature, and English at the Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, and member of the research group C [P y R] (Communication, poetics and rhetoric) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is currently a member of the METAPHORA project and has been a member of a previous research project on Cultural Rhetoric. His research interests include comparative literature, rhetoric, and literary translation. 

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translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15532

Abstract: Holocaust survivor testimonies are frequently read, explored, and interpreted in English translation—that is, beyond their original linguistic, temporal, and cultural points of telling. And yet only meager attention has been paid to the epistemological and ethical implications of translation as a mode of re-mediating Holocaust memory. Significant questions remain regarding the potentialities of translation, both positive and negative, for shaping the way in which readers come to know about, and respond to, the lived experiences of the survivors. Specifically, this article hopes to encourage more sustained and critical thinking about the decisive and moral role of the translator as a secondary witness, “one who listens to the testimony with empathy and helps to record, store and transmit it” (Assmann 2006, 9). The article presents a case study of two acts of secondary witnessing which re-mediate the experiences of French female deportees into English: Barbara Mellor’s translation of Agnès Humbert’s (1946) Notre guerre, published in 2008 as Résistance, and Margaret S. Summers’s translation of Micheline Maurel’s (1957) Un camp très ordinaire, published in 1958 as An Ordinary Camp. Attention will be paid to how the translators have listened to and re-mediated the experiences of the survivors for a new readership, while the sociocultural contexts of and influences on these acts of secondary witnessing will also be considered. Introduction Translating the written memory of an individual into another language and culture entails a twofold act of perpetuation; first, the lived experiences of that individual are recorded in an additional repository and are then carried beyond the immediate borders of the original telling. Yet, in order that this perpetuation might be realized through translation, the particular threads of memory which constitute the original narrative— whether in the form of autobiography, memoir, diary or testimony—are necessarily reworked by the hands of another, by a translator who, in most instances, has no direct connection with the remembered events or emotions.1 The warp and weft of the initial act of memory may subsequently emerge intact, preserved by translation to bear enduring and accurate witness to the life of the individual; alternatively, it may not withstand the process, becoming distorted in its appearance, texture or purpose once reconstructed in another setting. This article sets out to identify and critically examine the role of the translator in the transmission of individual memory within the specific context of survivor accounts of the Holocaust. In this respect, any exploration of how the translator re-mediates life in the camps must be fully mindful of the unique representational, epistemological and ethical complexities that can beset attempts to tell and retell those stories of suffering and survival. Many Holocaust narratives are marked by a tension between the (communicative, commemorative, and often cathartic) need to commit lived experience to writing and the aridity of words whose capacity to tell withers before the sheer horror of the events they venture to describe. The complexities of representation may be compounded further by the contingencies of memory, which can fade but also sharpen with the passing of time.2 In turn, the translator of the Holocaust narrative is potentially brought into an encounter with a text that is, deliberately or otherwise, halting, uneven; a text that may attempt to lay bare some or all of the concentrationary universe, and in so doing, charge itself with a particular moral burden to remember, to understand, or indeed to resist any such understanding. How the translator 1 A notable exception to this distance between the one who remembers and the one who translates can, of course, be found in the phenomenon of self-translation. The conflation of these two positions necessarily raises an alternative set of questions to the ones I address here. 2 Contrary to the antinarrative stance adopted by literary theorists such as Cathy Caruth (1996), scientific studies have shown that traumatic experiences are recoverable and representable, as opposed to repressed and unspeakable. As is noted by Beverley R. King in 21st Century Psychology: A Reference Handbook, “Overwhelmingly, the research supports the trauma superiority argument—memories for stressful experiences are not easily forgotten, especially the central details of the events” (2009, 452). For further criticism of Caruth, see Ruth Leys (2000), and Wulf Kansteiner and Harald Weilnböck (2008). responds to such complexities will be considered in reference to the concept of the secondary witness, 3 defined by Geoffrey Hartman as someone who “provides a witness for the witness, [and] actively receives words that reflect the darkness of the event” (1998, 48). It is precisely the nature and extent of the translator’s act of receiving that will be considered in the case study below, always heedful of what Colin Davis terms the “insidious dangers inherent in secondary witnessing” (2011, 20) which threaten to belie the experiences, pain and otherness of the Holocaust survivor. For the manner in which the translator serves as secondary witness will ultimately determine whether the target language reader has a window onto past events that is as broad or narrow, as transparent or opaque, as whole or fragmented, as the one originally offered by the survivor. The present case study centers on two remarkable French testimonies of life in and liberation from the Nazi labor camps for women. Agnès Humbert’s Notre guerre: Journal de Résistance 1940–1945 was published in the immediate aftermath of World War II in 1946; it begins with the art historian’s diary entries which record her early involvement in the French Resistance movement and then proceeds to a retrospective account of her arrest and internment in the Parisian prisons of Cherche-Midi, La Santé, and Fresnes, her subsequent deportation to the German forced labor camps of Krefeld- Anrath, Hövelhof and Schwelm, and her eventual liberation from the town of Wanfried. Micheline Maurel, a literary scholar, was also arrested for Resistance activities, and her testimony, Un camp très ordinaire, appeared in 1957. In her work, Maurel documents her experiences of daily life and hardship in the Neubrandenburg labor camp, a satellite of the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women, as well as her difficult return home following liberation. These accounts will be brought into relief with their English translations— respectively, Résistance: Memoirs of Occupied France translated by Barbara Mellor (2008) and Ravensbrück by Margaret S. Summers (1958)4—as a means of establishing how these translators have served as witnesses to the survivors, while 3 This present study follows on from my 2013 work in which I also draw on secondary witnessing to scrutinize the English translation of Robert Antelme’s (1947) L’espèce humaine. 4 Page references will here be given to the UK edition published in 1958 by Digit Books, an imprint of Brown Watson. See reference list for an overview of all available UK and US editions. also recognizing that the translator is not the sole agent responsible for the way in which these individual memories have been transmitted. The decision to explore these two particular female survivor accounts has been made in light Margaret-Anne Hutton’s observation that “French women deported to Nazi concentration and death camps […] have, as yet, received little to no critical attention” (2005, 2), in Holocaust studies or elsewhere. With the exception perhaps of Charlotte Delbo, analytical focus has tended to fall on male memories and narratives of life in the camps; this case study can thus be read as an attempt to bring two marginalized, eclipsed voices of female survivors further to the fore. In more general terms, the article can also be seen as a contribution towards a burgeoning body of work by scholars who situate themselves at the intersection between Translation Studies and Holocaust Studies in order to better understand how the linguistic and cultural dynamics of translation have shaped the transmission and reception of Holocaust writing. Susan Suleiman observes in 1996 that “[w ]hile students of Holocaust literature are keenly aware of problems of language and representation, they have paid surprisingly little attention to a problem one might call representing—or remembering, or memorializing—the Holocaust in translation” (1996, 640). Almost a decade later, and that much needed critical attention is beginning to emerge in revelatory studies, underpinned by comparative textual and cultural analyses across a range of language pairs and genres. Of particular note is the work of Jean Boase-Beier who approaches the poetry of Paul Celan from the dual and ethically engaged position of researcher and translator; she argues (2014) that reading a Holocaust poem for translation entails a more penetrating, exacting encounter with the silences, ambiguities, and tensions of the original and maintains (2011) that these potent features must be retained in the translation where they might be perceived and interpreted by the new reader. Conversely, Peter Davies adopts a decisively descriptive approach to the translations of Borowski (2008), Wiesel (2011), and Höß (2014) to frame textual and paratextual decisions in terms of the status and function of Holocaust testimony in the target culture, and in reference to target language reader expectations. A recent special edition of Translation and Literature (2014) on “Holocaust Testimony and Translation,” edited by Davies, further signals the upsurge in interest in questions of how, why and to what effect Holocaust writing travels in translation. In addition to Boase-Beier’s (2014) work mentioned above, specific cases in point are Sue Vice’s (2014) examination of how reading false Holocaust testimonies in translation can lay bare their constructedness, as well as Angela Kershaw’s (2014) exploration of how translation can restrict and release the complex network of intertextual references in French Holocaust fiction. Also of interest is Kershaw’s (2013) detailed examination on how translated Holocaust fiction is marketed and received within Britain’s literary landscape. More broadly, Bella Brodzki (2007) understands translation as a trope for the textual reconstruction and transmission of memory, dedicating a chapter of Can These Bones Live to the connections between memorializing, mourning, and translation in the writing of Jorge Semprùn. These studies unarguably serve to provide a more detailed and nuanced picture of the various ways in which translation functions as a mode of reinscribing and imparting Holocaust memory. In turn, this article endeavors to illustrate the strategies on which the mediation and reception of the two translated French testimonies are premised, supplementing thus the existing body of work in an empirical sense and proposing the figure of the secondary witness as a framework for better understanding the responsibility of the translator of first hand Holocaust accounts. Secondary witnessing in translation The notion of secondary witnessing can be traced back to the establishment of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies for which over 4,400 eye-witness accounts were recorded on videotape. One of the co-founders of the project, psychoanalyst Dori Laub, has reflected critically on his role as an interviewer, or “the immediate receiver of these testimonies” (1991, 76). He frames his position in relation to the survivor as “a companion on the eerie journey of the testimony. As an interviewer, I am present as someone who actually participates in the reliving and reexperiencing of the event” (1991, 76). Such companionship and participation is a decisive factor in the very elicitation of the testimony; the interviewer bears witness to the witness and, in so doing, becomes an auxiliary to the telling of the story, a secondary witness. Accordingly, an ethical onus is placed on the secondary witness; as Thomas Trezise puts it: The general lesson Laub draws from his intervention is that the listener actively contributes, for better or for worse, to the construction of testimonial narrative, that the receiving is analogous to the giving of testimony insofar as it involves a process of selection and omission, attention and inattention, highlighting and overshadowing, for which the listener remains responsible. (2013, 19) The translator of the Holocaust testimony can likewise be placed in this position of receiving and responsibility. Although the dialogic immediacy that characterizes the relationship between the survivor–witness and interviewer–secondary witness on tape is, in many cases, no longer tenable in the context of translation,5 it is nevertheless the case that the translator is a present and operative force in the bringing forth of the testimony in another language, as well as in its journey to another time and place. It is the translator who first participates in shaping the contours of the account, and only then can its content be repackaged and transmitted to a subsequent, broader audience in the target culture. The role of any secondary witness is a demanding and a complex one which entreats the listener to hear affectively and exactingly: “The listener has to feel the victim’s victories, defeats and silences, know them from within, so that they can assume the form of testimony” (Laub 1992, 58). At the same time, the secondary witness is called to be mindful of this attempt to feel and know the survivor, so as to preclude any collapse of the distinction between the two subject positions. Hartman expresses the dilemma of the secondary (or what he terms ‘intellectual’) witness as follows: “Every identification approaches over-identification and leads to a personifying and then appropriation of the identity of others. The distance between the self and other is violated and the possibility of 5 The retranslation of Wiesel’s La nuit by his wife in 2006 is a rare example of proximity between survivor and translator. intellectual witness aborted” (1998, 4). In order to avert such a failure, secondary witnessing must be predicated instead on the core value of empathy, an empathy which pertains in all contexts of the act. In the case of the historian as secondary witness, Dominick LaCapra insists on an ethically desirable form of empathy that “involves not full identification but what might be termed empathic unsettlement in the face of traumatic limit events” (2001, 102). Likewise, memory studies scholars Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer contend that the secondary witness “must allow the testimony to move, haunt and endanger her; she must allow it to inhabit her, without appropriating or owning it” (2010, 402). As I have argued elsewhere (Deane-Cox 2013), this empathic mode of bearing witness to the witness must also extend to the context of translation. However, the risk of crossing the threshold from empathy into over-identification is stronger here still given the appropriative thrust of translation and the subjective filter of the translator who may “feed [their] own beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and so on into [their] processing of texts, so that any translation will, to some extent, reflect the translator’s own mental and cultural outlook” (Hatim and Mason 1990, 11). If the translator of the Holocaust testimony is to serve as a secondary witness, as “the blank screen on which the event comes to be inscribed for the first time” (Laub 1992, 57), here in a new linguistic, cultural and temporal setting, then he or she must strive to engage empathically with that telling and to respect the distance that separates him or herself from the survivor. Otherwise, the testi- mony is at danger of being overwritten by the assumptions and the excesses (hearing too much) or insufficiencies (hearing too little or inaccurately) of the translator, at which point the testimony will cease to function as such. However, participation in the communicative exchange is not restricted to the witness and the secondary witness alone, for the account that emerges from this encounter can also be heard by additional audiences and used to different ends. Although Laub does not address this point explicitly in his work, Trezise sees there a “suggest[ion] that the reception of the Holocaust survivor testimony requires not only attending to the voices of witnesses while remaining aware of one’s own, but also attending, with equal self-awareness, to the voices of other listeners” (2013, 9). And within the paradigm of the translator as secondary witness, those other listeners are the translation readers as well as other interested parties such as literary agents, publishers and editors, their presence and needs positioning the translator, once again, in that familiar continuum bounded by source and target concerns. Or, as Francis Jones writes, “the call to the primary other (the source-writer or source-culture) must be tempered by a constant awareness of ‘the other other’” (2004, 723). Referring here to his experiences of translating literary texts against the backdrop of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, Jones clearly foregrounds the dual obligation of the translator whose loyalty towards the source text writer is in ever-present negotiation with the differentiated social, ethical, ideological, aesthetic, economic etc. goals of these “other others.” In this respect, the loyalty of the translator as secondary witness can never be wholly and exclusively be ascribed to the Holocaust survivor; there are no unique circumstances which might allow the translator of any published target text to stand outside the communicative context in which he or she operates. Such a position is doubtless implausible. But the impossibility of absolute loyalty does not exclude the very real possibility of privileging the original survivor’s account, of listening attentively despite, or even in the face of, the demands of other parties. For the translator is never an impartial mediator, situated squarely between source and target values; to think otherwise, according to Maria Tymozcko, leads to “the evisceration of the agency of the translator as a committed, engaged and responsible figure” (2007, 7). Indeed, the translator as secondary witness who purposely decides that their first and foremost obligation is to the survivor becomes the very embodiment of a translator as an ethically motivated agent. At the same time, this agency functions to dispel the similarly restrictive idea that translators are irrevocably beholden to the norms and expectations of the target culture. Of course, there may be implications for translation decisions that fall outside of established conventions and values; non- publication, censorship and poor sales are amongst the most obvious. But there is also a danger in overemphasizing the influence exerted by the target culture norms in the translation process. Siobhan Brownlie (2007, 155–157) has argued that adopting a broad normative approach has its blind spots since the specific motivations behind the decision to translate can vary from one text to the next, translation strategies may fluctuate within a given text, and there is often no neat concurrence between distinct norms and distinct time periods given the potential of norms to coexist, reappear or be challenged at any moment. In other words, the engaged translator will necessarily take the wider cultural context into consideration, but will proceed in accordance with their own agenda, be that in line with or in opposition to supposed prevailing norms. In her work Disappearing Traces: Holocaust Testimo- nials, Ethics and Aesthetics, Dorota Glowacka (2012) also gestures towards translation as an ethically charged act of bearing witness, where translation is understood to function on various levels in Holocaust testimonial writing: the original witness translates the self from past to present and often across multilingual contexts, while subsequent interlingual translations are framed in Levinasian terms as “a response to the summons from another language, the language of the other” (2012, 94). Glowacka also proceeds from the premise that the events of the Holocaust exist in the realm of the unspeakable, so that any act of witnessing will be suffused with communicative loss. Nevertheless, Walter Benjamin’s concept of “pure language” is proposed as restorative mode of telling; specifically, Glowacka suggests that the call of the other can be answered across Babelian disunities of language by means of translation that initiates “linguistic complementation” (Benjamin 2000, 21), namely the blending and synthesis of source and target languages that culminates in pure language. For Glowacka, a translation that responds ethically to the other is one that draws on multiple linguistic repertoires in order to transmit and ensure the survival of the testimony; only then can it transcend the limitations of the monolingual utterance. However, while this view of translation certainly calls attention to the responsibility of the interlingual translator in the witnessing process, numerous tensions arise if pure language is pressed into the service of concrete textual communication. First, the concept of pure language is an abstract one whose end goal is the elevation of language itself to an always distant point where language “no longer means or expresses anything but is […] that which is meant in all languages” (Benjamin 2000, 22). It is a matter of form alone, and its realization through translation “ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the innermost relationship of languages to one another” (2000, 17). Conversely, the translation of content is considered by Benjamin to be a redundant task: “any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential” (2000, 15). On the one hand, this conceptualization fits with discourses of unspeakability and trauma—the very act of telling, the manner in which it is told, is more important than what is told. But on the other, it is difficult to reconcile this stance with the demands of secondary witnessing: how will the referential function of a testimony endure if the task of the translator is to invariably defer meanings? And how will the relationship between the original and secondary witness be sustained if precedence is given to the relationship between languages? James E. Young cautions against an exclusive emphasis on poetics in Holocaust narratives: “By seeming to emphasize the ways we know the Holocaust to the apparent exclusion of the realities themselves, critics threaten to make the mere form of study their content as well” (1988, 3). This warning is particularly pertinent in the context of pure language which would seem to offer all but a restricted, abstruse mode of secondary witnessing; a mode that neglects the facts (as understood by the survivors) of existence and suffering, and one that certainly eschews over-identifi- cation, but does so by promoting the linguistic over and above the human. When we move from the abstract to the concrete to consider Benjamin’s proposal of literal translation strategies as a means of approaching pure language, obstacles to secondary witnessing are still discernible. According to Glowacka, Benjamin’s literalness will instigate a process whereby “native words are transformed from an inscription of belonging into the mark of strangeness” (2012, 99), and the translated testimony reader is forcefully confronted with and called to respond to the (multi)linguistic and experiential alterity of the other. The claim that translation, as a signal of difference, “can potentially stand guard against linguistic ethnonationalism, remaining vigilant against the sedimentation of words into tools of oppression, exclusion and discrimination” (2012, 99) strongly echoes Lawrence Venuti’s claim that foreignization “can be a form of resistance against ethnocentrism and racism, cultural narcissism and imperialism” (1995, 20). But, although foreignizing translation can be revelatory and responsive to the needs of the other, it can also conceal under the weight of its impenetrability: as Tymoczko questions, “how do we distinguish resistant translations from translations that are unreadable?” (2000, 37). The danger here is that the reader finds nothing on which to hinge their reading and response, thereby rendering translation if not ineffectual as a mode of address, then at least diminished in what Glowacka regards as its “potential to create communities of speakers” (2012, 101). So, while Glowacka is right to insist on the ethical responsibility of the translator to preserve and transmit survivor testimonies, neither pure language nor its textualization as literal translation are perhaps the most enduring bridges across the divide between the other and the other other. Instead, the translator who serves as an ethically committed secondary witness is one who listens astutely and empathically to the survivor’s story, giving primacy to its preservation and not to any lofty ideas of pure language or the assumed demands of a target culture, all the while aware that some concessions must be made in the name of accessibility. Admittedly, though, discussions of the secondary witness have predominantly remained notional and detached from empirical practice. The following case studies will therefore direct attention towards more applied considerations of secondary witnessing in order to explore the implications of actual textual translation decisions, while also attempting to discern the extent to which pressure has been exerted by external factors. Given the ethical dimension of secondary witnessing, the comparisons between source and target testimonies will be openly evaluative. In this sense, my analytical stance is informed by Phil Goodwin who has challenged the displacement of ethical questions in translation by technical labels such as “free” or “literal,” “foreignizing” or “domesticating”; one of his aims is “to remind us that translation always takes place within a human context” (2010, 23) and, consequently, that it is “almost wilfully absurd to view the translation question in these circumstances as a purely technical one” (2010, 24). By consciously moving beyond the realm of objective description, the question of translation as secondary witnessing can thus be fully foregrounded as an ethical one. The stakes are high; the translator has a clear responsibility towards the Holocaust survivor, and, whether they have a conscious awareness of this obligation or not, the ways in which the translator (dis)continues the original act of witnessing merit a critical and a vigilant approach. Humbert and Maurel: translated experiences How have the translators of Humbert and Maurel engaged with the survivors’ stories and how have their translation decisions impacted on the process of secondary witnessing? Before turning to the analysis itself, it is worth briefly underscoring a basic premise of this study, namely that, although written accounts of the Holocaust may have been borne of an onerous struggle with language, such accounts should not be placed under the sign of the ineffable. This is not to deny the extremity of the events, but rather to acknowledge the efforts that witnesses have made to put their lived experiences into words. Accordingly, both content and form are fundamental to the transmission of survivor memory; neither can be omitted from the analytical approach. First, while there may be some slippage between lived experiences and their verbal representations, this should not undermine the potential of words to tell or to record. As Pascaline Lefort argues, “the existence of testimonies shows that the camp survivors [. . .] have successfully dealt with the unspeakable, moved beyond its limitations” (2012, 585, my translation), while Zoë Waxman likewise affirms that “[l]anguage may not be adequate to convey the horrors of the Holocaust, but this does not mean that nothing can be said” (2006, 175). In short, saying something is understood as the counterpoint to ineffability. Secondly, the form of that saying is also central to renouncing silence. Although Young’s (1988, 3) previously discussed warning against an exclusive focus on form is to be heeded, it would be equally restrictive to dismiss the revelatory function of poetics in Holocaust accounts, since, as Margaret-Anne Hutton contends, “such literary and rhetorical traits can be seen to function as aids to communication” (2005, 69). So, if the form and content of words have been simultaneously charged with the task of communication by the original witness, then the secondary witness is compelled to uphold and preserve those referential and aesthetic dimensions. The examples below will thus consider how and to what effect the translators have responded to the communicative efforts of Humbert and Maurel. On irony One of the most striking narrative features of the testimonies of both Maurel and Humbert is the way in which they draw on irony, verging on dark humor, in order to record their physical experiences and to signal their resistant stances in the face of such suffering. Referring to its use in Holocaust testimonies, Hutton has noted that “irony, as a non-literal mode, requires the reader to decode the unspoken message. When and if these conditions are met, a powerful bond based on what remains unsaid is created, and communication is intensified” (2005, 84). But for the reader of the translated testimony, this potential bond already hinges on an act of decoding, or hearing the unsaid, as carried out by the translator. Critically, if the translator does not pay sufficient heed to irony, then the voice of the survivor and the adverse conditions of which they speak risk being submerged in translation, which would mark a collapse of secondary witnessing. Maurel’s account is, from time to time, accentuated by litotic observations that are caustically delivered in a single sentence. Indeed, a good number of these have been heard and reinscribed in the English versions by her translator, Summers. Accordingly, where Maurel downplays her brutal treatment at the hands of the guards by remarking that “Il est apparu très vite que j’avais une tête à claques” (1957, 49), this sardonic tone is preserved in the translation as “It soon became apparent that my head invited blows” (1958, 39). And where Maurel declares that “C’est à cause de [Frau Schuppe] en grande partie que les Françaises mouraient si bien” (1957, 87), the mordant inflection is paralleled in English, where the reader learns that “It was mainly because of her that the French were dying in such satisfactory numbers” (1958, 71). By preserving Maurel’s irony, Summers offers the translation readers an insight into both the daily threat of punishment and death in the camps, as well as the survivor’s defiance in the face of such hardship. But certain restrictions seem to have been placed on the transfer of irony that is self-deprecating or particularly sensitive. In the first instance, Maurel, reflecting on her physical and emotional dishevelment, comments that “Nous devions être si ridicules à voir [We must have been such a ridiculous sight]” (1957, 81–82);6 in contrast, the translation lessens the derision in its more neutral estimation that “we must have presented an incongruous sight” (1958, 66). Secondly, Maurel is scathing in her critique of the unthinking way in which people responded to her return to France. The question most frequently posed to the survivor was whether she had been raped, leading her to react as follows: “Finalement, je regrettais d’avoir évité cela. J’avais manqué par ma faute une partie de l’aventure, et cela décevait le public. Heureusement que je pouvais au moins raconter le viol des autres [I came to regret having avoided that. Through fault of my own, I had missed out on a part of the adventure, and that disappointed the public. Fortunately, I could at least tell them about the rape of others]” (1957, 185). Although Summers retains the ironic sense of regret expressed by Maurel, a few telling attenuations of the full force of the irony occur in the translation. The survivor’s wry self-blame is first limited by the shift from the original active construction of “having avoided” rape to a much more passive state in which she “regretted having been spared this” (1958, 154, italics mine). Secondly, a tentative adverb is added to the passage: “Seemingly, by my own fault, I had missed one part of the adventure” (1958, 154, italics mine) which detracts once again from the sardonic notion that she is guilty by deliberate omission. In addition, the discordantly positive “Fortunately” of the original is replaced by a concessive adverb in the statement that “However, I could at least tell them of the rape of others” (1958, 154), which has the potential to be read in a more straightforward manner. 6 All back translations in square brackets are mine and they serve two purposes: as normal, they allow non-French speaking readers access to the original, but they also demonstrate that a more attentive translation is possible.  Perhaps these changes were motivated by a sense of probity on the part of the translator, but this lessening of Maurel’s irony effectively dampens a form of communication that the survivor relied on as both a means of communicating and of coping. Indeed, the cumulative effect of this strategy can be read in the Kirkus Review which describes the translation in the following terms: “More as a reminder, than as recrimination, this sensitive and softspoken memoir patterns the days spent over a period of two years in the concentration camp of Neubrandenburg” (n.d.). But the original is scathing, bold, outspoken. The review thus points to the potential of translation to fundamentally alter the tone of a given testimony. The piercing use of irony comes even further to the fore in Humbert’s writing, extending over entire passages. By way of illustration, Humbert describes the harmful and humiliating effects of working with acid in the rayon factory as follows: J’ai passé l’âge des costumes genre Folies-Bergère. L’acide brûle naturellement non pas seulement notre peau, mais il brûle aussi le tissu de notre uniforme. Chaque goutte fait un trou… plusieurs petits trous réunis en font un grand. […] Je fais voir à la gardienne que j’ai maintenant le sein gauche à l’air… elle a refusé de me faire donner une autre chemise, refusé une aiguillée de fil, refusé une épingle, il faudra que je travaille le sein à l’air ! [I’m past the age of wearing Folies-Bergère style costumes. Of course, the acid doesn’t just burn our skin, it burns the fabric of our uniform too. Each drop makes a hole… several small holes join up and make a large one. […] I let the female guard see that my left breast is hanging out now… she has refused to let me have another shirt, refused a needle and thread, refused a pin, I’ll just have to work with my breast hanging out!] (1946, 217) Although the translation starts off by capturing Humbert’s glib tone in the statement that “I really do believe I am too old for this Folies-Bergère lark” (2008, 161), the remainder of the episode is conveyed in a more dispassionate manner which conceals the original flippancy: The acid burns holes not only in our skin, but also, naturally, in our uniforms. Every drop makes a hole, and the little holes join up to make big holes. […] I have shown the wardress how my left breast is now on view.  She has refused to let me have a new shirt, a needle and thread, or a pin, declaring that I’ll just have to work as I am. (2008, 161) The comparative reduction in irony stems first from the shift in register from the irreverent allusion to “le sein à l’air,” her breast hanging out, to the more factual statement that “my left breast is now on view.” Mellor’s translation also neglects to repeat the phrase at the end of the passage and to retain the exclamation mark, thereby eliding the dry humor and self- ridicule of the original interjection. Another significant alteration comes at the same point in the translation with the introduction of reported speech as signaled by the verb “declaring.” So, whereas the free indirect speech of the original echoes Humbert’s attempt to make light of her deplorable work conditions, the translation effectively takes the words from the survivor’s mouth and reattributes them to the female guard. This is a move that strips Humbert’s words of the power to resist her inhumane treatment at the hands of the one who now speaks in her place. Also suppressed in this passage is Humbert’s use of aposiopesis whereby the unfinished sentences silently, but deliberately, communicate the frustrating impossibility of her situation. The translation reader is thus no longer called on to sense the futility that lies in these discontinuities, which in turn detracts from Humbert’s ironic treatment of the scene. In point of fact, the use of irony is diminished elsewhere in the translation through the reduction in or omission of exclamation points and ellipsis; such is the case, for example, in Humbert’s account of an underwear inspection (1946, 180; 2008, 130) and the shared drinking bowl (1946, 184-5; 2008, 134). The examples above reveal that, in some instances at least, the irony of both Maurel and Humbert has been palpably conveyed to the translation reader. At the same time, however, where the tone of that irony is neutralized, misappropriated, or its typographic markers discarded, the reader will be left with less immediate and identifiable clues on which to base their interpretation. If the irony should cease to function as such, then the critical and unyielding voice of the survivor is also submerged by and in translation, marking thus a collapse of secondary witnessing. On narrative time Lawrence Langer draws a fundamental distinction between the linear movement of “chronological time” and the more oblique dynamics of “durational time” in Holocaust testimonies, where the latter “relentlessly stalks the memory of the witness, imprinting there moments immune to the ebb and flow of chronological time” (1995, 22). This durational past does make its haunting presence felt in the accounts of Maurel and Humbert, albeit in different ways, with both survivors slipping between and across temporal perspectives in their shifting use of tense. The translator as secondary witness is then called on to listen attentively to the subtleties and significances of how the past is retold in the present of the survivor. The passage in which Maurel recounts her arrival and processing at Ravensbrück is a revelatory example of how tense and aspect can serve to unsettle the narrative and point towards the abiding anguish of the survivor. It opens with alternating moves between narration in an imperfect tense that intimates the horrifyingly unending nature of the ordeal for the survivor and the use of the infinitive, an impersonal and timeless form that reverberates with the inhumanity and ubiquity of the guards’ orders. This sequence is followed by a sudden shift to the present tense, heavy with the weight of inescapable immediacy and dread, while the subsequent use of the perfect tense situates the survivor in the close aftermath of the event to convey a transitory moment of reprieve: Les choses se passaient vite derrière les portes. Déposer les valises, se déshabiller en vitesse; on vous arrachait les vêtements à mesure. Se coucher sur une table, où une femme vous maintenait pendant qu’une autre explorait du doigt tous vous orifices naturels. S’asseoir sur un tabouret pour être tondue. Une main fourrage dans mes cheveux. Je n’ai pas été tondue cette fois. [Things were happening quickly behind the doors. Put down the suitcases, quickly get undressed; your clothes were being snatched away as you went along. Lie on a table where a women was holding you down while another was exploring all your natural orifices with a finger. Sit on a stool to be shorn. A hand rummages through my hair. I have not been shorn this time.] (Maurel 1957: 18, emphasis mine)  The translated narrative undergoes an aspectual reframe- ing that obscures the inescapable, interminable and durational thrust of the time to which these temporal manoeuvres attest in the original. Maurel’s arrival at the camp has been wholly recast by the translator in a simple past that dissembles the difficult relationship between the survivor and the lived experience: Things happened fast behind those doors: a moment to set the bags down, to undress quickly, hastened on by hands that reached out to tear the clothing off; a moment to lie on a table, where one woman held us down while another passed an exploring finger into all our natural orifices; a moment to sit on a stool to have our hair cut off. A hand rumpled my hair, but on this occasion I was not shorn. (1958, 13, emphasis mine) The elision of the present tense marks, above all, a breach of attentiveness on the part of the translator as it fails to herald what Oren Stier has termed “the palpable presence of the past […] [that] disrupts the space-time of the survivor” (2003, 87). But the use of the imperfect tense has also been passed over in the translation, leaving little indication that Maurel found herself suspended in the dreadful moments she described, while the replacement of the infinitive imperatives with the temporal phrase “a moment to” further masks the threatening persistence of the guards’ orders. Although objective details about Maurel’s arrival at the camp remain, the translation reader can no longer discern the more subjective painful blurring of temporal boundaries enacted by the survivor, and the appropriation of the narrative flow into one of chronological time therefore blunts the act of secondary witnessing. The use of the present tense in Holocaust writing is widely held to be a narrative marker of trauma. As Anne Whitehead explains, “This method of narration emphasizes the traumatic nature of the memories described, which are not so much remembered as re-experienced or relived” (2004, 35). However, an altogether different dynamic emerges from the writing of Humbert; her account begins with the diary entries made in the months prior to her arrest, and her ensuing experiences of imprisonment and deportation are also recounted in this immediate narrative style of the diarist. In his afterword to Mellor’s translation, Julien Blanc writes that Humbert “was consistent in using the present tense throughout” (2008: 275), but this statement is only partly true. On the one hand, the use of the present tense is undeniably frequent, signalling less the steely grip of durational time on the survivor, and more her own lucid control over chronological time. On the other hand, though, Humbert’s work does bear the traces of tense switching, from this dominant use of the present tense that speaks of resistance and strength to a sparing, but nevertheless compelling, use of the past tense that speaks too, in its own way, of defiance and escape. The following example is telling in its understated shift from the immediacy of the present to the completedness of the perfect tense, transitioning through free indirect speech back to the present in an episode that details the survivor’s increased suffering due to acid burns and her descent into the confines of the cellar where prisoners supposedly had the opportunity to convalesce. Humbert writes: Mes mains me font autant souffrir que les yeux ; j’ai connu, car j’étais seule à la cave, la signification de cette locution, « se taper la tête contre le mur » ; oui, j’ai tapé ma tête contre le mur, et puis je me suis reprise. [. . .] Pour mes mains, il faudrait des pansements humides, oui, mais il n’y avait pas d’eau… Alors, essayons autre chose. J’urine sur mes malheureuses mains, les chiffons qui me servent de pansements sont imprégnés de pipi… [My hands are making me suffer as much as my eyes; because I was alone in the cellar I’ve known the meaning of this saying, ‘to bang your head against the wall’; yes, I’ve banged my head against the wall, and then I’ve pulled myself together again. […] For my hands, some damp bandages would be needed, yes, but there was no water… So, let’s try something else. I urinate on my pitiful hands, the rags that serve me as bandages are soaked in pee. . .] (1946, 252, emphasis mine) Here, the slippage into the use of the past perfect tense might be read as an attempt on the part of the survivor to contain her most unnerving memory of the event, marking it off as one concluded, isolated incident before she finds the determination once more to take charge of her situation. If durational time is indeed pursuing Humbert, she turns its trap on itself to restrict and defy its reach, distancing herself temporally and emotionally from this horrific moment. The return to the present tense indicates thus a return to resistance, a return that is further paralleled in Humbert’s flippant lexical choice and the dry humor of her ellipsis. These fleeting, yet important, variations in narrative time are indiscernible in the translation, where the episode is retold consistently in the present tense: My hands are as agonizing as my eyes; finding myself alone in the cellar, I understand the true significance of the phrase “banging your head against a brick wall.” Yes, I bang my head against the wall. Then I pull myself together. […] What I need for my hands is damp dressings, but there is no water. So let’s try something else. I urinate on my wretched hands, soaking the rags that serve as dressings. (2008, 190, emphasis mine). The translator does not appear to have heard the undertones of defiance in Humbert’s singular step into the past; or, this move may have been ignored in a misled endeavor to unify the temporal aspect of the narrative. The result stands as a warning against the potential dangers of inattention and appropriation in secondary witnessing; the lack of aspectual contrast mitigates the force of Humbert’s renewed refusal to give up, while the omission of the ellipsis and self-deprecating tone once again hides the survivor’s tenacity in the face of suffering. On language For many prisoners, experience of the Nazi camps was also marked by a confrontation with and assimilation of the language of their German oppressors, but also the Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, to name but the predominant tongues, of their fellow prisoners. The result of this linguistic conflation was the emergence of a “Lagersprache,” a vernacular particular to the camps that was necessary for communication between the prisoners themselves, as well as between the guards and the prisoners. In her testimony, Humbert remarks that, rather than speak fluent German, “Je ne parle que ce charabia international, cet espéranto étrange que vingt million de déportés ont dû apprendre [I speak only this international gobbledygook, this strange esperanto that twenty million deportess have had to learn]” (1946, 296). Her narrative is interspersed with individual German words that resounded throughout her internment and served to shape her experience. Mellor retains, in large part, the echo of these discordant and often terrifying lexical items; by way of illustration, the English language reader is introduced to the concept of the “kommando” (2008, 115), to the “little coshes, known here as ‘gummi Knüppel’” (2008, 128, italics in the original), to the “Spinnerei, or rayon mill” (2008, 147, italics in the original) and to the markings, “G=Gefangene: convict” (2008, 148, italics in the original) on the prisoners’ work uniforms. Nevertheless, there are a few occasions on which the lexical specificity of the camps is subsumed into standard modes of expression by Mellor. First, Humbert’s observation that the food in the Ziegenhain prison is “acceptable, mais knap [sic]” (1946, 286, italics in the original), is simply remediated as “tolerable but scarce” (2008, 219), without any attempt to retain the German term. Consequently, the translation silences the linguistic hybridity and alterity of Humbert’s “strange Esperanto,” while simultaneously obscuring the misspelling (German: knapp) which attests to the survivor’s adequate but imperfect use of a German idiom, undoubtedly acquired as a result of constant food privations. In addition, the prisoners would often create new turns of phrase, or rework existing ones, to convey the extreme conditions of their existence. Such is the case when Humbert and her fellow inmates adapt an idiom to capture the caustic effects of working in the rayon factory: “Selon notre expression « mes yeux coulaient dans ma bouche »” [According to our expression, “my eyes were running in my mouth”] (1946, 245). The translation omits reference to the singularity of the expression and also undoes its distinctiveness, reverting instead to the recognizable idiom of “eyes streaming” (2008, 184). The reader is at once disallowed access to the extent of the suffering and the process of linguistic inventiveness that characterized life in the camps. Language too plays a prominent role in the testimony of Maurel which bears the traces of the German, Polish and Russian with which she came into contact. Summers’ transla- tion, in turn, demonstrates a keen sensitivity to these markers of otherness, preserving a vast array of German orders (Raus!; Schnell!; Aufstehen!), insults (Schweinehund; Schmutzstück), and the nomenclature that designates the reality of the camps (Revier; Verfügbar; Strafstehen; Kretze). Snatches of Russian and Polish are also to be heard in the translation, while verses of French poetry and song are retained in their original form and then followed by their interpretation in English. The preservation strategy is an effective one, serving to provide a distant reverberation of the Babelian disquiet that prevailed in the camps. It is only on the rare occasion that the non-translation is discontinued, that the real force of appropriation comes to the fore. Notably, this occurs when the German command “Achtung!” (1957, 50, italics in the original) is articulated in the translation as “Atten-shun!” (1958, 40). Instead of a German imperative, an order now rings out that suggests the diction of a stereotypical British sergeant major in an act of appropriation that closes the reader off from a distinguishing verbal feature of the camps. Of further linguistic significance is the process whereby Maurel and her companions “Frenchify” some of the camp vocabulary: “Nous avons transformé Kopftuch en « coiffe- tout », Schüssel en « jusselle », Nachtschicht en « narchiste », Schmutzstück en « schmoustique ». Et les brutes en uniforme qui nous surveillaient, les Aufseherinnen était pour nous les « officerines »” [We transformed Kopftuch/headscarf into “coiffe-tout,” Schüssel/bowl into “jusselle,” Nachtschicht/ nightshift into “narchiste,” Schmutzstück/piece of dirt into “schmoustique.” And the brutes in uniform who guarded us, the Aufseherinnen/female overseers were for us the “officerines”] (1957, 15, italics in the original). This assimilation of German words into a French pronunciation resonates with Reiter’s reflection that “The highest priority for concentration camp prisoners was to lessen the alien character of their experience. They were helped in this if they could name new things with their existing vocabulary and thus include them in the horizon of the familiar” (2000, 99). However, the significance of this use of language as survival has been overlooked by Summers who, in her translator’s preface, begins by explaining the etymology and pronunciation of “coiffe-tout,” “schmoustique,” and “officerine,” but then goes on to undermine the prevalence and dismiss the importance of the remaining terms, claiming: “Certain other words, like Schüssel, a bowl or basin, pronounced jusselle by the French, Nachtschicht, nightshift, which became narchiste, occur only once or twice in the French text and have been omitted in this translation for simplicity’s sake, though they might have added local colour” (1958, 10). This approach to the survivor’s own appropriation of the German words attests to a further act of appropriation on the part of the translator, one that fails to heed the importance of the re-naming process. For these words lend more than a touch of “local colour” to the depiction of life in the camps; they represent a strategy of survival and of resistance. Evidently, Summers has made the decision to privilege simplicity over complexity in order to facilitate a more fluid reading experience in English. In so doing, though, Summers also closes the reader off from the entangled linguistic landscape of the camps and from Maurel’s coping mechanism amidst the unfamiliar. At this point, the translation strategy stands as a barrier to secondary witnessing. On accuracy Survivor testimonies are generally not held to be reliable sources of fact given the reconstructive fallibility of memory and the alleged representational failings of words. As Aleida Assman has noted, “The survivors as witness do not, as a rule, add to our knowledge of factual history; their testimonies have, in fact, often proved inaccurate” (2006, 263). But this does not preclude the possibility that, at any moment in the telling, survivors can fully and precisely convey the kind of empirical, objective information valued by historians.7 Although it may reasonably be presumed that this latter type of information is more readily discernible and less problematic for the translator as secondary witness, the following example from Summers’ translation of Maurel’s testimony would suggest otherwise. At the beginning of her account, Maurel records that: Le convoi dont je faisais partie […] a été immatriculé à Ravensbrück sous les numéros 22.000. J’étais le numéro 22.410. Au bout d’un mois de quarantaine, le convoi des 22.000 a été envoyé à Neubrandebourg [The convey I was part of […] had been registered in Ravensbrück in the 7 For a discussion of how historians have rejected personal testimony on the basis of its supposed inaccuracies, see Laub 1992, 59–63.  22,000s. I was number 22,410. After a month in quarantine, the convoy of the 22,000s was sent to Neubrandenburg]” (1957, 13). As prisoners entered the concentration and work camps, they were assigned a matriculation number; for Maurel’s particular French convoy, registration began at the number 22,000 and her own number was 22,410. However, it becomes clear that Summers has misinterpreted this numerical information as in the English version we read that the convoy was “registered and given numbers. I was number 22,410. At the end of a month of quarantine, the 22,000-odd were sent to Neubrandenburg” (1958, 8, emphasis mine). Here, the number that assigns identity to the group—that is, the “convoy of the 22,000s”—has been misattributed by Summers to the size of the group. Nor is this erroneous tally an isolated occurrence, for the translator then reworks Maurel’s observations in Chapter Four in line with her own reckonings. Consequently, where Maurel documents that “En automne 1943 le camp de Neubrandebourg contenait environ 2.000 femmes [In the autumn of 1943 the Neubrandenburg camp contained around 2,000 women]” (1957, 38), that “le convoi des 22.000 était pourtant bien mélangé [the convoy of the 20,000s was nevertheless well mixed]” in terms of political and religious beliefs (ibid., 41) and that “nous étions 2.000 sur le terrain [there were 2,000 of us on the parade ground]” (ibid., 46), Summers purports that “the camp at Neubrandenburg contained approximately 22,000 women” (1958, 30), the French “numbered 2,000” (ibid., 32) and the camp was “22,000 strong on the parade ground” (ibid., 37). Whether the reversal of the numbers stems from a misplaced attempt on the part of the translator to “correct” an inferred inaccuracy can itself only be surmised. But it does seem as though Summers was not fully aware of the dehumanizing Nazi practice of replacing prisoner names with numbers. Nor does Summers appear to have an understanding of the camp classification system of colored markings. Following liberation, Maurel has her friend remake “mon numéro et mon triangle rouge [my number and my red triangle]” (1957: 171) in order to avoid being mistaken for a German; these items are stripped of their specificity and their personal resonance for Maurel in the translation as “a triangle and some numerals” (1958: 143). The implications of such an inattentive treatment of the serial numbers and statistics are such that, not only does Summers obscure the imposed identity of the convoy, but the capacity of the labor camp is also inflated well beyond its actual dimensions. In line with Maurel, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos places the number of female prisoners in Neubrandenburg at “almost 2,000 at the end of February 1944” (Strebel 2009, 1215); the translation thus runs the risk of misinforming its readership, and of giving ammunition to the Holocaust deniers who “are quick to seize upon errors and inaccuracies in witness accounts” (Hutton 2005, 33). Regrettably, the errors and inaccuracies in this case are all those of the translator; worse, they have made their way into both reviews and scholarship, as a result of which the misinformation becomes more broadly disseminated. In 1959, the Catholic Herald printed a review of Ravensbrück in which it is noted that at Neubrandenburg “some 22,000 women, including 2,000 French, were engaged in munition works” (1959, 3). The Kirkus Review similarly goes on to record that “Neubrandenburg numbered some 22,000 women” (n.d.) on the basis of the translation, while the entry for Maurel in The Jewish Holocaust: An Annotated Guide to Books in English also states that “Over 22,000 women were sent to Neubrandenburg during the war” (1995, 192). Of even more significance is Rochelle G. Saidel’s (2004) work, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Drawing explicitly on the English translation of Maurel’s account, Saidel challenges the statistics of another scholar as follows: “Morrison cites Maurel that there were two thousand women in the camp in late 1943, but she wrote there were twenty-two thousand women,” and she then refers the reader to An Ordinary Camp (the title under which the US edition was published) “regarding this discrepancy” (ibid., 250n. 12). Of course the unfortunate irony here is that the real discrepancy is to be found in the translation, not the original. In reference to Holocaust scholarship, Kuhiwczak notes that “large quantities of primary source material have been translated into English, and many conclusions have been drawn from texts read only in translation” (2007, 62). The above is a clear example of how translation can substantially (in both senses of the word) alter this interpretation of the camps that is presented to the translation receiver. And yet, in the face of such distortion, it is also important to bear in mind that translation has the potential to retransmit the accuracy and precision with which life in the camps has been reported in the original testimony. Such is the case in Mellor’s translation of Humbert’s account; although the survivor focuses less on the quantitative dimensions of the various camps to which she is sent, there is sustained evidence of a high degree of concordance between the details presented by the primary and secondary witnesses. Take for example the exactitude with which the classification system at Krefeld has been explained in the translation: “The Russian girls have a label sewn on their clothes, a little rectangle of blue material with the word ‘Ost’ in white” while the Polish women wear a “yellow lozenge with a dark-blue ‘P’” (2008, 132, italics in the original). Similarly, the complex mechanical process Humbert was forced to learn in the rayon factory has been recorded with careful adherence to the original telling, to reveal the torturous work of the spinner who, amongst other tasks, “grasps the filament in her left hand and, holding it between her index and middle fingers, takes it on to the glass wheel, follows it through and pulls it towards the funnel slightly” (2008, 153). There does appear to be one isolated instance in which Mellor has misheard the dynamics of life in the camps. The bartering (and theft) of commodities was widespread amongst prisoners, and Humbert recounts that “Mon amie Martha […] me promet, contre deux tartines, de me ravoir ma défroque [My friend Martha […] promises, in return for two slices of bread, to get my old rag back for me]” (1946, 204, italics mine). However, it would seem that Mellor has heard “entre” as opposed to “contre,” and thus reworks the situation into one where Martha “promises me between two slices of bread that she will get my old rag back” (2008, 150). Although evidence of the theft remains in the translation, one of the common and vital practices that shaped the (often and necessarily unscrupulous) relationship between prisoners has been obscured on the basis of a prepositional slip. Nevertheless, Mellor’s translation rigorously attends to the cruel physical realities of the labor camps as experienced by Humbert, thereby attesting to the re-presentational contingencies of interlingual secondary witnessing. Memory mediation in context It goes without saying that the translator is not the only figure involved in the transmission of the survivor’s account; when a translation appears, its packaging and intended audience are all shaped, to some degree, by context of production. By this token, the readership (the “other others”) that the translator as secondary witness reaches and their response to the testimony will be in large part be determined by the publisher, and not least by the ways in which the account is reframed by paratextual material. Although it is difficult to reconstruct a comprehensive account of all the editorial and contextual factors that have influenced the translations of Summers and Mellor, and therefore their reception, it is nevertheless possible to retrace some of the wider sociocultural and economic backdrop against which they appeared and offer some suggestions as to how the process of secondary witnessing is affected under such circumstances. Despite the parallels between the original testimonies of Humbert and Maurel in terms of referential content and style, the moment of publication and the paratextual presentation of the English translations differ widely. Whereas the translation of Maurel’s account is separated from its source text by just one year (i.e. 1957 to 1958), Humbert’s work does not appear in English until some sixty years after its publication in France (i.e. 1946 to 2008). This discrepancy may in part be explained by the dynamics of both the source and target cultures, and in particular by changes in the prevailing attitudes towards survivor accounts. To begin with Humbert’s Notre guerre, its appearance in France in 1946 came at a moment when the literary field was becoming (over-)saturated with testimonial writing from recently returned deportees. According to Damien Mannarion, the accounts which appear between 1944 and 1951 are not simply motivated by a desire to tell: “in this period when [the survivors] say “remember,” they are really addressing their contemporaries and not future generations, […] they want to denounce those responsible and see them condemned” (1998, 20, my translation). Given both the volume of published accounts and the contextual immediacy of their goals (acknowledgment of and justice for their sufferings), Humbert’s source text may well have been rendered invisible to British publishers or translators alike. Neither was there an expansive audience for any such translation in the target audience at that time. This is not to suggest that British readers were closed to accounts from the Nazi camps; on the contrary, the problem, as identified by David Cesarani, was one of a market flooded by very raw, disturbing writing, as a consequence of which readership began to dwindle: “Reading these memoirs and testimonies it is easy to understand why, by the end of the 1940s, the public turned away” (2012, 20). And so source and target conditions contrived to obscure Humbert’s work. But in France, a recovery of her writing was instigated by the publishing house Tallandier in 2004 when they issued a re- edition of Notre guerre, thereby introducing the survivor to a new, broader audience. The text’s journey was succinctly described by Daniel Rondeau, a journalist for L’Express, as follows: “out of sight for years, often quoted by historians, here is Notre guerre once again” (2004, n.p.). However, there seems to be no direct link between the appearance of the new French edition and the introduction of Humbert to English readers in translation, for this second recovery came about only when Mellor happened across the original 1946 edition on French ebay (Mellor, 2008, np.) and initiated the translation process herself. Likewise, the English version of Maurel’s Un camp très ordinaire appeared as a direct result of the translator. In this case, though, the link was of a more personal nature since Summers and Maurel shared a mutual acquaintance. According to a reviewer in The Vassar Chronicle: Mrs. Margaret Summers of the French Department has just completed a translation of AN ORDINARY CAMP by Micheline Maurel. […] Mrs. Summers became interested in this factual account of the author’s life in a German concentration camp through Mlle. Louisiene [Lucienne] Idoine, formerly of the Vassar French Department. Mlle. Idoine met Mlle. Maurel, the author of the original version at the German concentration camp of Ravenbruck [sic]. […] Mrs. Summers decided to undertake the translation  of Mlle. Maurel’s book, for she wanted people to know about these German camps. (1958, 3) The relatively quick appearance of the target text can thus be explained through the biographical circumstances of the translator, as well as her desire to raise awareness of Nazi atrocities. For even though the translation was published more than a ten years after the liberation of the camps, Anglo- American audiences would still not have been familiar then with the full scale and horror of the events we now know as the Holocaust.8 As Andy Pearce has argued, “We cannot speak of ‘Holocaust consciousness’ in the opening postwar decade or so no simply because the substantive concept of ‘the Holocaust’ did not yet exist, but because […] there remained considerable ignorance, ambiguity and variance” (2014, 12–13). Indeed, this rather patchy understanding is likely to have extended to Summers herself and may go some way to explaining some of her more problematic translation decisions, especially the treatment of the Lagersprache and matriculation numbers as discussed above. Events in the source culture may also have had a bearing on the appearance of Summers’ translation, for the prominence of Un camp très ordinaire was greatly enhanced by the involvement of François Mauriac who helped to secure its publication in 1957.9 Interest in survivor testimonies was on the wane in France at this time, and Mauriac felt a duty to remember “an abomination that the world has determined to forgot” (1957, 9, my translation). His presence as a preface writer inevitably lent weight and authority to the source text, and so, while Summers may have shared Mauriac’s ideological agenda, the additional symbolic and potential economic capital generated by his name would also have been appealing to Anglo-American publishers. Both Mellor and Summers then played integral roles in bringing the testimonies of Humbert and Maurel respectively to an English-speaking readership. But target culture publishers also made an undeniable contribution to this process of transmission, and a close examination of 8 The Eichmann trial is, at this point, still some years off. See Annette Wieviorka (2006) for a discussion of how the trial came to be a global watershed moment in Holocaust witnessing. 9 A year later, Mauriac would also help to bring about the publication of Elie Wiesel’s La nuit. editorial paratext can reveal some of their underlying motivations and agendas. What is instantly remarkable about Bloomsbury’s publication of Humbert’s account is the use of a modified title. Rather than adopt a literal translation of the original—that is, “Our War: Diary of Resistance 1940–1945,” the publisher has instead opted for Résistance: Memoirs of Occupied France. On the one hand, this alteration can perhaps be explained by the reticence, first, to retain a possessive marker that would jar in a new cultural setting, and secondly, to present the work as a diary when only parts of the work can be claimed as such. But on the other hand, the revised title introduces some misconstruals of its own; for the account is not restricted in scope to Humbert’s time in an occupied France, but rather, the greatest proportion of the work deals with her experiences as a deportee. Indeed, this discrepancy has been noted by historian Simon Kitson who remarks in his review of the translation that “the English title is slightly misleading. Whilst the author’s spirit of resistance is present throughout, almost two-thirds of the book is set in Nazi Germany” (2008, n.p.). Furthermore, the cover graphics which show two lovers on the banks of the Seine, with a barbed-wire barricade in the foreground, also accentuates an occupied Paris that figures only in the beginning of the memoir. It may well be the case that cynical ploys of marketing lie behind this repositioning of focus; it is perhaps no coincidence that the cover image in many respects mirrors that of Suite Française, the highly successful novel written by Holocaust victim Irène Némirovsky and published in English translation by Chatto and Windus in 2006. Likewise, the revised subtitle, “Memoirs of Occupied France” also suggests a thematic correlation with the latter. Rather than present the work on its own terms, the publisher may have skewed its title in line with market forces. However, within the covers of the translation, the reader is afforded an abundance of supporting editorial and allographic paratextual material, including a preface by writer William Boyd, photographic illustrations, an afterword by French historian Julien Leblanc (who provided the introduction to the French 2004 re-edition of the work), historical documents on the Resistance movement, and a bibliography for further reading. In contrast to, or perhaps as compensation for, the title of the work, this material ensures that the interested reader has the opportunity to arrive at a more informed understanding of Humbert’s experiences, her character and her writing style. The first UK edition of Maurel’s Un camp très ordinaire was published in 1958 by Digit Books (an imprint of Brown Watson publishers) under the tile Ravensbrück, leaving the Catholic Herald reviewer unable to answer the “mystery why it should have been misleadingly re-christened” (1959, 3). One possible reason may be that Ravensbrück was becoming more recognizable to Anglo-American readers as part of the Nazi apparatus. For example, in 1954 Lord Russell published his book The Scourge of the Swastika which “enjoyed immense commercial success” (Pearce 2014, 16) and contained details of Ravensbrück and sketches of the camp drawn by former inmate Violette Lecoq, meaning that knowledge of its deadly function was expanding. The book cover also makes the prominent claim that the work is “As Real as THE DIARY of ANNE FRANK…” (1958, emphasis in the original), thereby suggesting that the publishers were tapping into an existing market demand for Holocaust writing, especially given the bestselling success of the latter’s translation in 1952. But other factors suggest that interest in the work was being generated not along the lines of understanding, but of sensationalism. At the top of the cover is the quote from a Sunday Times reviewer that this is “a coarse, savage book.” Below this appears the bold and fallacious depiction of a voluptuous, perfectly coiffed, red-lipped prisoner who bears more than a passing resemblance to Vivian Leigh, gripping a barbed-wire fence, and dressed in a well-tailored, low-cut khaki dress. For Maurel’s work has found its way on to the list of a publisher who caters for an audience that enjoys tales of derring-do such as Jungle Pilot, Against the Gestapo and Conscript. Interestingly, writer Ken Worpole recalls his own experiences of Ravensbrück in his work on popular literature in Britain, placing it on a list of nineteen WWII-related titles (mostly written by men) that “were sold in millions and read in even larger numbers” (1983, 50). The popularity of these books appears to have been enormous, with Worpole claiming that “they were the staple reading diet of myself and my school peers, and the sales figures also suggest that they were the staple reading diet of the adult male British reading public, and, possibly, of a significant portion of the female reading public” (1983, 50–51). But Worpole also sounds a strong note of concern about the way in which the Digit Books edition has been visually presented to its readers, defining it “as part of the pornography of sadism” (1983, 64). There can be no doubt the cover sets out to titillate, not educate; it sells a sexualized image of the survivor, rather than depict the arduous, unrelenting conditions of her captivity. Worse still is the US edition issued by Belmont in 1958 whose cover page depicts a distressed, yet appealing, blond behind whom stands a menacing SS figure, whip in hand. The original title has also been eschewed in favor of The Slave, while the cover carries an extract from Maurel’s text (but wrongly attributed to Mauriac) that asks “Were you raped? Were you beaten? Were you tortured?” and in so doing, overtly fetishizes the testimony. Unquestionably, these two publishers are extreme in their misappropriation; other editions released in the US by Simon and Schuster (1958) under the title An Ordinary Camp and in the UK by Anthony Blond (1958) as Ravensbrück are more muted in their cover design, opting instead for a plain barbed-wire motif. Nevertheless, both Digit Books and Belmont serve as an example of how publishers are positioned as initial gatekeepers to the survivor’s story, attracting a particular type of reader seeking action or cheap thrills. If Mauriac was troubled about forgetting in the source culture in the 1950s, there are parallel concerns to be raised in the target culture about the dubious ways in which the Holocaust was being remembered then. The last issue to be addressed in reference to the framing of the target texts is that of the translatorial paratext. 10 In Résistance, Mellor has provided a “Translator’s Acknowl- edgements” section in which she thanks those who helped in the process and alludes to her reasons for undertaking the translation of the original: “Surely it deserved to be more widely known? Surely it should be made available in an English 10I use this term as a means of supplementing Genette’s (1987) paradigm of authorial, editorial, and allographic paratext in order to carve out a more visible and definite space for the translator. See also Deane-Cox 2014, 27–29. translation?” (2008, vi). There are also extensive “Translator’s Notes” (2008, 325–357) at the back of the work which provide detailed explanations of references in the text to people, places and events. As discussed above, Summers also establishes her presence around the text by means of the “Translator’s Note” which focuses on the use of Lagersprache and Maurel’s Frenchification of certain words (1958, 10–11). So, although the translatorial paratext is a clear signal to the reader that they are reading a text in translation, neither translator provides any sustained or penetrating reflection on the challenges and possibilities they may have confronted during their engagement with the source text. I would like to argue that the paratext offers a space in which the translator can make explicit their role as secondary witness, in contrast to the text itself where “the task of the listener is to be unobtrusively present” (Laub 1992, 71). Accordingly, the position of the translator as secondary witness can be mapped once more on to that of the interviewer for the Fortunoff project. Hartman observes that throughout the recording process, “the interviewers are almost completely out of sight [and] seem not to intrude into the testimony, even as they continue to direct it” (Young 1988, 166). In the same way as the interviewers are visible on the margins of the screen, so too can the translator be visible on the margins of the text, whether in a preface, in footnotes or any other form of translatorial paratext. This peripheral material can thus function as a record of how the translator has interacted with the original witness, how they have elicited and facilitated the transmission of a testimony from one setting to another, what obstacles they might have encountered, and how they regard their own ethical responsibility. Trezise has noted that, in the video testimonies, “the audible and occasionally visible presence of the interviewer(s) lends to the dialogical relation of witnessing a concreteness far removed from what may seem, in written testimony, to be only a disembodied interaction of pronouns” (2013, 34). The translator as secondary witness can thus add a concrete dimension to the transmission process by acknowl- edging their own role as listener to and perpetuator of the original act of witness. In so doing, the community of receivers will be more informed, more alert to any potential barriers to communication and more conscious of the survivor behind the pronouns. Conclusion: Remembering Forwards Translation, as a mode of remembering forwards, is not an unshakable one. Despite resisting a more perfidious and total lapse of memory, the above inquiry has shown that translation equally has the potential to distort, amongst other aspects, the factual, linguistic and tonal qualities encoded in the original telling, while paratextual material can also function as a site of appropriation and transformation. The extent to which a translator listens closely to the original telling may be the result of numerous factors: over-identification with the survivor, the onset of secondary trauma that leads to a distancing or a numbing of the translator, or, more prosaically, the temporal and editorial constraints imposed by publishers. In turn, the listening realized by the translator has the capacity to shape the response of the reader to the events of the past. In other words, the manner in which the reader positions him or herself on an ethical and epistemological level in relation to the Holocaust, as well as to the specific struggles of the survivors, will hinge on the strength and integrity of the bond established between the original and secondary witness. It has also become evident that the ties of that bond hold more securely in some parts of a translation than in others; within the boundaries of a given text, translation can serve either as an empathic re-telling or as a trespass. Granted, this article has given more space to what, following Antoine Berman (2000), could be termed a “negative analytic” of translation, the emphasis here being on the forces that deform the survivor’s account. Peter Davies has warned against such a focus on the negative in reference to Holocaust translations, claiming that “What is missing from the discussion of translation is a sense of the far-reaching achievement [of translators]. If we move beyond melancholy reflections on loss, we are able to shed a much fuller light on the role that translation and translators have played” (2014, 166–167). However, the reasoning behind my negative approach is twofold. First, the wider empirical evidence that emerged from my comparative analyses had a discouraging tendency to point in this direction, particularly in the Summers translation; the examples discussed above are a small, but representative sample of this trend. Secondly, the study should in no way be understood as a personal attack against the translators, but rather, as a means of accentuating the very real transgressive potential of translation as a form of secondary witnessing. By flagging up the lapses in secondary witnessing in these texts and underlining the translation strategies from which they stemmed, it becomes possible to inform future Holocaust translation practice and to prevent such breaks in transmission from reoccurring elsewhere. It may well be the case that the all-hearing, non- appropriating figure of the secondary witness is an impossible ideal, but this does not mean that it is not one worth striving for. Speaking more broadly about the readers of Holocaust narratives, Colin Davis points out that “the best we can do may be to try to attend as honourably as possible to the traces of that which remains foreign to us” (2011, 40). Similarly, Francis Jones has proposed some basic guidelines for the translator working in sensitive circumstances, namely “a principle of maximum awareness of ethical implications together with one of least harm” (2004, 725). And so the translator as secondary witness is one who undertakes to be attentive and self-reflexive, and who weighs the better part of translation decisions in favor of the survivor. Although some of these endeavors will inevitably fall short of their mark, the crucial step is in the trying. It has often been noted in recent times that the need to document Holocaust testimonies is growing as the survivors themselves diminish in number. As these accounts continue to be committed to paper or audiovisual media, or are recovered from the past, so too does the potential increase for the communicative force of translation be brought consciously and effectively into the service of the original witness and the perpetuation of his or her memory. References “An Ordinary Camp.” Review of Ravensbrück, by Micheline Maurel, translated by Margaret M. Summers. Kirkus Reviews. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/micheline-maurel/an- ordinary-camp/. Assmann, Aleida. 2006. “History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony.” Poetics Today 27(2): 261–273. “Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. How Much We Must Learn!” 1959. Review of Ravensbrück, by Micheline Maurel, translated by Margaret M. Summers. Catholic Herald, April 3. 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Humbert, Agnès. 1946/2004. Notre guerre: Journal de Résistance 1940- 1945. Paris: Tallandier. ———. 2008. Résistance: Memoirs of Occupied France. Translated by Barbara Mellor. London: Bloomsbury. Hutton, Margaret-Anne. 2005. Testimony from the Nazi Camps: French women’s voices. London & New York: Routledge. Jones, Francis. 2004. “Ethics, Aesthetics and Décision: Literary Translating in the Wars of the Yogoslav Succession.” Meta: journal des traducteurs/ Meta: Translators’ Journal 49 (4): 711–728. Kansteiner, Wulf and Harald Weilnböck. 2008. “Against the Concept of Cultural Trauma or How I Learned to Love the Suffering of Others without the Help of Psychotherapy.” In Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning, 229–240. Berlin: De Gruyter. 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New York: Oxford University Press Laub, Dori. 1991. “Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle”. American Imago 48(1): 75-91. ———. 1992. “Bearing Witness, or the Vicissitudes of Listening”. In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, edited by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, 57–74. London and New York: Routledge. Lefort, Pascaline. 2012. “Le dire impossible et le devoir de dire: des gloses pour dire l’indicible.” SHS Web of Conferences. Volume 1 of 3e Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française: 583–597. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20120100041. Leys, Ruth. 2000. Trauma: A Genealogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mannarion, Damien. 1998. “La mémoire déportée.” Revue d’histoire de la Shoah; le monde juif 162: 12–42. Maurel, Micheline. 1957. Un camp très ordinaire. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. ———. 1958. An Ordinary Camp. Translated by Margaret M. Summers. New York: Simon and Schuster. ———. 1958. Ravensbrück. Translated by Margaret M. Summers. London: Anthony Blond. ———. 1958. Ravensbrück. Translated by Margaret M. Summers. London: Digit Books. ———. 1958. The Slave. Translated by Margaret M. Summers. New York: Belmont Books. Mauriac, François. 1957. Preface to Un camp très ordinaire, by Micheline Maurel. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Mellor, Barbara. 2008. “Bold defiance in Nazi Paris.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7634000/7634154.stm. “M. Summers Translates French Book Describing Life in Concentration Camps.” 1958. The Vassar Chronicle, December 13. http://newspaperarchives.vassar.edu/cgi- bin/vassar?a=d&d=vcchro19581213-01.2.19. Pearce, Andy. 2014. Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain. London: Routledge. Reiter, Andrea. 2000. Narrating the Holocaust. Translated by Patrick Camiller. London & New York: Continuum. Rondeau, Daniel. 2004. “Nous étions des enfants.” Review of Notre guerre by Agnès Humbert. L’Express, December 6. http://www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/notre-guerre-souvenirs-de- resistance_820118.html. Saidel, Rochelle G. 2004. The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Stier, Oren Baruch. 2003. Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Strebel, Bernhard. 2009. “Neubrandenburg.” Translated by Stephen Pallavicini. In The United States Holocaust Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933–1945, Volume I, edited by Geoffrey P. Megargee, 1215–1216. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Suleiman, Susan Rubin. 1996. “Monuments in a Foreign Tongue: On Reading Holocaust Memoirs by Emigrants.” Poetics Today 17(4): 639–657. Trezise, Thomas. 2013. Witnessing Witnessing: On the Reception of Holocaust Survivor Testimony. New York: Fordham University Press. Tymoczko, Maria. 2000. “Translation and Political Engagement: Activism, Social Change and the Role of Translation in Geopolitical Shifts.” The Translator 6(1): 23-47. ———. 2007. Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge. Waxman, Zoë. 2006. Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whitehead, Anne. 2004. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wieviorka, Annette. 2006. The Era of the Witness, translated by Jared Stark. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Worpole, Ken. 1983. Dockers and Detectives. London: Verso Editions. Young, James, E. 1988. Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. joined the University of Strathclyde as a lecturer in translation and interpreting in 2016, having previously held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, where she also completed her PhD in 2011. Her research is anchored in the field of Translation Studies, but currently intersects with Memory Studies, Holocaust Studies, and Museum Studies. She is particularly interested in the translation of French individual and collective memories of occupation and deportation during World War II. She is author of the monograph Retranslation: Translation, Literature and Reinterpretation (2014) and a member of the IATIS Regional Workshops Committee. 

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https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15533

Abstract: This article explores how memory—the central issue of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977)—has induced a specific type of writing that makes its translation a more challenging task in terms of stylistic, lexical, and syntactical choices. Tayo, the main character, is haunted by painful memories of his traumatic war experience, powerful nightmares and daytime visions blending seamlessly into the vacuity of his present life on the reservation. However, memory is also a healing force when it means going back to the traditional Indian way and adapting it to the broken present. Silko navigates between storytelling and storywriting, weaving a circular vision of time into the linear format of the novel and bridging the gap between her Indian ancestry and her white academic education. Translating Ceremony raises many interesting issues, three of which are discussed here: the treatment of intermingling narratives whose chronology the readers have to reconstruct for themselves, the network of echoes and repetitions that structure the novel, and the description of the Indian landscape. The article finally asserts that translation contributes to the circulation of memory and is a positive force ensuring the survival of texts written to resist acculturation. Introduction Ceremony is a landmark publication in the advent of Native American literature. Published in 1977 by Leslie Marion Silko, it received much critical acclaim and soon became a commercial success and was translated intoseveral foreign language (Norwegian, German, Japanese, Italian, French, Dutch). It is often part of the selection of Native American novels on university syllabi next to House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1968) and The Death of Jim Loney by James Welch (1979). Those are the titles readers remember as they have become the “memory” of Native American literary Renaissance. Whether they should be seen in terms of “ethnic minority fiction” or as part of mainstream American fiction is subject to debate. For instance, Joseph Bruchac states that the “‘mainstream’ in America is being turned back by a tide of multiculturalism” (Bruchac 1994, xviii). According to Robert N. Nelson, Native American novels have distinct features that set them apart: their authors are “Native American” (like the protagonists), the settings “include Indian reservations,” they allude to, or widely incorporate, “tribal traditions” 1 (Nelson 1993, 3). As a consequence some of their content is perceived as being difficult to grasp for the readers who are not “tribally literate” (to use Nelson’s word), those who do not share the memory of the tribal heritage. Memory is an essential dimension to Native American fiction and to Ceremony. According to Robert Dale Parker, Native American Literature was “invented” by “Indian writers,” drawing on both “Indian and literary traditions” (Parker 2003, 1). In trying to keep tribal culture alive, Native American writers have explored memory in different ways. Memory is what is left of all that has been destroyed and eradicated by colonization, industrialization, and forced assimilation. It is the main force enabling Native Americans to resist acculturation. Cultural memory was traditi- onally transmitted through storytelling, an endangered activity in a world ruled by the written word, where communities and families have been increasingly scattered across the whole 1 The choice of the most appropriate word to designate the people from Native American tribes is still highly controversial. The issue has not yet been settled, which explains what may seem like confusion in most essays and books about Native American art and fiction. Christina Berry writes in her article published on the All Things Cherokee website: “So what is it? Indian? American Indian? Native American? First Americans? First People? We all hear different terms but no one can seem to agree on what to call us” (Berry, 2013). Although the word “Native American” seems more neutral, many Native Americans object to it as it is seen as a creation by the Federal government aiming at erasing the sufferings of the Native tribes and making the colonial past more acceptable. The actor and political activist Russell Means declares: “I am an American Indian, not a Native American! I abhor the term Native American. It is a generic government term used to describe all the indigenous prisoners of the United States” (Means, 1996). Silko uses both the word “Indian” and “Native American.” In this article the word “Native American” has been kept to refer to the ethnic origin of the people involved but the word “Indian” has been preferred to indicate the cultural connotations as in “the Indian way” or “Indian memory” since it is closer to the ideas developed by Silko. country. Native American writers therefore invented a new type of storytelling that can survive and thrive in their new environment, translating traditional memory and storytelling into novels. Those novels are hybrid forms, close enough to the template of the Western novel to be recognized and understood by all while being innovative enough to cater for values and notions radically alien to Western culture. However, Indian memory is also a traumatic memory and offers many common points with other works and narratives problematizing memory such as writings by holocaust survivors and by victims of intense trauma (see Brodski 2007). Writing is not only a means of transmitting memory and struggling against oblivion, but it also transforms the unbearable memory of the trauma—which lies on the side of death and destruction—into a resilient force that makes life possible. The memory of the horror beyond the scope of human understanding is translated into words in order to help the victims make sense of the events and reappropriate their lives. Through the case study of Ceremony, I will demonstrate how memory can be a haunting force of destruction as well as a healing type of energy. Memory is both the theme and the material chosen by Silko for her novel. Her literary approach is characterized by a specific type of writing that makes interlingual translation particularly challenging in terms of stylistic, lexical, and syntactic choices. The novel was translated into French by Michel Valmary, who later translated two other books—Archie Fire Lame Deer’s Gift of Power (Le cercle sacré) and James Welch’s Killing Custer (C’est un beau jour pour mourir). The translation was published in 1992 by Albin Michel in the Terre Indienne collection, which specializes in Native American fiction (director: Francis Geffard), and its French title was Cérémonie. After studying how memory is at the core of the themes and textual identity of Ceremony, I will focus on three points: 1) writing/translating the fluctuating and unstable time of memory through a limited choice of possible grammatical tenses; 2) the construction/destruction of echoes, memories, and correspon- dences; 3) the translation of words and names referring to the landscape that is central to Indian memory. Finally, I will examine the close relationship between writing and translating in the case of Indian memory and discuss whether the trans- lation of Native American fiction is possible/advisable/neces- sary. Memory as the Main Theme and Material of Ceremony The theme of memory is crucial to Ceremony. The protagonist, Tayo, is a Laguna Pueblo of mixed ancestry, a “half-breed”2 living on the reservation near Albuquerque in New Mexico. When the story begins, he is back from the Second World War. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or “battle fatigue” according to the white psychiatrists who have discharged him from the hospital, he is unable to resume his old life. He is haunted by memories of the war and overwhelmed by guilt as he feels responsible for all the disruption that took place when he was away: the death of his cousin who went to war with him, the death of his uncle Josiah, and finally the drought that he sees as retribution for his swearing at the rain in the prisoner camp in the Philippines: “The old people used to say that droughts happen when people forget, when people misbehave”(Silko 1977, 46). These destructive memories disrupt his present life and make him mentally and physically ill as they invade his everyday life in the form of nightmares and daytime visions that leave him empty. His war memories are interspersed with his childhood memories as he is also trying to cope with his sense of alienation as a “half-breed” brought up by his aunt after his own mother left him. However the past, which is a source of suffering, is also the key to his recovery. Knowing that white medicine cannot save him, Grandma convinces him to visit a medicine man because “The only cure/I know/is a good ceremony” (Silko 1977, 3). Although the visits to Ku’oosh and then Old Betonie do not succeed immediately and the healing ceremony cannot be completed, Tayo gradually recovers his ancestral memory. He learns to understand the traditional signs and rites, becomes able to read the landscape around him again and to realign his life with a broader universal pattern of meaning. Thanks to his recovering the traditional cultural memory of his ancestors, Tayo can complete the ceremony by himself, adjust, and find his place back on the reservation. His 2Although “half-breed” may seem offensive, it is the word used by Silko to describe Tayo’s as well as her own ancestry (Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and white). healing is symbolic of and preparatory to a more global change as rain returns to the region saving the crops and cattle. Tayo’s journey, out of his destructive memories, which are manifestations of evil and witchcraft and back to the healing memory of the Indian way, enables him to restore balance and harmony in the universe as thought can again circulate between the fifth world (the world inhabited by human beings) and the other worlds inhabited by spirits. Memory is at the core of Ceremony. The different encounters with the medicine men, the traditional one and Old Betonie, the modern one, with the women Tayo loves, all avatars of Tse’pina, the spirit of the mountain, are various memories of the same quest or the same healing ceremony. It is by remembering them and understanding their correspondences that Tayo progresses on his way to recovery and that the readers gradually understand the way the novel is structured and what it means. The novel functions like memory itself, giving birth to seemingly disconnected episodes that make sense when put together, reassembled and realigned. Moreover the conventional narrative structure of Tayo’s quest is framed by and intertwined with traditional stories and poems, memories of traditional Laguna storytelling, as if the real creator of the story was not Silko but Thought Woman. The book begins with the poem: Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought-Woman, is sitting in her room and whatever she thinks about appears [. . .] I’m telling you the story she is thinking. Those traditional passages draw on Silko’s personal memories of the stories she was told when a child on the reservation or memories she has revived from the collection of stories published in Franz Boas’s Keresan Texts (a transcription of traditional tales published in 1928, see Nelson 2001). There are altogether 28 “storytelling memories” (whose length varies from a few lines to four pages). Silko blends traditional Indian forms—based on circular patterns, repetitions and circulation from memory and myth to reality—into a novel, a genre favoring a linear conception of time, a sequential and historical development of the story, and a clear-cut distinction between past and present, memory, and reality. She thus creates her own language, one that can express memory. Moreover, the novel is a way for Silko to come to terms with her own mixed ancestry and her sense of alienation. She started writing Ceremony after having been away in Alaska for two years where she felt she had been exiled. The novel is a personal remembrance ceremony enabling Silko to weave the loose threads of her attachment to her Native ancestry and of her white academic education back into significance: “Writing a novel was a ceremony for me to stay sane” (Arnold 2000, 24). Memory and the Blurred Frontiers between Past and Present The treatment of diegetic time is quite unconventional in Ceremony, as noted by most critics and reviewers. Although analepsis is a common device in most conventional novels, time shifts are so frequent in Ceremony that they blur the frontier between the main narrative and the secondary narratives that are Tayo’s various memories and visions. The story shifts to and fro between the time of Tayo’s return to the reservation after he is back from the war, and various memories—childhood scenes, war episodes, and other times before he left for the war. Those shifts back in time are not systematically signaled as such— there are few dates, few accurate references to places which would help the readers to chronologically reorganize the diverse fragments constituting Tayo’s story. The fragmented narratives are the representations on paper of the disruptive forces released by Tayo’s memories and the readers must agree to getting lost in the succession of embedded stories going back in circles rather than following a straight time line from beginning to end. Like Tayo, the readers will understand later and what they remember will then make sense, as Night Swan (one of the female characters Tayo meets during his quest) tells him: “You don’t have to understand what is happening. But remember this day. You will recognize it later” (Silko 1977, 100). Only when the tense of the first verb of the analepsis is a pluperfect is the shift clearly indicated. Even then, the following verbs are in the simple past (also the prevailing tense of the main narrative), which creates ambiguity as to the exact point where the main narrative is resumed, as in the following example:3 “You see,” Josiah had said, with the sound of the water trickling out of the hose into the empty wooden barrel [. . .]. He pointed his chin at the springs [. . .]. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead [. . .]. Tayo knelt on the edge of the pool and let the dampness soak into the knees of his jeans. (Silko 1977, 45–46) Although it is quite clear that the first paragraph is a memory because of the use of the pluperfect and the situation (Josiah is dead by the time Tayo returns from the war), the status of the following paragraph (“Tayo knelt…”) is ambiguous, and the similarity of the setting misleads the readers into believing initially that it is part of the same memory sequence whereas the main narrative has been resumed. The translation into French reads thus: “Tu vois, lui avait dit Josiah par-dessus le bruit de l’eau qui dégoulinait du tuyau dans les tonneau de bois vide [. . .]. Du menton, il avait montré les sources [. . .]. Il avait enlevé son chapeau et essuyé son front [. . .]. Tayo s’agenouilla au bord du bassin sans se soucier de l’eau qui trempait les genoux de ses jeans. (Silko 1992, 55) The translator has made a grammatically safe choice. The shift from pluperfect to past, which is quite frequent in English fiction, has been neutralized through a more consistent use of a plus que parfait in French. The passé simple, used for the main narrative, is deemed inadequate as soon as the diegetic chronology is upset—a stylistic rule many, but not all, French novelists adhere to. That “safe” choice is not consistently applied. For other time shifts the passé simple is used for anterior actions but only after a series of plus que parfait has clearly delineated the time frame: He stood outside the train depot in Los Angeles and felt the sunshine; he saw the palm trees [. . .] he realized why he was here and he remembered Rocky and he started to cry. [. . .] 3 Words discussed in the ensuing analysis are given in bold in the quotes.  The new doctor asked him if he had ever been visible and Tayo spoke to him softly and said that he was sorry but nobody was allowed to speak to an invisible one. (Silko 1977, 15) Devant la gare de Los Angeles, il avait senti la caresse du soleil; il avait vu les palmiers [. . .] il comprit pourquoi il était là, il se souvint de Rocky et il se mit à pleurer. [. . .] Quand le nouveau docteur lui avait demandé s’il avait jamais été visible, Tayo lui avait répondu d’une voix douce qu’il était désolé mais que personne n’avait le droit de parler à un être invisible. (Silko 1992, 23) Whereas the English original allows for more indeterminacy (the readers will not immediately understand that the first passage is the memory of a scene that took place just before Tayo’s return and that the second passage is another shift in time, neither the continuation of the preceding passage nor the resuming of the main narrative), the French readers are guided by the translator’s choice, which clarifies the order of the successive time sequences. Although choosing between imparfait, plus que parfait, passé simple, and passé composé to render a simple past is a controversial point, the passé simple—even if it is an obvious choice for a translator—may not be the most appropriate tense in the case of Ceremony. The use of the imparfait in some passages makes it possible to keep some referential indeterminacy as shown in that example where it is not clear if the second passage is still part of Tayo’s memory of the war or of the main narrative: Rocky had reasoned it out with him; […] Tayo nodded, slapped at the insects mechanically [. . .]. He had to keep busy; he had to keep moving so that the sinews connected behind his eyes did not slip loose and spin his eyes to the interior of his skull where the scenes waited for him. (Silko 1977, 8–9) Rocky s’était efforcé de le ramener à la raison ; [. . .] Tayo avait acquiescé; d’un geste machinal de la main, il avait écrasé quelques insectes [. . .]. Il fallait qu’il s’occupe ; il fallait qu’il reste actif pour que les muscles qui se rejoignent à l’arrière de ses yeux ne se relâchent pas, les faisant ainsi pivoter vers l’intérieur du crâne, là où toutes ces scènes l’attendaient. (Silko 1992, 16–17)  Even if it is not conventional to use the imparfait for single past actions, that tense might have the potential to accommodate Silko’s literary treatment of memory, as some French writers have done to give extra depth to their past narratives, J. M. G. Le Clézio, for instance (see Lepage 2008). Alternatively, using a passé composé instead of a passé simple as the prevailing tense for both the main narrative and the memories would have been a way to signal the shift from conventional fiction writing and would have insisted on the connection with oral tradition. Grammatical constraints and the translator’s wish to conform to the more conventional writing norms do not explain all the occurrences of plus que parfait in the French text. They illustrate the translator’s symptomatic wish to guide his readers, to help them through the maze of the original novel, as in the following example where a whole sentence has been added: They unloaded the cows one by one, looking them over carefully. (Silko 1977, 77) Quand Tayo eut ouvert le grand portail du couloir d’entrée du corral, Robert ouvrit la porte de la bétaillère. Ils firent sortir les vaches une par une, en les inspectant attentivement. (Silko 1992, 88) The time of the action as well as the identity of the characters have been made explicit in French. However, reducing ambiguity and reordering Tayo’s memories imposes a Eurocentric vision on a hybrid text. In fact, it brings more confusion to the readers as it prevents them from being aware of the blurred frontiers between past and present and between memory and reality, essential to the understanding of the novel. Indeed Ceremony reintroduces in the linear development of the novel the memory of a more ancient time, the Indian vision of time, which is circular, cyclical, always moving but not going directly from one point to another: The Pueblo people and the indigenous people of the Americas see time as round, not as a long linear string. If time is round, if time is an ocean, then something that happened 500 years ago may be quite immediate and real, whereas something inconsequential that happened an hour ago could be far away. Think of time as an ocean always moving. (Arnold 2000, 149) Memory as Repetitions, Echoes, and Resonances Repetitions and echoes are the backbone of the writing in Ceremony, and the coherent structure they create counter- balances the confusion brought about by Silko’s fluctuating treatment of diegetic time. Repetitions work at the level of sentences and paragraphs but also at the higher level of the whole novel. In sentences, repetitions give rhythm to the narrative and endow it with a typically oral dimension. The following passage illustrates how repetitions structure the sentences and help the readers/listeners keep track of the important notions: He could get no rest as long as the memories were tangled with the present, tangled up like colored threads from old Grandma’s wicker sewing basket when he was a child [. . .]. He could feel it inside his skull—the tension of little threads being pulled and how it was with tangled things, things tied together, and as he tried to pull them apart and rewind them into their places, they snagged and tangled even more. So Tayo had to sweat through those nights when thoughts became entangled; he had to sweat to think of something that wasn’t unraveled or tied in knots to the past (Silko 1977, 6–7) Il ne pourrait trouver le repos tant que les souvenirs et le présent s’enchevêtreraient comme les fils de couleur dans le panier à couture de Grand-mère : [. . .] Sous son crâne, c’est cela qu’il sentait, la tension des fils minces que l’on tirait, et les choses emmêlées, attachées ensemble, qui, lorsqu’il essayait de les démêler et de les rembobiner, chacune à sa place, s’accrochaient et s’emmêlaient encore davantage. C’est ainsi que Tayo devait passer de longues nuits en sueur quand ses pensées s’embrouillaient; il devait faire d’énormes efforts pour penser à quelque chose dont le fil ne soit pas défait ou attaché au passé par des nœuds inextricables (Silko 1992, 14–15) The translator has reduced the number of repetitions by erasing some occurrences (the two occurrences of tangled have been reduced to one in the first sentence) and by resorting to synonyms (s’enchevêtrer, emmêlées, s’emmêler, s’embrouiller for tangled; en sueur and faire d’énormes efforts for sweat). The destruction is not systematic, however. For instance, the translator manages to keep the repetition of comfort and comfortable (a word difficult to translate into French) by using bien and bien-être which work on both material and moral levels: We know these hills, and we are comfortable here.” There was something about the way the old man said the word “comfortable.” It had a different meaning—not the comfort of big houses or rich food or even clean streets, but the comfort of belonging with the land and the peace of being with these hills. (Silko 1977, 117) Nous connaissons ces collines, et nous y sommes bien. » Il y avait quelque chose de spécial dans la façon dont le vieil homme avait dit le mot « bien ». Il prenait un sens différent : ce n’était pas le bien-être que procuraient les grandes maisons, une nourriture riche ou même des rues propres, mais le bien-être né du fait d’être à l’unisson de la terre, la paix ressentie à se trouver dans ces collines. (Silko 1992, 129–130) At the macro level of the whole novel, repetitions give meaning to the various interconnected episodes. Repetitions of words create a textual memory that enables the readers to interpret the story correctly, exactly like Tayo who will gradually learn to recognize the pattern underlying what he goes through. For instance, when Tayo walks to the toilets in a bar (Silko 1977, 56), the dirty wet floor mentally takes him back to his ordeal in the jungle (Silko 1977, 11). The shift from a real situation to a memory is textually signified by the repetition of the same phrase—“It was soaking through his boots/it soaked into their boots”—in the two passages. In the translation, although the readers will understand the situation, there is no textual link between the two scenes but only a semantic link as two different phrases are used: “qui pénétrait dans ses bottes” (Silko 1992, 66)/“s’infiltrait dans les chaussures” (Silko 1992, 19). Many passages echo each other as if the various episodes and the various characters were diverse avatars of the same event, Tayo’s encounter with the spirit of the mountain and his becoming whole again. Repeated words form a network of key words whose occurrences weave a significant textual material connecting and reuniting what first seems disconnected. Through their reiteration the readers can recognize the resemblance and understand that time and storytelling are cyclical as Old Grandma concludes: “It seems like I already heard these stories before . . . only thing is, the names sound different” (Silko 1977, 260). The network of recurring words organizes the novel around key themes such as dampness and dryness, circles and whirls, weaving and scattering. In the translation, the structure is less obvious because of lexical variety. For instance, the word scatter which is central to Tayo’s broken psyche is translated by two different verbs, disséminer and disperser, as well as by a whole range of words according to the cotext: l’entouraient (Silko 1992, 117), franchirent le sommet (Silko 1992, 195), faire voler (Silko 1992, 231), laisser derrière (Silko 1992, 250), s’effriter (Silko 1992, 214), parmi (Silko 1992, 168), and s’égaillèrent (Silko 1992, 243). The important word scatter has virtually disappeared from the French translation, made invisible by the translator’s decision not to maintain its repetition. The destruction of repetitions is not systematic, how- ever, as the recurrences of some words are maintained. For instance whorls (of flesh, of skin), which appears in the morbid episodes dealing with witchcraft, is systematically translated by volute, making it possible for the French readers to link the various scenes together and to establish the connection with the poems relating the invasion of the evil spirit: “il se peignit le corps/les volutes de chair” (the poem about Pa’caya’nyi who tricks people into witchcraft, Silko 1992, 56), “D’autres défirent des paquets en peau/pleins d’objets répugnants:/des silex sombres, des cendres de hogans brûlés/où reposaient les morts,/Des volutes de peau” (the poem about a witchcraft competition during which white people are invented and turned loose to destroy the Indian world, Silko 1992, 147), “Pinkie lui maintint la jambe, et Leroy trancha la volute de chair sous le gros orteil de Harley” (the torture scene in which witchcraft attempts to engulf Tayo’s life and the world in general, Silko 1992, 271). By reducing the number of repetitions, the translator brings considerable changes to the material texture of Silko’s novel of textual memory. His motivations may be an adherence to French stylistic norms that still consider repetition to be inelegant despite its use by great writers. He thus imposes his own view, his own cultural memory on the original text and destroys its inner rhythm and its signifiance (to use Meschonnic’s (1999) word). Repetitions are essential to Silko’s endeavor to write a text which reads as a memory of the oral tradition of storytelling and deliberately blurs the frontier between genres (tales, songs, poems, and novels), between storytelling and story-writing, between Indian traditions and Western culture: “So I play with the page and things that you could do on the page, and repetitions. When you have an audience, when you’re telling a story and people are listening, there’s repetition of crucial points” (Arnold 2000, 71). Systematicity is essential to maintain the way lexical networks function. Each repetition is important. As Berman states when he studies how the deforming tendencies transform a text, each word must be chosen carefully and the use of synonyms is deceptive. Words have their own lives, their own textual bodies from which they derive their power: “The words of the story poured out of his mouth as if they had substance, pebbles and stone extending to hold the corporal up” (Silko 1977, 12). Silko’s writing is like weaving: the intricate patterns suffer no mistakes, no holes. Storytelling and story-writing is a sacred act, a ceremony in which each word has its part to play. Memory and the Landscape The landscape is the central character of Ceremony. As stated in Place and Vision, in which Nelson dedicates a whole chapter to the landscape of Ceremony, the geophysical landscapes “serve not only as the ‘settings’ of these [Native American] fictions but also as principal ‘characters’ in them” (Nelson 1993, 9). It is only after being reunited with the landscape that Tayo can recover his vital energy. The landscape is the place where Indian memory lies, the landscape is Indian memory: “We are the land. [. . .] More than remembered, the earth is the mind of the people as we are the mind of the earth” (Paula Gunn Allen in Nelson 1993, 1). Describing and naming the landscape is therefore a delicate part of the ceremony of writing. Locations and directions are given with accuracy. The words connected to the landscape are the names of the places, the words describing those places as well as the names of the plants, animals, and spirits inhabiting the land. All those names recreate the landscape of the American Southwest where the Laguna Pueblo reservation is located and they bear the memory of its history. The original Indian names have been largely replaced by English names or by Spanish names, the languages of the enemy, to use Gloria Bird’s phrase in Reinventing the Enemy’s Language (Harjo and Bird 1997), that is to say the languages of the settlers: “But the fifth world had become entangled with European names: the names of the rivers, the hills, the names of the animals and plants—all of creation suddenly had two names: an Indian name and a white name” (Silko 1977, 68). The Pueblo names are still there, though, in the names of the characters of the traditional stories and the names of the spirits inhabiting the land. They stand out in the English text as their morphology is quite different from that of the European names and display a characteristic apostrophe: Tse-pi’na orTs’eh, K’ou’ko, Ck’o’yo, A’moo’ooh, Ku’oosh. . . The Pueblo names have been used in the translation without any change as if they had resisted one more displacement. Most Spanish names are maintained too: mesa, arroyo, Casa Blanca . . . with the exception of burro (âne, bourricot). It is the English names that are problematic for the translation into French. When they are kept, which is the case of many place-names, they stand out as memories or traces of the original English text, whereas in the original they blend seamlessly into the main narrative in English. In Cérémonie, place-names such as Wake Island, Dixie Tavern, Purple Heart, or Prairie Dog Hill remind the readers of the European settlers’ imprint on the American landscape but also suggest that the “entanglement” with English names is only a passing stage in the history of the landscape. The names and languages may change, but the landscape and its ancient memory will remain unchanged. The English language, which dominates the text of Ceremony, is pushed back to the margin through translation. The names of plants and animals are translated into French and raise many difficulties. Most English names are both simple and precise. As they are based on a simple generic word (grass, tree, weed, hill. . . ), names such as wild rose bush, salt bushes, snakeweed, rabbit brush, foothills create a realistically complex environment (Silko has drawn on her accurate knowledge of the Southwest landscape). The geographically- literate readers will recognize it. However, those who are unfamiliar with such settings will not be lost and will manage to find their way among grass, trees, weeds, and hills. In French, the translator has to negotiate between two options. He can favor the exact translation which is very often a scientific term unknown to most readers: Salt bushes/atriplex, arroche; snakeweed/bistorte, gramma grass/ bouteloue. . . Alternatively, he may opt for a literal translation that will be understood but may not refer to an actual plant or animal. The few cases when literal translations correspond to the reality of the environment (rock sage/sauge de rocher, bee-wee plants/l’herbe-aux- abeilles, rabbit weed/herbe-aux-lapins. . . ) are not enough to compensate for the different vision of the world the numerous scientific names produce. Moreover, the scientific words in French do not allow the correspondence between geography and myth. The words of the landscape in Ceremony are meaningful and contribute to weave a consistent memory of the universe that reinforces the links between the human world and the spirits. When Tayo meets the mountain lion (puma in French), he also meets the hunter spirit, the companion of Tse’pina, the mountain spirit. When he meets Tse, she is sitting next to a moonflower plant (marguerite dorée) that indicates the feminine power she represents. Tse is a woman and a spirit and the earth, as this passage underlines: “He dreamed he made love with her. He felt the warm sand on his toes and knees; he felt her body, and it was as warm as the sand, and he couldn’t feel where her body ended and the sand began” (Silko 1977, 222). It echoes Josiah’s comment: “This is where we come from, see. This sand, this stone” (Silko 1977, 45). Once Tayo acknowledges he is sand and stone like the sandstone cliffs around him, he can be whole again. In the translation, the link connecting sand (sable), stone (pierre), and sandstone (grès) is severed. The landscape in Cérémonie is therefore more scientific and more obscure than in the original; it does not work as the main representation and memory of the harmony of the Indian way. It is not the “living text” mentioned by Nelson, which can be read by the readers. Memory and Translation as Transformation Beyond the linguistic and stylistic difficulties the translator has to face when translating a narrative of memory such as Ceremony, broader questions must be addressed. Is it possible or even legitimate to translate memory in the case of Native American fiction? Can Indian memory, which is so deeply rooted in the ancient languages and in the local environment, survive when uprooted and transferred into a culturally and linguistically alien environment? Silko has already provided part of the answer. Drawing on Indian memory to write her novel, she has opened up a new frontier and contributed to the invention and development of the Native American novel, essentially transgenre and multilingual. She is the one who has translated—that is to say, transformed and rewritten—the oral traditional stories: “I write them down because I like seeing how I can translate this sort of feeling or flavor or sense of a story that’s told and heard onto the page” (Arnold 2000, 71). Therefore, translating Ceremony into another language is doing a second-hand translation in which the main choices have already been made: the degree of multilingualism, of obscurity to which the readers—and more particularly the “tribally illiterate” ones—will be submitted. The inherent tension between the source and target languages, between what we understand and what we do not, between what the translator chooses to reveal and what he/she leaves unexplained is already present in the original. Even the reception of her work and the issue of the target reader has been addressed, as Silko is aware that her readership falls into two categories—Native Americans (who know a lot about Indian memory) and non-Natives (whom she does not want to alienate). For her, making Indian memory accessible to all through her translation is a political choice: “I’m political, but I’m political in my stories. That’s different. I think the work should be accessible and that’s always the challenge and task of the teller—to make accessible perceptions that the people need” (Arnold 2000, 26). Translators have always been suspected of betrayal and Silko is no exception. Being of mixed ancestry, born on the reservation but educated outside it, she is the perfect go-between and a highly suspicious one. Paula Gunn Allen criticized her for giving away tribal secrets which should only be known by Native people, as Nelson reminds us: “In fact, a few years ago another Laguna writer, Paula Gunn Allen, criticized Silko for using some of this oral traditional material, contending that by including a clan story in her novel Ceremony Silko has violated local conventions regarding proper dissemination of such stories” (Nelson 2001). For Silko, translating and rewriting Indian memory is not a betrayal but, on the contrary, a way to redeem Native traditions. Those must not be kept as museum artifacts which are the dead collectible pieces recorded and translated by ethnologists such as Boas, but they must be given the possibility to carry on as living entities. Memory pines for transmission as a way out of oblivion and eradication. Through her translation, Silko reminds the American readers of the Native American heritage of their country and promotes it as a living force in today’s world. Interlingual translation goes one step further in the same direction. Translating Indian memory strengthens it as it will be kept in the minds of more and more readers across the world, and in turn they will pass it on. It will then be safe from destruction, as when kept in the belly of the storyteller (Silko 1977, 2). Paradoxical though it may seem, translating Indian memory is a form of repatriation as it takes it back to its original purpose, helping the people understand and live in harmony. In a globalized world, the people may just mean people in general: “Something in writing Ceremony that I had to discover for myself was indeed that the old stories still have in their deepest level a content that can give the individual a possibility to understand” (Arnold 2000, 147). On a more practical level, the translation and transmission of memory may increase people’s awareness and support of the Native cause and give more visibility to the Indian alternative to the materialistic “American way of life” taking over the world. Silko is aware of the potential impact of Native memory across languages and nations: “In other words, we feel that we get cultural, intellectual, spiritual support from all the people outside the United States. [. . .] There are no isolated people, there is truly now a global village and it matters” (Arnold 2000, 151). The teller/writer is one link in the long chain of the circulation of memory, and the translator another one. The important point is to keep the transmission going even if it means changes on the way. Changes are not always for the worse. In the case of Indian memory, the displacement brought about by the interlingual translation opens up new possibilities. In the French translation, the stories may thrive better in a new medium, freed from the English language (the linguistic memory of the trauma of colonization). Memory itself is not a fixed form. It is based on repetitions and differences, like translation—two notions at the core of Deleuze’s early philosophical thought and analyzed at length in Différence et Répétition in link with the power of language: “La répétition est la puissance du langage” (“Repetition is the power of language”—translation mine—Deleuze 1968, 373). The memory of an event is a repetition of the event, both similar to and different from it. Each time the memory comes back it is slightly modified, too, as repetitions are never identical. The same relationship links the text and its translations, which are the memory of the text. They are not equivalents but repetitions of the original, different but not necessarily less valuable, less trustworthy, or less authentic. The transformation process at the core of memory and translation is a regenerative power that keeps life going. The old stories, like the old healing ceremonies, must be adapted to their new environment—be it linguistic or cultural—the way Betonie has managed to devise a new ceremony to cure Tayo of his modern disease. Translation and memory are two modes of survival (“‘survival’ as a cultural practice and symbolic action, and above all as a process that extends life” (Brodzki 2007, 5)) and revival, a way to share the gift of the healing force or the burden of the trauma. Conclusion Memory as the main theme and material of Ceremony has shaped the novel’s language. It is based on correspondences and resonances that can evoke the chaos of traumatic memory and of witchcraft but that also symbolize the redeeming force of the Indian way whose ceremonies can restore harmony. The specificity of Silko’s writing requires attentive translating strategies that enable the transmission of its textual and poetic density. The memory of the text is particularly threatened when the translator yields to some of the deforming tendencies defined by Berman in his chapter “L’analytique de la traduction et la systématique de la déformation” (Berman 1985, 65–82), and more particularly clarification (thus replacing cyclical time with linear time), the destruction of rhythm (the rhythm of oral tradition), and the loss of meaningful networks which equate writing with healing ceremonies. Like all poetical texts, Ceremony challenges easy solutions. Those texts need transformation rather than stereotyped equivalences. To translate them is to listen to the text and its resonances, to its signifiance rather than concentrate on its superficial narrative meaning. Translators will then be able to draw on that intimate memory of the text to rewrite it in an act of sharing and transformation, not a move of appropriation. Narratives of memory ask for translation more than anything else as transformation and circulation are their essence. Like the Indian stories they have “a life of their own” (Arnold 2000, 72) whose natural development is translation. Translators are similar to Betonie, the modern healer. “But after the white people came, elements in this world began to shift; and it became necessary to create new ceremonies [. . .] things which don’t shift and grow are dead things” (Silko 1977, 126). Translators, as life-givers of those narratives, have the responsibility of choosing carefully and creatively so that reading the translated text will be a renewed ceremony that revives the power of the original and transmits its memory. References Allen, Paula Gunn, ed. 1996. Song of the Turtle: American Indian literature, 1974–1994. New York: Ballantine Books. Arnold, Ellen L., ed. 2000. Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Berman, Antoine. 1985. Les Tours de Babel: Essais sur la traduction. Mauvezin: Trans-Europ-Repress. Berry, Christina. 2013. “What’s in a Name? Indians and Political Correctness.” All Things Cherokee website. Accessed November 20, 2013: http://www.allthingscherokee.com/articles_culture_events_070101.html. Brodzki, Bella. 2007. Can These Bones Live? Translation, Survival, and Cultural Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bruchac, Joseph, ed. 1994. Returning the Gift: Poetry and Prose from the First North American Native Writers’ Festival. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1968. Différence et répétition. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Harjo, Joy, and Gloria Bird, eds. 1997. Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America. New York: W. W. Norton. Lepage, Pierre. 2008. “Le Clézio et l’oubli de l’Afrique.” Le Monde des Livres, September 9. Accessed November 20, 2013. http://www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2008/10/09/le-clezio-et-l-oubli-de- l-afrique_1105152_3260.html. Means, Russell. 1996. “I am an Indian American, not a Native American!” Accessed November 20, 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20010208120908/http://www.peaknet.net/~ aardvark/means.html. Meschonnic, Henri. 1999. Poétique du traduire. Lagrasse: Verdier. Momaday, N. Scott. [1968] 2010. House Made of Dawn. New York: HarperCollins. Nelson, Robert M. 1993. Place and Vision: The Function of Landscape in Native American Fiction. New York: Peter Lang. ———. 2001. “Rewriting Ethnography: the Embedded Texts in Leslie Silko’s Ceremony.” In Telling the Stories: Essays on American Indian Literatures and Cultures, edited by Elizabeth Hoffman Nelson and Malcolm Nelson, 47–58. New York: Peter Lang. PDF available at https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~rnelson/ethnography.html Parker, Robert Dale. 2003. The Invention of Native American Fiction. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Silko, Leslie Marmon. 1977. Ceremony. New York: Penguin Books. ———. 1992. Cérémonie. Translated by Michel Valmary. Paris: Albin Michel. ———. 1997. Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today. New York: Simon & Schuster. Welch, James. [1979] 2008. The Death of Jim Loney. London: Penguin Classics. Wright, Anne, ed. 1986. The Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright. Saint Paul MN: Graywolf. is senior lecturer in Translation Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle—Paris 3. Her research concentrates on the interaction between form and meaning, on the translation of the voice, and the syntactic organization as well as normalizing effect at play in the translation process. She has either edited or coedited Palimpsestes 18 (Traduire l’intertextualité, 2006), Palimpsestes 24 (Le réel en traduction: greffage, traces, mémoire, 2011), and Translating the Voices of Theory (2015). She is also interested in intersemiotic forms of translation and Native American voices. 

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Abstract: Over the course of the last five years my research has led me to conclude that the literary representation of a trauma is not the immediate step after the historical event and that there are other, intervening layers in between. First is the occurrence of the historical event. What then follows is the translation of that event in the minds of the survivors—that is, in their memory and interpretation of the event. Then, memory becomes the subject of oral history. This oral history enters the minds of the writers of memoir and fiction, where it becomes a literary translation. Finally, the filmmaker, if such a story makes it to this step, translates the text in order to render her interpretation of it as film. If we acknowledge that translation involves interpretation, then what exists here are different layers of translation. The aim of the paper is to analyze the different effects that each medium (literature, translation, cinema) may have on the experience of its readers and audience—what that medium is trying to cultivate, the limitations of each, and how all of them in different ways bring greater attention to the historical phenomenon of the Armenian Genocide. Introduction Thinking about the contribution of literature to raising awareness about the Armenian Genocide, I have asked myself whether literature is the immediate step after the historical event. My research has led me to think that it is not. In this paper, I will propose the following schema to chart the development in Genocide awareness from the historical event to its interpretation within an act of artistic representation. First is the occurrence of the historical event. What then follows is the translation of that even in the minds of the survivors—that is, in their memory and  interpretation of the event. Memory then becomes the subject of oral history, and this oral history enters the minds of the writers of memoir and fiction, where it becomes a literary translation. Finally, the filmmaker, if such a story makes it to this step, translates the text in order to render his or her interpretation of it as film. In effect, we have here different layers of translation upon translation—to use memoirist Günter Grass’s term, with this theory we are “peeling the onion” (Grass 2008). With a focus on the renowned Italian–Armenian novelist Antonia Arslan’s Genocide narrative La masseria delle allodole (2004; English translation Skylark Farm, Arslan 2006), I’ll first discuss the literary genre as an instrument that brings greater attention to the historical memory of the Armenian Genocide. Then the power of translation related to the Genocide as an instrument of cultural, historical, and linguistic interaction will be both explored and problematized. For example, why has this particular book been chosen for translation into sixteen languages?1 In what ways have these translations contributed to the awareness of the Genocide in their given countries? Exploring the impacts these translations have had in their given countries, there will also be an examination of readers’ reactions following their respective publications in various languages by presenting interviews with some of the translators. Finally, I will focus on the theme of the Armenian Genocide in cinema and will deal with the dramatized version of the Genocide narrative La masseria delle allodole by the Italian directors the Taviani brothers (Taviani and Taviani 2007).2 The Armenian Genocide in Literature In every trauma, in every situation, there are always at least two sides, two prevalent stories, and the power dynamics are strong. On the one hand, the side that “successfully” commits Genocide usually determines the way its history is written (or not written), as is the case of the Armenian Genocide, which is varied and has been contested for many years. Then there is the side of the 1 So far, the book has been translated into Dutch, English (four editions), Eastern Armenian (two editions), Finnish, French, German (two editions), Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Persian, Romanian, Russian, Western Armenian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish. 2 The present study springs directly from my experience in translating Armenian Genocide narratives and from the outcomes of the course I taught at California State University, Fresno— Armenian Genocide and Translation while being the 10th Henry S. Khanzadian Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies at CSUF. people who have suffered the overwhelming trauma. This side, especially when silenced by the perpetrator, attempts to record any history of the event, albeit painful, and often, as we look over these testimonies, it is clear that any proper investigation or analysis of this traumatic event should be undertaken by someone with psychoanalytic and linguistic skills. One of the consequences of the Armenian Genocide was the dispersal of those who survived into a global Diaspora. Traumatized and impoverished, involuntary exiles and immigrants in a new land, they struggled to survive. Part of their survival strategy was to write what they had experienced and witnessed. Survivor stories emerged painfully and with great difficulty. The obstacles were many: a fragmented, traumatized community with far too few resources. The challenges they faced included the fact that they were either forced to write in a language that few in their new lands understood or that they had to struggle to describe the indescribable in a foreign tongue. Despite all the trauma and difficulties, the immigrants decided to put pen to paper to document that which the world needs to better know and comprehend. Even though the potential audience and publishers were greatly limited, these important survivor memoirs emerged, often in isolation, in small print runs and sometimes as unpublished manuscripts. They emerged in a variety of locales and conditions that characterized the global Diaspora. These Diaspora fragments disseminate Armenian culture and seeds across differing landscapes. In so doing, the Armenian identity has evolved and become more diverse and complex and has contributed to an emerging multiculturalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The survivor memoirs provided and continue to constitute an invaluable research tool not only for researchers but also for Genocide fiction writers, who take their insights from those stories and, in thousands of literary flavors, offer the reader the historical dimension of the Armenian Genocide. It is true that it is not possible to penetrate the world of the Armenian Genocide without reading the history. However, as Rubina Peroomian asserts (Peroomian 2012, 7), documents, statistics, and data do not provide the whole story. On the other hand, the extremely important memoirs and eye witness accounts alone often cannot express the unthinkable horror of the Genocide as the blockages and psychological borders can impede the author’s revealing the whole trauma. Hence the importance of historical fiction, which, by fusing historical fact and creative writing, can provide access to a larger readership in terms of global impact. An example of this phenomenon, with a particular symbolic and powerful radiation and with a priority function of meaning, is the Italian–Armenian novelist Antonia Arslan’s Genocide novel La masseria delle allodole (Arslan 2004). Antonia Arslan, who was born and grew up in Italy and was professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature at the University of Padua, has published on Italian popular fiction and Italian women writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, her most recent publications have focused on her Armenian heritage. Her first approach to her Armenian heritage was, surprisingly, through translation. With the help of two Armenians (as she doesn’t know Armenian) she has translated/edited two volumes by Daniel Varujan, one of the most significant Armenian poets of the twentieth century, into Italian: Il canto del pane (Varujan 1992) and Mari di grano (Varujan 1995).3 Here is Antonia Arslan’s testimony about her translation: Poetry functions in an immediate and unexpected way. I discovered Daniel Varujan, his strength and his grace, when reading some of his poems in Italian and the entire The Song of Bread in French, translated by Vahé Godel. So it was that I concentrated on the text of his last work, which completely fascinated me. I already had a lot of experience translating poetry—from French, English and German—but my work with Varujan was a great adventure, also because of my collaboration with two young and enthusiastic scholars, C. H. Megighian and A. H. Siraky. The Italian edition of The Song of Bread (Varujan 1992) became the seventh one, and it enjoyed much success within the Italian secondary schools. I further translated other pieces of Varujan’s poetry; I published twenty of them in the volume Seas of Wheat (Varujan 1995) and the others in magazines. I also want to remind us that he was a great poet, one of the major ones since the beginning of the 1900s, equal to no one, but less known because he wrote in a minority language. (Haroutyunian 2012a) Translating Varujan’s poetry became part of the process of 3 In 1915 at the age of thirty-one, Daniel Varujan was on the verge of becoming an internationally renowned poet but he was brutally murdered by the government of the Young Turks, like other Armenian poets such as Siamanto, Grigor Zohrab, and so on. discovery of her own Armenian identity.4 It brought her to the unknown path of her lost ancestry and the birth of her first novel, the best-seller Skylark Farm, in which, drawing on the history of her own ancestors, she tells of the attempts of the members of an Armenian family caught up in the Armenian Genocide to escape to Italy and join a relative who had been living there for forty years. This book won many prestigious awards in Italy and worldwide.5 Skylark Farm belongs to a genre that mixes autobiography and biography, history and fiction, documentary and memory. First of all, Arslan introduces her fifty-three-year- old grandfather Yerwant, an important physician living in his adopted Italian hometown of Padua in the months leading up to the Second World War. [H]is mother, Iskuhi, the little princess, died at nineteen giving birth to him. My great-grandfather then remarried an “evil stepmother,” who bore him many other children; my grandfather couldn’t stand her, and so, at the age of thirteen, he requested and was granted permission to leave the little city and go to Venice, to study at Moorat-Raphael, the boarding school for Armenian children. (Arslan 2006, 17) Yerwant never again returned home. Now, after forty years, he hopes to reunite with his brother Sempad, a successful pharmacist, who continued living in his little city in Anatolia. In 1915, Yerwant enters his fiftieth year, and he is satisfied—and alone. . . “I am now a citizen of Italy; the Ottomans can’t touch me any more,” he thinks. (Arslan 2006, 45) But World War I begins, and the ruling Young Turk party closes the border and when Italy enters the war on May 24, 1915, Yerwant’s dream vanishes. He will never be able to return to his country of origin in his red Isotta Fraschini, the doors of which were encrusted with the silver coat of arms that featured an intertwined Y and A, standing for Yerwant Arslanian. He will 4 She then went on to edit different works on the Armenian Genocide, including Hushèr: la memoria. Voci italiane di sopravvissuti armeni (Arslan, Pisanello, and Ohanian 2001); she has worked with Boghos Levon Zekiyan on the Italian version of Gérard Dédéyan’s Histoire du peuple arménien (Dédéyan 2002) and Vahakn Dadrian’s Storia del genocidio armeno (Dadrian 2003); and translated Claude Mutafian’s brief history of the Armenian genocide from the French (Mutafian 2001). 5 Arslan’s more recent publications include Il libro di Mush (2012), which is an account of the largest extant Armenian manuscript that was preserved in two halves by two separate women, each of whom took one half when escaping the city of Mush during the Armenian Genocide; Il rumore delle perle di legno (2015); and Lettera a una ragazza in Turchia (2016). never see his family again as they will be exterminated almost entirely by the Young Turks. From that moment on for Yerwant the distant Fatherland remained forever remote, and when his children got older Yerwant even changed their names. Antonia Arslan talks about a contradiction in the behavior of her grandfather: at first he did not want to deny his ancestry, and gave his children four Armenian names each—Yetward, Erwand, Armenak, and Vardan; Khayel, Anton, Aram, and Maryam—but later tried to erase their origin: “And in 1924, he will petition the Italian government to allow him to legally remove from his surname that embarrassing three- letter suffix, -ian, that exposes so plainly his Armenian origin” (Arslan 2006, 160). During the deportation, the women performed a crucial role not only by bravely making sacrifices to protect the children, but by persistently working to preserve memories of their land. These are a few stories, objects, and photographs, “relics or icons from a terrible shipwreck” (Arslan 2006, 19), and a few other items shipped from Sempad as a gift to his relatives in Italy. Thanks to this “act of memorial transmission,” the author can now see and touch objects and images belonging to her Armenian family and therefore be reunited with its indefinite past (Alù 2009, 369). Here, as readers, we are made witness to familiar historical narratives—perhaps we share similar ones, perhaps we’ve read firsthand accounts in books. But what happens when a historical event penetrates literature? First of all, the literary genre is a powerful medium that is able to bring the historical phenomenon to the attention of the masses. By reconstructing her family history in the novel, Arslan is merging both historical research and imagination culled from collective memory; she also becomes the protector of her familial memory and historical archive. Taking an input from Bella Brodzki’s idea that “[c]ulture’s necessarily overarching orientation toward the future only obtains by sharing its past” (Brodzki 2007, 113), I conducted an experiment on collective memory and testimony in an assignment I gave to my students at Fresno State. I set an assignment in which they were called to write the story of their ancestor’s survival. Most of them said to me, “I know something about my great grandparents, but I’m missing a lot of details. What should I do?” This is exactly what I was hoping for, and advised them to fill in the gaps with their imaginations and to take advantage of their parents and grandparents and ask them questions. As evidenced by Brodzki, “[t]hinking both psychoanalytically and historically also means that while we harbor the dream of plentitude, we always begin with a gap” (Brodzki 2007, 113). For their assignment, some of my students contacted their relatives living in other countries to inquire about their grandparents and, as the students shared some amazing stories in class.6 This assignment contributed to raising their personal awareness of their ancestors’ voyages towards refuge. Antonia Arslan has done the same in filling in the gaps of an unknown past. In the meantime the geography, the places, and the itineraries that she describes in her novel reveal not only significant moments of family history but also its inclusion in a determinate social space and national history (Alù 2009, 364).7 This is important because it gives the historical part to “historical fiction.” For yet another class assignment, based on the concept of Rushdie’s “translated man,” students worked together to write the names of the native cities and villages of their ancestors, as well as the places through which they passed on their long journeys of migration before arriving in the United States.8 We also included in the map the languages they had learnt along the way. This initial exercise helped the students to visualize, re-realize, and appreciate both their ancestors’ geographical passages and the students’ indelible connection to them. Further, the act of writing it on the board—taking pen in hand—implicated them as the bearers and continuers of their ancestral memories. I have always been obsessively diligent throughout my academic career to erase whatever is on the board after any given lesson. However, what 6 Some of these stories have already been published in the Hye Sharzhoom newspaper (Fresno 2013, 35/1, 2). 7 In her article, Alù refers to Anne Muxel who in her Individu et mémoire familiale explains how rediscovering familiar places and spaces can help us to recover a biographical path as well as the origin, progress, and decline of a social, individual, and collective destiny (Muxel 1996, 47). 8 In his book of essays Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie asserts that “Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained” (Rushdie 1992, 17). was created on the board that day was an interwoven tapestry of names, places, times, and languages that neither my students nor myself even dared to erase. The memory seemed at once too fresh and validated yet again. So, we decided to leave it as it was. I took a picture before the next instructor could “erase our ancestors,” preserving this image at least through another medium—if not the word, the image. We were all excited and surprised to discover that among all our ancestors, they collectively spoke sixteen languages including Armenian, English, Arabic, French, Turkish, Spanish, Vai, Pele, Fula, Russian, German, Romanian, Bulgarian, Latin, Greek, and Kurdish. In the same way, Antonia Arslan’s undertaking the mission of retelling the story continues the voyage of her ancestors. In one of her numerous public lectures Antonia said: “The idea of my past was bothering me for years, so one morning I decided to write: ‘Zio Sempad è solo una leggenda, per noi: ma una leggenda su cui abbiamo tutti pianto.’”9 This is the very first sentence of the novel, and Antonia once told me that, while many passages of the book have undergone editing, that sentence remained unchanged. What is interesting is that Antonia never mentions the name of her grandfather’s birthplace, calling it “little city.” “No one, patient reader, ever went back to the little city,” finishes Antonia Arslan in her book (Arslan 2006, 268). She does this intentionally— firstly because this is a novel and not a memoir and secondly because she doesn’t want to personify but rather render the idea more globally and not to give the reader the impression that the Armenians were persecuted in that specific place. I’d like to share the last classroom example from my California State University experience, which dealt with the question of the story’s transmission. By using their part of the genealogical tapestry I spoke of before, each student illustrated the geographic and linguistic journeys of their ancestors. I asked the students, as an extension, to report their family history to one partner in the classroom. It was then the task of the partner to re- reflect the story and report it. After a series of retellings, the students eventually had to report these stories back to the class, 9 Uncle Sempad is only a legend, for us—but a legend that has made us all cry (Arslan 2006, 17). thus directly engaging in the process of transmission and translation. Our aim was to internalize the process of a story’s transmission and to show how feelings, details, chronology, and so forth are translated as they pass from one person to another. Thus, the story, especially the oral tale, is a shared substance between interlocutors, and simply does not exist without both the teller and the listener, the writer and the reader. So when we return to consider the gravity of Arslan’s work in the telling of the Armenian Genocide from a very personal perspective, we come to the realization that, by sharing her own family history, we also become a responsible player of that story as readers. In this case, we are both called upon to consider and remember the Genocide and are also invited to enter its discourse. To consider Arslan’s work on such a global scale, then, is of tantamount importance. Through the pen of the writer Antonia Arslan, the Armenian Genocide is thus carried beyond its historical limits, slipping from the desks of historians and entering the minds and imaginations of ordinary people. Of course, when a historical event becomes literature it is enriched with new shades and colors. New heroes are born who are given names and are assigned identities. Families are born belonging to one nationality or to another who are placed in this or that social class. This is where literary fiction comes into play. And she weaves the plot. Through a love story, a common conversation in the home, or between neighbors, and through a description of a relationship between two individuals of two different nationalities (such as the Armenian and Turkish) or minorities (Armenians and Greeks), Antonia Arslan introduces the historical dimension to the story. A sentence from the prologue that was also used for the blurb on the book cover reads: My aunt always used to say: When I’ve finally had it with you, when you get too mean, I’m leaving. I’ll go stay with Arussiag in Beirut, with Uncle Zareh in Aleppo, with Philip and Mildred in Boston, with my sister Nevart in Fresno, with Ani in NY, or even with Cousin Michel in Copacabana—him last, though, because he married an Assyrian. (Arslan 2006, 5) With this sentence, the author introduces the complex phenomenon of the Armenian Diaspora created by the Armenian Genocide. When a non-Armenian reader, completely ignorant of not only the essence but also the existence of the Armenian Genocide, buys the book for its literary value, while reading this sentence, asks herself: How can a single person, Antonia’s aunt, have so many relatives around the world? The answer will come on reading the book. Before writing her Genocide narrative, Antonia Arslan consulted many history books. But the plot also came to her through saved photographs. As Daniel Sherman has it: “Sight is the only sense powerful enough to bridge the gap between those who hold a memory rooted in bodily experience and those who, lacking such experience, nonetheless seek to share the memory” (Sherman 1999, 14). Thus the picture becomes a complicated form of self- portrait that reveals the ego of the writer that is necessarily relational and at the same time fragmentary. Similarly, descriptions of group photographs in Skylark Farm are used by Antonia Arslan to recover the bonds with her dispersed Armenian relatives (Alù 2009, 373): Arussiag, Henriette, and Nubar, two girls and a little boy dressed as a girl. Along with Nevart they are the numb survivors who will, after escaping Aleppo, come to the West. These children now look out at me from a snapshot taken in Aleppo in 1916, one year after their rescue, just before they embarked for Italy: their grave, childish eyes are turned mysteriously inward, opaque and glacial, having accepted—after too many unanswered questions—the blind selection that has allowed them to survive. They are wearing decent orphan clothes, but they seem dressed in uniforms of rags, and at a quick glance the eye sees prison stripes. Their dark Eastern eyes, with their thick brows tracing a single line across their foreheads, repeat four times, wordlessly, the fear of a future that will be inexorable and the hidden nucleus of a secret guilt. (Arslan 2006, 23) Transforming and translating the protagonists of the pictures into the characters of the book, Antonia is linking herself through a bridge towards her ancestors: But it will be Zareh the skeptic, the European, who will save the family legacy, the children, and the photographs: the four little malnourished bodies curled together like dying birds, their small skulls all eyes, and the precious packet of family portraits, sewn up along with Gregory of Narek’s  prayer book inside a velvet rag and passed from hand to hand from the dying to the survivors. Parched, dried skeletons—memorials of a life that had been cordial and boisterous, with plenty of water, plenty of hospitality and mirth. (Arslan 2006, 29) These images, along with a few objects protected by the women during the massacre and deportation, become relics of which the author becomes the possessor through the acts of postmemory. In addition, the images included or only described in Skylark Farm, along with the text, are the subject of memory and commemoration as well as collective pain, the lieux de mémoire that stop time, block forgetfulness, immortalize death and materialize the immaterial (Alù 2009; Nora 1989). In her 2007 book Can These Bones Live, Bella Brodzki directs her attention to processes of intergenerational transmission, conceived as acts of translation, to how the value of memory or remembrance as an instrument of historical consciousness is inscribed in a culture [. . .] What connects and divides two generations and their respective cultural narratives, where are the borderlines of a life and text, what are the ways in which processes of translation perform as well as disrupt the work of cultural memory? (Brodzki 2007, 111– 112). In the case of Antonia Arslan, the intergenerational transmission took place through her beloved grandfather who entrusted her with the task of retelling his trauma and memories for a country that no longer exists, for the columns of deportees, for a family dying beneath a poisonous sun, for the unmarked graves along the dusty roads and paths of Anatolia; and for everything that disappeared with them, everything alive and fragrant, exhausted and joyous, painful and consoling: the country’s soul. (Arslan 2006, 40) The Armenian Genocide in Translation When we talk about Genocide and translation in a global sense, we inevitably enter a discourse about memory. Let’s think for a moment of the psychological state of the trauma victim: they are pained, they block things out, sometimes repress the memories that are too painful. The Armenian Genocide survivors’ silence was also due to the fact that they were over-protective of their children considering them a representation of survival and treating them as substitutes for the relatives who perished and communities that had been wiped out. Thus with the aim to ensure their protection, the parents often refused to share the trauma with the second generation.10 Genocide trauma is translated by the very person who experienced it by the memory they retain of the event. What about when a trauma is translated into artistic literature? Are we obliged to then preoccupy ourselves with less important “factual” matters—was it really fifty days that the woman walked through the desert, or thirty? Historical fiction is a genre that fuses a historical fact with creative writing. Thus, as a fiction, we are ultimately obliged as readers to be less preoccupied with the precision of less important facts, but rather occupy ourselves with the rendering of feeling and narrative form within a historical space. And it is in this moment of not being preoccupied with the fact or fiction of memoir, biography, or a historical text that we are able to immerse ourselves in the heart of the matter. How do we feel about this situation? How can we relate to it? How do we interpret it ourselves? Certainly a lot of truth also comes out through creative writing and not only through memoir or biography or other forms of factual writing where the blockages and psychological borders stop the author from revealing the whole trauma. *** Every book has its birth story, and analogously every 10 While exploring the impact of World War II on the second-generation Armenian–American identity, Aftandilian (2009) noticed that the war brought the memory of the Armenian Genocide to the forefront within Armenian–American families, as survivors of the Genocide had to send their sons off to war. Aftandilian interviewed World War II Armenian–American veterans and found that the topic of returning home was more emotional than the topic of their combat experience. His research on the children of survivors found that many children were named after the murdered relatives. These children felt special, because an obligation was placed on them, directly or indirectly, to bear the hopes and aspirations of the survivors not only for the family, but also for the Armenian people as a whole. One of my students at California State University, A. Pilavian, wrote in her final paper: “I never really knew the details about how my family began or how much they sacrificed to live a better life. I used to get angry with my family when they wouldn’t tell me things that I wanted to know from their past experiences. What I came to realize is that when people don’t speak of something tragic that has happened in their life, it actually eats at them more. The reason they feel that it’s better to keep quiet is so that they don’t disrupt the peace in their life that they finally have now.” translation has its birth story. Most of the translations of Antonia Arslan’s Skylark Farm have been executed according to the standard ways when a publisher decides to commission a book’s translation. However, there is something immediately striking about the book’s Hungarian edition. The Hungarian translation was published in Romania, and not in Hungary (Arslan 2008). Here is the explanation given by the book dealer Kinga Kali: As you perhaps know Hungary still does not recognize the Armenian Genocide—and there is not much knowledge about it in the Hungarian book publishing. The publishers I contacted simply did not respond to my proposal—to publish the Hungarian translation of Skylark Farm. I had the idea to go to Mentor, a Hungarian publishing house in Transylvania, Romania. I also offered a complete plan for advertising the book in Hungary. They accepted the proposal. Mentor publishers in Romania took all the risks in dealing with a theme intentionally kept from public view in Hungary. This is why Antonia was able to go and give her book tour in both Hungary and Romania. The circulation of Antonia’s Genocide novel, thanks to its Hungarian translation, among common Hungarians is extremely important because Hungary has yet to recognize the Armenian Genocide.11 After the publication of Skylark Farm in Romania, the book dealer together with the publishing house managed to organize several book presentations in Budapest and in a few Transylvanian towns in Romania with a Hungarian majority. While I was in Budapest for a conference, I met the dealer and asked her about the impact of the translation and its contribution to raising awareness in Hungary. She replied that The majority of the people I gave the book [to] as a present and [who] 11 Hungary was the country where, in 2004, Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant of the Azerbaijani army, used an axe to hack the twenty-six-year-old Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan to death in his sleep. Both were participating in an English language training course within the framework of the NATO-sponsored Partnership for Peace initiative in Budapest. Ramil Safarov was imprisoned in Budapest for the murder until he was extradited to Azerbaijan in 2012. To the shock of many, Azerbaijan promoted him and made a hero of the murderer. In reaction, Armenia formally suspended ties with Hungary.  shared it with their friends said that by reading it for the first time, they were able to understand what the Armenian Genocide meant. They usually had knowledge about the Jewish Holocaust, but not about the Armenian one—at least, the younger generation did not know anything about it. The mother of a friend of mine was revolted, and cried, “why are people in Hungary not informed about all of this, and why is this not included in the history classes at the school?” Here we see a Hungarian girl dreaming of bringing knowledge to her people about the historical event of the Armenian Genocide, by translating the Genocide narrative Skylark Farm: When I met Antonia Arslan in 2004 during her book presentation, I decided to let my Hungarian nation learn about this book, and my dream came true within four years. In June 2008, the book was released and presented for the very first time at the Budapest Book Fest. Narrative and translation therefore once more prove themselves valid tools in the raising of awareness about the historical event. Later I had the chance to contact Kinga Júlia Király, the Hungarian translator of the novel. Antonia Arslan’s Skylark Farm was the most shocking translation I’ve ever made, she said. When I got the book from Italy and I started reading it for the first time, I couldn’t even imagine that such a horrible national destiny does exist. After reading one fourth of the novel I had to buy a new armchair, which I still call my “Skylarkfarmchair”: I needed a new position, a new posture for my body in order not to be absorbed by the novel, not to read as a whatsoever fiction, but keep my awareness till the end of it. As I have Armenian origins, too, since my family came to Transylvania in the seventeenth century, the novel had awakened in me, somewhere deep inside, a never felt receptivity toward suffering and misery. And I struggled for good amidst with my shamefacedness which [incapacitated] me in my translation. How should I translate those terrifying events, bring the best close to the reader, what Sempad’s family had endured? How should I repaint the “Armenian blood- flowers” on the walls (Arslan 2006, 118)? Am I allowed to do such things? Is this reasserting, recommitting a Genocide? It was much more than [a] matter of ethics or aesthetics. More than literature, as well. I still remember the deep impact which Nevart’s death in the thunderbolt made on me (Arslan 2006, 175). When I had to read a sequence from the  book for the first time in front of an audience, I [chose] Nevart’s death. But I could not do it. I felt such discomposure, such sorrow, such mourning, that I started to cry. That was too much for me as translating is an intimate act while sharing Genocide, in fact, [. . .] is a reaction. I owe this translation a brand new life, since I became wide open for suffering. Skylark farm – in a sacred sense – had made my life. Further, I also interviewed Hillary Creek, who translated into English a section of Antonia Arslan’s second novel A Road to Smyrna, which has now been entirely translated into Armenian (Arslan 2012): I am a historian (economic and social), she said, with a special interest in the Middle East from 1890 on, as my research has in some part been on petroleum politics in the area. As a social historian I am obviously interested in the life of ordinary people and find a rich source in the literature, drama, art, and music of the period. I researched [the] bare facts, chronological history of the time, movements, and main characters, before starting translating. But I was born into postwar London when the city was in large part rubble, rationing didn’t stop till I was six. The war was still very close, my mother (a teacher) had spent the Blitz finding and taking care of young kids who escaped from evacuations and returned to find nothing. So I had her memories. Then I have many friends who have had to flee from political persecutions and I have long been interested and involved in human rights questions. So if anything it was not one event, but rather a combination of first, second and third hand tales and memories that were my points of reference. Now, some of my personal thoughts about the Genocide novel as an Armenian experience and the Armenian translator of Antonia Arslan’s Genocide narratives. In 2004, when I read Skylark Farm all in one sitting, I could not imagine that three years later I would have the honor of being the Armenian translator of this best-seller. It all began in the fall of 2005, when a Festival of Friendship between Armenia and Italy was organized in Yerevan and there were many events held both on academic (conferences, round tables) and popular (Italian opera or cinema evenings) topics. At that time I was in Armenia participating in a conference at the Academy of Sciences with a paper on Dante’s Armenian translations (Haroutyunian 2006, 2012b). Of course, among the events, I could not miss the presentation of Skylark Farm, which had just been published in Italy and was already proving to be very successful. At the event, the author and the directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani were supposed to be there to present the book and forthcoming film. Antonia suggested that I translate the three most moving episodes of the book so they could be read at the presentation. It was after this that Antonia asked me about going forward with the translation. But the deadlines were very precise. The Armenian translation had to be ready for the release of the film by the Taviani Brothers. There was very little time, and the responsibility was huge. The heroes of the story were talking to me, just as Antonia says in her acknowledgments: I must first thank those who spoke to me: Sempad and Shushanig, Ismene and Isaac, Nazim the beggar, and Yerwant, with his neat Pirandello goatee. And then Azniv and Veron, the great aunts I never knew; funny, tiny Henriette, who spoiled me; Zareh and Rupen, my legendary great uncles. I thank my audacious, whimsical mother, who raised me unleniently; Khayel, my serious, sly father, who worried about everything; my uncle Yetwart, and my cousins Yerwant, Ermanno, and Teresa; my little brother Carlo . . . (Arslan 2006, 271) I was too emotionally involved in the story. I was feeling a kind of duty to make their story available to Armenians. I often skipped lunch. I was so immersed in the book and its characters that I was almost ashamed to take a break to eat while they were walking along the dusty roads of Anatolia, hungry and exhausted, destroyed by deportation. It seemed that they were beckoning me to tell their story because they desperately wanted to be heard. When I go to the episode that tells of the horrific massacre at the Farm, I was completely blocked as it was too hard to switch off emotionally and think about the word order of the sentence or make a choice of adjectives when the plot was describing the murder of the little boys in front of their mother: Garo lies placidly with his handsome smile, holding his little hands over his open belly. Leslie, scurrying on all fours, tries to hide beneath the sideboard sparkling with crystal, but he’s dragged out by his feet and flung against the wall, where his small round head smashes like a ripe coconut, spraying  blood and brain across the delicate floral design. Thus are flowers born from the blood of the Armenian Calvary. (Arslan 2006, 118) After a while, emotionally drained, I decided to skip those passages and return to them once I’d completed the book. I finally managed to keep my promise, finishing the book before the screening of the film, which took place July 10, 2007, at the opening of the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Yerevan (Arslan 2007). In the translation I have maintained the foreign expressions in Turkish, French, and English used by the author in the Italian text, because it was worth reviving those expressive nuances in Armenian, especially taking into account that these terms not only precisely characterized the cultural environment of that generation during the Genocide, but were also a part of the characters’ everyday lives. So I precisely preserved foreign words in transliteration, inserting notes to facilitate comprehension and reading. From Text to Reel: Cinematic Translation of Arslan’s Skylark Farm to the Taviani brothers’ film The Lark Farm There is always the matter of fidelity of the film to the novel, generally expressed as a function of adequacy and acceptability, whereby the former is more or less what we mean by equivalence, and the latter is more or less what we mean by audience believability. For example, many readers usually watch movies based on the books they’ve read and end up being disappointed. Why? Because so many parts of the story are cut out. So we as readers look for mistakes and sometimes disregard whether the movie was well directed, produced, and so on. I think we should never compare them, but rather consider them separately. When a book is translated into a movie, questions inevitably arise. One of the first is to ask about the film genre (documentary, drama, historical narrative, etc.) that the filmmaker has chosen since each film genre creates a different kind of viewing experience for the audience. The famous Italian film directors and screenwriters the Taviani brothers’ Lark Farm is based on a historical novel, so the goal is to awaken curiosity, interest, even engagement in a historical event; the limitations and strengths of a film translation are evident in the selection of passages from the novel, the filmic treatment of those passages, the omission of passages, and so on. The Taviani brothers announced right away that the film would be “liberally” based on Skylark Farm—that is, the plot would be relatively the same but the directors had the right to change things or make additions, and in fact they editorialized and accessorized the film and inserted fictional material in the movie such as love interests and so on. This is quite normal because, even if it originates in a novel, the filmmaker translates her or his perception/translation of the fiction into film. This reflection leads into the relationship of the source (novel) and the target (film) and opens up such questions as what other source modeling material is evident in the film. In fact, the Tavianis have not only cut episodes from the novel but they have also added some. There is an episode in the film that recalls a passage from another Genocide narrative by Alice Tachdjian, Pietre sul cuore (Stones on the heart), published in Italy in 2003. In the book there is a scene where two women are forced to dispose of the child by suffocating him between them as they sit back to back (Tachdjian 2003): We were terrorized by the Turks’ cruelty, writes Tachdjian in her memoir. We understood that they were trying to annihilate us all, but before they found joy in killing the children in front of their mothers, who were going mad throwing themselves from the cliffs. The Turks were opening the wombs of pregnant women with yatağan, they were stabbing children and then drowning [them] in the rivers. They even took [the] clothes from the dead, to resell them afterwards. [. . .] Our two-month-old baby was crying because he was hungry, there was no milk in Hripsimé’s breasts, the grass that she ate on the streets caused terrible stomachache for the child. However the poor creature [was] destined to die of hunger, diarrhea, or by the sword. To avoid being discovered by his cries, our mother and sister suffocated the baby in the middle of their backs, one against the other, without looking at him. He [was] extinguished like a candle . . .12 When the Taviani brothers asked Antonia Arslan to dramatize Skylark Farm, there was also much interest from 12 Tachdjian’s book hasn’t been translated into English yet. We translated this piece of a memoir as a class assignment during my Armenian Genocide course at Fresno State as I wanted my students to experience what Genocide translation meant. Since the memoir was in Italian, the process of translation took place with me providing the initial translation into English, and then working collectively with the students. Hollywood in acquiring the movie rights. But Arslan was aware that in the past the several attempts to produce a Hollywood film about the Armenian Genocide were blocked. She knew that prominent directors and actors throughout the decades had attempted to produce a film based on Franz Werfel’s novel Forty Days of Musa Dagh, but without success.13 Antonia Arslan therefore agreed to the Taviani brothers’ suggestion. The film is a Spanish coproduction and the Spanish actress Paz Vega is a central character in the movie. Even the Spanish translation of the movie Skylark Farm is entitled El Destino di Nunik as she interprets Nunik’s role.14 In fact when the film had just come out some Armenians were concerned by the fact that the filmmaker had inserted a double love story for Nunik with two Turkish officers played by two actors, the Italian actor Alessandro Preziosi and the German Moritz Bleibtreu. In her novel Antonia has only one love story. A change I dislike in the film is Nunik’s second romance with a Turkish soldier, one who is helping lead a caravan of Armenian women to their death in Syria, wrote one of my students at California State University Fresno in his final paper. I feel like Nunik must have a very deep case of Stockholm Syndrome, as she seems to only fall in love with Turkish soldiers. Besides catering to fans of romance movies I can’t understand why this change was made. It almost seems to pander to a Turkish audience by showing a sympathetic Turkish participant in the Genocide, who we’re meant to feel sorry for because he doesn’t really want to be there. Was he added to make any Turk watching feel less guilty? Obviously, the Turkish audience for this movie would be small if not nonexistent, so the addition of this character is puzzling. The two characters are both serving the same purpose as a sympathetic perpetrator and love interest, so it would make a lot more sense to merge them together, from a storytelling perspective. As it is the second Turkish soldier is redundant at best, and raises a lot of unfortunate implications.15 During the “film vs novel” discussion with cinema critic Dr. Artsvi Bakhchinyan from Armenia, he confessed: 13 According to Variety magazine, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh has become “the most on- again and off-again motion picture production in Hollywood history” (Torosyan 2012). 14 This character is Azniv in the book, and unlike the film is not a central character in the volume. 15 An excerpt from the final paper by Suren Oganessian.  Like from any artistic display of the Armenian Genocide, Armenians had great expectations from the Tavianis’ film, and as a general rule these expectations were unjustified. Of course, we should be grateful to the great masters of cinema for being able to bring the pain of our people to the public at large, which was not sufficiently informed of the history of this tragedy. However, in my humble opinion as a film critic, the extremely classical shape, style, and language in which the story was presented was at least half a century late. The same cannot be said about the book. The presented motivations for the film as a tragedy remain almost undiscovered. According to the film, one perceives the false notion that those motivations were purely economic. From historical and psychological points of view, the behavior of the main heroine of the film is not characteristic of an Armenian woman at the beginning of the twentieth century and gives the wrong idea that the Armenian women, like Nunik, were throwing themselves into the arms of the Turks. In fact, the opposite occurred. The fictional part of the film suffers due to the dialogues that are not characteristic of everyday home speech. Perhaps the film’s small budget caused some “artistisms” inappropriate to present-day cinematography (for example, in the deportation scene, the clothes the deportees are wearing are not convincing). From my perspective, the film works especially well for an audience with little or no knowledge about the Armenian Genocide. By contrast, Armenians, more aware of the Genocide, have more mixed sensations, either of gratitude towards the filmmakers or of disappointment due to the dubious accuracy of some aspects, as we saw above. A completely unaware person however would begin to learn about the historical phenomenon of the Armenian Genocide. The filmmakers managed to put together an excellent cast. They stated in one of their interviews that the actors were not only involved professionally but also emotionally. According to the directors, after watching the whole film for the first time the Turkish-born Greek–Jewish actor Tchéky Karyo burst into tears and when he calmed down he said that he had not only watched the tragedy that they had played, but he had also seen his Jewish uncle and grandfather. So in the imagination of the actor Karyo the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust all of a sudden were superimposed.16 16 Il genocidio dimenticato: intervista ai Fratelli Taviani [Parte 1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pnyzq4kROA.  When we ask about the effect of a film, we are dealing with the rhetorical and artistic purposes of the film—that is, we are probing into the film’s skopos or purpose with regard to the audience. A novel would have similar artistic and rhetorical purposes, but executed along different lines since the experience of reading a novel is stretched out over several hours if not days while the experience of viewing a film is usually contained in under two hours. And this is a very important point as movies usually reach an even larger audience, and sometimes viewing a massacre with your own eyes might prove more powerful than reading about it. The grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of film create meaning in their own right but also invite the viewers to make meaning out of the viewing experience. Film has the potential to be an excellent tool in raising awareness about a historical event in less than two hours to an audience of hundreds of thousands.17 When in 2006 the Taviani brothers were shooting the film, their intention was to raise awareness about the Armenian Genocide and show the world the need to stop such crimes against humanity from reoccurring. Their desire also was to see their movie circulating in the schools. Today their goal has been fulfilled as the film is shown in many Italian schools mainly to eighth-graders who are learning about World War I and students doing their last year of high school. This film has two major advantages: it stimulates reflection on a story known only by a few, in part because few film makers have brought this Genocide onto the screens before. Secondly, this film shows that good and evil are not at all on one side or the other. Conclusion In his Les Lieux de Mémoire, Nora asserts that In fact, memory has never known more than two forms of legitimacy: historical and literary. These have run parallel to each other but until now always separately. At present, the boundary between the two is blurring; following closely upon the successive deaths of memory–history and memory–fiction, a new kind of history has been born, which owes its 17For audiovisual translation, among others see Zatlin 2005; Díaz-Cintas 2009; Cronin 2009; and the collection of essays by Agost, Orero, and di Giovanni 2012.  prestige and legitimacy to the new relation it maintains to the past [. . .] History has become the deep reference of a period that has been wrenched from its depths, a realistic novel in a period in which there are no real novels. Memory has been promoted to the center of history: such is the spectacular bereavement of literature. (Nora 1989, 24) In the novel, by reconstructing her family history Arslan is merging both historical research and the imagination from a collective memory. Historical research and imagination that have both been brought together by a collective memory are very important even independently, and the merging of them all is quite fascinating, especially with regards to the collective. And the consequence of the novel is a sort of catharsis for Arslan and her family as she becomes both receptacle and protector. Here we can also call into question the very genre of art and literature, depending on the author’s intention. For example, “art for art’s sake” or art for a social cause, or testimony for catharsis. Literature and testimony are different, and then there is the literature of testimony, which is another genre altogether. Why is the “literature of testimony” an actual genre? And, further, even if it is not exactly Arslan’s testimony but a retelling of a retelling, Arslan’s text is a literature of testimony. Collecting personal and public memories affords coherence and integrity to interrupted stories that have been fragmented or compromised by loss, dislocation, and division. In our case, the journey into Arslan’s family’s past transcends the silence and fills the gaps in a personal history. Family history, personal history, and national history are, in fact, interrelated and at times one. Finally, in Skylark Farm, through the research of original documents and acts of postmemory, the author unites her present to the lost world of her family, and in this way strengthens her roots and anchors her identity. With the memory what is past returns to be actual. The memory is not only an act of remembering, but it can become a living entity, can become a vibrant emotion. Antonia Arslan’s Genocide narrative with its thirty-six reprints in Italy alone, where the Armenian community only has 2,000 members, has sold over 500,000 copies to an Italian readership for the most part previously unaware of the Armenian Genocide. However, it is through the power of translation into fifteen languages that Skylark Farm has surpassed the borders of Italy, taking the knowledge of the Armenian Genocide throughout the globe and thereby contributing to its “afterlife”—to use the word of Walter Benjamin (Benjamin 1999)—as well as its cinematic rendering to a global audience. References Aftandilian, Gregory (2009), “World War II as an Enhancer of Armenian- American Second Generation Identity,” JSAS 18:2, 33–54. Agost, Rosa, Pilar Orero, and Elena di Giovanni. 2012. Multidisciplinarity in Audiovisual Translation. Alicante: University of Alicante Press. Alù, Giorgia. 2009. “Sulle tracce del passato: memoria e frammentazione familiare in Vita di Melania Mazzucco e La masseria delle allodole di Antonia Arslan.” In Tempo e memoria nella lingua e nella letteratura italiana. Vol. III: Narrativa del Novecento e degli anni Duemila, edited by Bastiaensen et al., 363–374. Brussels: Associazione Internazionale Professori d’Italiano. Arslan, Antonia. 2004. La masseria delle allodole. Milan: Rizzoli. ———. 2006. Skylark Farm. Translated by Geoffrey Brock. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ———. 2007. Artuytneri agarake (Skylark Farm). Second edition 2012. Edited by Sahak Partev. Translated by Sona Haroutyunian. Yerevan: Sahak Partev. ———. 2008. Pacsirtavár. Translated by Kinga Júlia Király. Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureș: Mentor Kiadó. ———. 2009. La strada di Smirne. Milan: Rizzoli. ———. 2012. Il libro di Mush. Milan: Skira. ———. (2015). Il rumore delle perle di legno. Milan: Rizzoli. ———. (2016). Lettera a una ragazza in Turchia. Milan: Rizzoli. Arslan, Antonia, Laura Pisanello, and Avedis Ohanian. 2001. Hushèr: la memoria. Voci italiane di sopravvissuti armeni. Milan: Guerini e Associati. Benjamin, Walter. 1999. “The Task of Translator: An introduction to the translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens.” Translated by Harry Zohn. In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge. Brodzki, Bella. 2007. Can These Bones Live? Translation, Survival, and Cultural Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Cronin, Michael. 2009. Translation goes to the Movies. Abingdon: Routledge. Dadrian, Vahakn N. 2003. Storia del genocidio armeno. Conflitti nazionali dai Balcani al Caucaso. Edited by Antonia Arsland and Boghos Levon Zekiyan and translated by Alessandra Flores d’Arcais. Milan: Guerini e Associati. Dédéyan, Gérard, ed. 2002. Soria degli armeni. Edited by Antonia Arslan and Boghos Levon Zekiyan. Milan: Guerini e Associati. Original French edition Histoire du peuple arménien. Edited by Gérard Dédéyan. Toulouse: Éditions Privat, 1982. Díaz-Cintas, Jorge. (2009). New Trends in Audiovisual Translation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Grass, Günter. 2008. Peeling the Onion. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Haroutyunian, Sona. 2006. “La Commedia dantesca in armeno.” In IX Rassegna armenisti italiani, 20–26. Venice: Padus-Araxes. Accessed February 16, 2017. PDF available at http://www.24grammata.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/Armenisti-Italiani-24grammata.com_.pdf. ———. 2012a. “Interview with world famous novelist Antonia Arslan.” PDF available at book platform: your gateway to book culture in Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine. Accessed February 16, 2017. http://www.bookplatform.org/images/activities/417/docs/interviewantoniaar slanen.pdf. ———. 2012b. “‘The Homer of Modern Times’: The Reception and Translation of Dante in the Armenian World.” In Like doves summoned by desire: Dante’s New Life in 20th Century Literature and Cinema. Essays in memory of Amilcare Iannucci, edited by Massimo Ciavolella and Gianluca Rizzo, 89–109. New York: Agincourt Press. Accessed February 16, 2017. https://www.academia.edu/18710985/_The_Homer_of_Modern_Times_the _Reception_and_Translation_of_Dante_in_the_Armenian_World. Nora, Pierre. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations (26), special issue Memory and Counter-Memory, 7–24. doi:10.2307/2928520. Muxel, Anne. 1996. Individu et mémoire familiale. Paris: Nathan. Mutafian, Claude. 2001. Metz Yeghérn: Breve storia del genocidio degli armeni. Translated and edited by Antonia Arslan. Milan: Guerini e Associati. Peroomian, Rubina. 2012. The Armenian Genocide in Literature: Perceptions of Those Who Lived through the Years of Calamity. Yerevan: The Armenian Genocide Museum–Institute. Rushdie, Salman. 1992. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991. London: Vintage Books. Sherman, Daniel J. 1999. The Construction of Memory in Interwar France. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Tachdjian, Alice. 2003. Pietre sul cuore. Milan: Sperling & Kupfer Editori. Taviani, Paolo, and Vittorio Taviani, directors. 2007. La masseria delle allodole. Released in English as The Lark Farm (2007). Ager 3, France 2 cinéma, Flach Film et al. Torosyan, Lilly. 2012. “New Documentary on ‘The Forty Days of Musa Dagh’ and Hollywood.” The Armenian Weekly, October 5. Accessed February 16, 2017. www.armenianweekly.com/2012/10/05/new-documentary-on-the- forty-days-of-musa-dagh-and-hollywood/. Varujan, Daniel. 1992. Il canto del pane. Translated by Antonia Arslan. Milan: Guerrini e Associati. ———. 1995. Mari di grano e altre poesie armene. Translated by Antonia Arslan. Paoline. Zatlin, Phyllis. 2005. Theatrical Translation and Film Adaptation. Buffalo: Multilingual Matters. teaches Armenian language and literature at the Università degli Studi di Venezia—Ca’ Foscari (Venice, Italy). She received her first PhD in philology and translation (Yerevan State University) and her second in linguistics (Università degli Studi di Venezia—Ca’ Foscari). She has been visiting professor at the Nida School of Translation Studies, Yerevan State University, California State University Fresno, and City University of New York. She has authored many scholarly papers and translated books, including Antonia Arslan’s bestsellers. In her recent monograph The Theme of the Armenian Genocide in the Italian Literature she metaphorically analyses Genocide literature as “translation of trauma.” 

Unimi Open Journals

translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15536

Siri Nergaard: Marianne, I would like to start by asking you to introduce yourself, to tell us how you started to work on memory, and how you developed the idea of postmemory. Marianne Hirsch: I was very late coming to questions of memory. I really started to think about it in the late 1980s which was, I guess, the beginning of Memory Studies and Holocaust Studies, when it became a field of inquiry. But actually, thinking back, my Master’s thesis in 1970 was already on memory. It was a thesis in Comparative Literature and it was on Nabokov’s Lolita and Musil’s novella Tonka, and it was, in each case, about the protagonist’s memory of a lost love. So it is in some ways an old topic, and also a much newer and different one, though it did not concern me for a very long time, because I was actually interested in the new. The new novel, the new wave, postmodernism and the beginnings of second-wave feminism, and the issue about how to remake the world: the past was very far from my consciousness for over a decade. If someone had told me in the ’70s that I would be working on memory, and particularly my family history and the history of my parents during the Second World War, I would have said, “who’s interested in that?” and “why would I be interested in that?” When I did come to the study of memory, I think that it was actually through my work in feminism which was very much about analyzing, contesting, critiquing the ethos of family, of traditional family structures. I wrote a book on mothers and daughters in literature that then led me to genealogies: the story of genealogies that of course also leads to memory. This trajectory is not just about my own formation, it’s really about my generation where actually, strangely, a number of people working in feminism and women’s literature and feminist theory ended up working on issues of memory. I see a lot of threads of continuity between these fields and how we all suddenly, it seemed, moved from one interest to another. Not that we left behind the questions of gender. On the contrary, they’re still infused in the work. It’s a work that has a similar commitment to tell untold stories, to ensure that stories of suffering and catastrophe aren’t forgotten—those kinds of commitments. So, this is how I see the relationship. Cristina Demaria: I have a very similar itinerary. This is also how I started moving toward memory. Marianne Hirsch: . . . How do you explain the continuities? Cristina Demaria: . . . In a very similar way to the one you said: to give voice to untold stories, or narratives that can be told differently. And as you said before, in the 1970s the tendency of critical theory was oriented towards the new and the future. Nowadays memory is often seen in connection to the future; memory of course is written in the present to rewrite the past, but also for a future. So, the very role of memory has changed very much, but to me its connection to gender studies is still very important. I remember that the first essay I read of yours is the one on Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah and the women. Marianne Hirsch: . . . that’s really the beginning of my getting involved in that field, that was the very beginning. . . Cristina Demaria: Do you agree with those who say that the concept of memory became important as a category in order to bring history and materiality back into theory? Marianne Hirsch: Yes, I agree though it may not be the only explanation. In fact, materiality and bodies didn’t really disappear: to say that deconstruction was completely antimaterial is not really true. But I think people saw it as the linguistic turn and, so, saw that not only materiality was missing but also history, in a sense. So, then we had the new historicism that was also about material objects, and memory studies kind of grew up around the same time. I think that there are many other reasons for the appeal of memory, one of them, the attractiveness of the interdisciplinarity of this field, that anthropologists, sociologists, historians, philosophers, and psychoanalysts, literary and visual culture theorists could actually work together. That didn’t really happen for me in any other context as vibrantly as around questions about memory. Siri Nergaard: And also translation studies, later on, can be, in many ways, connected to memory. Bella Brodzki, with her book has demonstrated how strongly connected these two themes are. In regards to this interdisciplinary connection I would like you to develop what you just told us about your starting your research on memory through Shoah, a film in which you noticed the absence of women, but where the women were translators. Marianne Hirsch: Exactly, Shoah shows a particular relation to the Holocaust, which was a very central site of the development of memory studies. Shoah really shows how central translation is to the whole, I mean, first of all to the experience of the Holocaust and its aftermath, and then to the representation and the study of it. Many films wouldn’t do it that way, but because Lanzmann decided to take time to show the process of translation and to foreground it, I think he points to something that’s actually very much a part of the field, which is that, a lot of people who lived through that historical moment, may not have had a primary language but lived their daily lives, at home, in the ghettos and camps, and in the aftermath, in and through translation. You asked me earlier, “what's your first language?” and I said “German,” but neither my parents nor I lived in a German- speaking country, except for one year in Vienna, so we were always minority speakers of a language that we claimed as ours, but that was actually denied us as Jews. So, it’s a very complicated relationship to a first language, but many survivors of the Holocaust, may not have had a first language at all. Many people were young and they might have grown up speaking Yiddish in school and then Polish on the street, they were deported to a camp where they learned German, and later they ended up in a DP camp in Italy, and in the end they went to Israel or the United States. When you listen to or watch their testimonies, they are most often speaking a “foreign” language. What is the status of those testimonies? In the study of memory, testimony, and witness in the first person is really important, but the witness’s relation to the language she speaks is very often mediated by the multilingualism in which she lived and lives. Siri Nergaard: Yes, and when you then have the person to whom the memory is transmitted, the generation of postmemory, further languages are involved. As you told us, you spoke German with your mother, but the language you are writing in is English, so you are really translating these memories again, for I don’t know, the third, fourth, or fifth time. Marianne Hirsch: Well, you know, it’s very complicated and, I’m always wondering, what am I doing to these stories, to their authenticity. The book that Leo Spitzer and I wrote on the community that my family grew up in, Czernowitz, Ghosts of Home, was based on a lot of interviews, a lot of readings and documents and literature as well, but a lot of interviews. We interviewed people in German, we interviewed them in English, we interviewed them in Romanian, you know, whatever they wanted to speak. But the book is in English, so most of the quotes we used had not only to be edited but also translated. We also used my father’s memoir quite extensively. He wanted to write it in English because he wanted to write it for his grandsons. His English was a language acquired very late in life, and the experiences he wrote about were in German and Romanian. So, his words are already a process of translation, of multiple translations. I think these language issues are at the core of memory studies. Siri Nergaard: There is also the time of translation in the metaphorical and literal way. Marianne Hirsch: It is time, but it’s also the mediation of the translator, especially significant if the translator is the child of the person and wants to hear certain things, then it’s more than just a professional translation, right? There’s a kind of investment that’s part of what I talk about as postmemory; the personal investments and the desires, and the curiosities of the second generation. Then, you get the parents’ words but you have to translate them; how do you trust that your investments aren’t somehow also structuring the translation? Siri Nergaard: As I see it from a translation point of view again, what you are telling here about the transmission and mediation of a memory, through language, the personal involvement by the translator, her investments, are assuming in a way what I see as the core aspects of what translation is about. In the translation of the other’s memory you can find a kind of archetype of what translation really is. Translation always implies change because of personal and cultural investments giving memory a new nature, a new identity of that memory since you have put it into another context and another language. Marianne Hirsch: Yes, I think that’s true. And then, of course, a lot of these stories are diaspora stories with memories of migration and refugeehood that are inherent as well. There, of course, you have multiple translations, cultural translations, and linguistic [translations] as well. Siri Nergaard: Could you tell us how you define and how you developed this concept that has been so helpful and fruitful for us—the concept of postmemory? Cristina Demaria: And together with that, let us include the question Bella Brodzki wanted to ask you: Have there been applications or appropriations—translations into new and different contexts—of your very generative term “postmemory” that have surprised or perhaps even enlightened you in ways you hadn’t anticipated or envisioned? Marianne Hirsch: Well, it started as a very personal need for a term, not just for me but also for a number of colleagues who met at feminist conferences in the 1980s. Informally, at lunch or breakfast we started talking about our family history and then it turned out that we had similar family histories, and similar symptoms and syndromes that came from them. It was the moment when important texts like Art Spielgeman’s Maus and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, monuments about memory were starting to come out. We realized that we are the inheritors of these histories but we hadn’t really thought about what that meant. For me it was really reading Maus and thinking about it and talking to people like Bella, who had actually gone through similar family experiences. We all felt like our parents’ memories of their youth were overshadowing our own memories of our childhoods. It was a really powerful sensation that demanded a term that was like memory but it wasn’t actually memory. So, that’s where the idea actually came from, so it was quite personal and it was rooted in this history of inherited histories. But of course this is part of a much larger story. Just yesterday, we had a discussion with the filmmaker Laurent Bécue- Renard who made the film Of Men and War, based on interviews with traumatized veterans of the Iraq War in a treatment program in California. He said that the reason he made this film, and his previous film about Bosnian widows called Tired of War, is because he felt like he needed to understand his own grandparents. His two grandfathers fought in the First World War; he never met them, but he wanted to understand how these very young men went into trench warfare, came back, started a family of which he is the product. The widows, wives, grandmothers whom he met lived with an unspoken history. As he said, “aren’t we all the inheritors of the wars of the twentieth century?” If this is postmemory, it is so in the sense not even of stories, it’s really about the affects and the behaviors and the kinds of. . . Cristina Demaria: As you said, “products.” Marianne Hirsch: . . . Yes, the products, it’s really in the DNA that we have inherited, we are all the products of that. We all live with those legacies. Laurent Bécue-Renard is trying to understand how that shapes masculinity and femininity and the culture, and how these histories are transmitted even if they’re not really told. And that really kind of subsumed what I wanted to do with that term. It was fascinating that he’s third generation and he didn’t talk about his parents in France during the Second World War, but about his grandfathers. When he was interviewing the veterans of Iraq who were, probably, twenty years younger than he is, it was as their grandson, in a sense. This is something I didn’t quite understand in the beginning—that the temporal implications [. . .] are so complex that history stops being linear and is somehow simultaneous rather than genealogical. So, something else I learned is that although I never saw postmemory as a strictly biological, biographical, or familial structure, for some the literal connections are supremely important. I saw it more as a generational structure and I think that memory is always mediated through stories, through narratives, through images, through media. Even when it’s within the family, it’s still mediated. So, I was always very insistent on that, but then people who are children or grandchildren of survivors or actors within certain histories, wanted to preserve a special place for that literal relationship. In my book on postmemory, I tried to make space for them by distinguishing between familial and affiliative postmemory. At first it surprised me that people felt very protective of that space which is a position I’m not always that sympathetic to, because it feels like identity politics to me, or some sort of authenticity that I’ve always been suspicious of. The other thing that happened in the time that I’ve been working on postmemory is that a lot of interesting work in queer theory that complicates linearity, linear histories emerged. A critique that complicates the idea of genealogy and that looks at alternative kinds of family structures. And so I felt like my work was, in some ways, already doing that, even though it looked like it was about family, it wasn’t really, it was about a contestation about a kind of traditional family structure. Those are things that surprised me because I felt like there were some conversations that I didn’t quite realize I would be in but, I ended up in. Cristina Demaria: I was thinking of this very idea of affiliation and the ways in which different forms of commemoration of post dictatorship have developed in Latin America, very much linked memory is preserved, as in the movements of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo: the bearer of a certain memory is legitimized as such through a family connection. But there is a tendency now in Argentinean Memory Studies to go towards a more affiliative idea of memory and postmemory, since the very idea of family in a Latin culture can be also very much of a problem; it can be very traditional and has been used to support the dictatorship: God, the traditional family, and the country. . . Marianne Hirsch: Well it’s fascinating in Argentina because of course, that’s where family have DNA tests actually, so that a very literal, biological definition of identity has a political impact unlike many other places. Each context has its own politics and I think that’s what’s so interesting about working transnationally as you do and as I have. It is actually, if I can say it in more metaphorical terms, the untranslatabilities between these contexts: in any other context, if you wanted to do a DNA test to find out if you’re really the daughter of this person who’s already handed down to you all of these histories, you might think that that was a kind of identity politics, but, in Argentina it’s actually really important, because the people raising you could be the perpetrators of the crimes against your biological parents. Cristina Demaria: In the same context there are different layers. This idea of limiting the “property” of memory to the biological family, and to the associations of direct victims had stopped the more affiliative and cultural ways of elaborating the past. But now it is changing. I would like to move to your work within Women Creating Change, where there are scholars but also artists and performers. How do you work together, do you translate? And what happens when you go to a place like Istanbul, as you recently did, where you confront, different cultures, a very particular past and a troubled present. . . Marianne Hirsch: The larger project is called Women Creating Change but the working group within that that some of us have started, is called Women Mobilizing Memory and it really has to do with what you said before: how can memory be mobilized for to the idea of family transmission. Think of Argentina and how change in the future? Rather than being weighted down by a past that you can never get over. The trauma paradigm that came out of this wonderfully rich theoretical work of the 1990s is very much about keeping the wounds open and understanding the unspeakability of certain crimes, the kind of crushing of the human and of language through acts of persecution and genocide and the destruction of a culture. That’s been a very powerful paradigm in the study of memory. Our thought in working more comparatively and transnationally was to look at whether the practices of memory look the same in different places. One of the key questions is how can memory become activist and how can it become more future-oriented? How can the past be transmitted, how can we make sure that certain histories aren’t forgotten… Cristina Demaria: Not just to be “preserved,” but as living memories… Marianne Hirsch: Right, and not for monumentalization in some kind of a museum, but for change. That’s where the feminist angle is coming in. To do that work, we really thought it would be interesting not just to have an interdisciplinary academic group but to work together with practictioners—artists, activists, curators, museologists. . . and to see what kind of collaboration would emerge from that. We are working together with the Hemispheric Institute on Performance and Politics: Performance Studies is already the field that takes the kind of embodied nature of memory very much into account. In those conferences, in the Encuentros of the Hemispheric Institute, we’ve had working groups in which we talked about mobilizing memory, but we also always talked about embodiment. It’s really interesting to have academic conversations in a room with artists, dancers, theater practitioners, visual artists, and scholars. Now, I think that question about embodiment and how memory functions in the body is a very different question for a dancer than it is for an academic like me who’s going to write about it. That’s also a process of translation when you think about it, it’s really understanding the multidimensionality of knowledge. When we have visual artists in the group, they’re translating our ideas into a visual work and I feel that we could use that work to think with. As literary critics we do that anyway with the texts that we read, but the multiple texts are very interesting. And, then, you have the embodied practices of memory, like the walk of the mothers on Thursdays in Buenos Aires, or the walk of the Saturday Mothers in Istanbul; similar strategies, very different kind of impact, politically different moments in the histories of these mothers–activists. These practices are a kind of performance, and its cultural impact then becomes a way through which ideas about memory and memory practices can be developed. I find these multidimensional conversations really helpful. So far, we’ve worked in a triangular structure with Chile, Turkey, and the US but people in the group may be working on other sites as well, so it’s more about the conceptual connections than just about the sites. Often we think we understand something and we really don’t. So I think, in terms of translation, one of the things we decided from the very beginning is that we should just assume that we don’t understand. We shouldn’t just assume that things can be easily translated. For example, when the group was in Chile, we went to the Museo de la Memoria, which is a museum commemorating the coup against Allende and the crimes of the dictatorship of Pinochet. The narrative of the museum starts on September 11, 1973—that is, the day of the Golpe. Where’s the background? How are people supposed to understand how this happened? Isn’t there a prehistory? To us from the US, it seemed flawed as a museological choice. But our Chilean partners responded, “here in Chile, when you talk about the background, that's the right-wing thing to do,” because the right said the reason Allende was toppled was because he was failing, and there were strikes because of his bad government. . . The progressive history starts on the day and its aftermath. This is the kind of untranslatability that I think is at the core of this kind of work which I don’t even want to call comparative work anymore, because it implies that you can compare things, so I’m trying to talk about “connective” histories; we provide the connections but often, they’re not easily connectable. We have to start with, “maybe we don't understand,” rather than walking into a situation assuming you know how it should be done, because it’s different in different contexts. Siri Nergaard: It’s very interesting what you are saying about untranslatability and that you don’t want to use the comparative concept. . . Marianne: I mean, I was in comparative literature so you can imagine it’s not so easy for me to say that. . . Siri Nergaard: I understand. I am saying this also because recently there has been a sort of shift in translation studies towards a stronger attention towards untranslatability, an aspect that has been somehow neglected. We have been so focused on translatability, and recognizing it everywhere, that we have almost forgotten that untranslatability exists. Untranslatables exist: as you said, sometimes universes are uncomparable because they are untranslatable, but we can create the connections. Marianne Hirsch: In the conference that we had in Turkey, which was about mobilizing memory for change, there was a really interesting talk by the anthropologist Leyla Nezi who interviewed Kurdish youth and Turkish young people, about the relationship between the two cultures. She said, “in these interviews, nobody meets anybody else,” because for the Turkish young people, the important moments of their lives are ahead of them, but for the Kurdish young people, the important things have already happened for them in the losses that preceded their birth. They live in the same country, but they’re not in the same time zone. I think that’s a really interesting idea of the nonmeeting. How might their lost past be turned toward the future as well? What will make these histories translatable to each other? What kinds of solidarity might be forged between them? And what can we learn from each other’s experiences of memory and activism? These are some of the questions that I’ve been thinking about and translation is at their core. Thank you for giving me a chance to think with you about this. Cristina Demaria and Siri Nergaard: Thank you very much. writes about the transmission of memories of violence across generations, combining feminist theory with memory studies in a global perspective. Her recent books include The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (2012); Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory (2010), coauthored with Leo Spitzer; and Rites of Return: Diaspora Poetics and the Politics of Memory (2011), coedited with Nancy K. Miller. Hirsch is the William Peterfield Trent Professor of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Columbia University. She is one of the founders of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Social Difference. She is a former President of the Modern Language Association of America and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Unimi Open Journals

translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15747

Introduction Sherry Simon This special issue explores eight spaces of translation—geographical sites, urban spaces, and architectural structures—whose cultural meanings are shaped through language interactions and transfer. Each study confirms the idea that places are created through itineraries and narratives, wanderings and stories, which evolve over time. Situated in the complex cityscapes of Itae- won, Lagos, Lviv, Montreal, Talinn, Renaissance Florence, Marseille, and the historically rich interzone of Gibraltar, these places illustrate the formative powers of translation in defining sensory experience and memory. The idea of space and place receives diverse interpretations in these essays—contributing to a field of inquiry which is rapidly evolving. Space is not understood as a simple container where translation takes place, but rather as a site where production and interpretation are intermingled, where translations occur and where identity is reinterpreted. Spaces are indicators of regimes of translation, of the forces that converge to allow or impede the transfer of languages and memories. From the architectural structure of a san- itary station to the dialogue between Gibraltar and Tangier, from the pages of novels to bronze statues, from multilingual markets to the studies where scholars are bent over treatises on Kabbalistic thought—these diverse spaces explode the notion of the “where” of translation. *** In her reading of the Sanitary Station of Marseille, Simona Bonelli uses the lens of translation and memory to evoke a place of multiple pasts— linked to the history of Marseille in its function as a place of migration and passage. Originally designed as a medical checkpoint, a place for screening mi- grants, then long abandoned, it has now become a museum which neverthe- less maintains traces of its previous functions. Citing Barthes, Bonelli shows that architectural spaces can be read as chapters of a complex text, continually retranslated. Following the Station in its transformations over the years, she defines it as a palimpsest representing “a place of exile, of displacement, a metaphorical place that contains a plurality of meanings, errant trajectories, isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 11  and that lends itself to multiple interpretations.” Initially born as a “boundary area” because of its function of containment and delimitation, the Sanitary Station has eventually “swollen,” through a series of metamorphoses, into a threshold—a place caught up in a tension of the present. This passage from boundary to threshold is enabled by a history of translation. *** Hunam Yun’s textured analysis of the district of Itaewon, in Seoul, South Korea, emphasizes the rich history of twists and turns that has marked this zone. This is a history which is not, however, apparent in the capsule “translations” found in tourist guides. As an area which has seen a strong mil- itary presence across the centuries, most recently for stationing the Japanese army during the colonial period and subsequently the American army, as a place now attracting many migrants, and also as a place strongly associated with sexuality and sex workers, Itaewon has been the site of cultural amalga- mation and conflict. As Yun shows, the various translations of the name of Itaewon itself—foreigners’ village, village for being pregnant with a foreign- er’s child, village for pear trees—show that the city as a “a culture-generator” (Lotman) cannot be translated into one fixed image. Itaewon has been a place for travelers and trading, a space of trauma caused by the conflictual history of Korea, a foreigners’ village, a foreign land within the country, a colonized space, a space of freedom and resistance, a window onto Western culture, a space for cultural translation . . . Yun contrasts the selective translations and commodifications of the city with the richness of its reality and history. As a culture-generator, a city deserves a more adequate translation. *** Elena Murphy draws a portrait of the multilingual city of Lagos through readings of Nigerian authors who portray the different sounds and accents of one of Nigeria’s most diverse and vibrant cities. The multilingual texts of Sefi Atta, a leading voice in what has come to be known as “The Third Generation of Nigerian Writers,” replicate the language negotiations of the city. Languages such as Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, as well as Nigerian English and Nigerian Pidgin, flow through Atta’s novels, just as they flow through the city. Particularly interesting is the diversity of cultural forms and spaces which express this plurality—types of music such as afrobeat or highlife music, dance, film, as well as the spaces of Lagos’s streets and markets. Translation is present in varied forms, aiding in the creation of new hybrid linguistic forms and new semantic associations, typical features of interaction in urban areas. 12 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  The Straits of Gibraltar, with its twin cities of Gibraltar and Tang- ier, stand as emblematic spaces of translation—but also as spaces whose hy- bridities force a rethinking of translation itself. To negotiate across hybrid spaces is to concentrate on the border experience as generating a powerful political vision, working against binaries, against inside and outside. In such zones, translation is a foundational activity, an activity of cultural creation. África Vidal and Juan Jesús Zaro provide a portrait of the Strait of Gibraltar as a natural border between two continents (Africa and Europe), between two countries (Morocco and Spain), and between two cities (Gibraltar, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, and Ceuta, a Spanish city with its own statute of autonomous government), and offer nuanced descriptions of the cultural histories of those spaces as they have been in interaction with one another. Governed as one territory by the Romans and also during the eight centuries of Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, the Straits then be- come an indication of division across empires. The waters of the Strait carry “a layered text of narratives of belonging and exclusion.” Anastasiya Lyubas reads the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv as a space comprised of buildings, communities, maps, memories, and languages spo- ken, written, and read—a tactile, textile, and textual fabric. The “real” city, she argues, cannot be experienced without linguistic mediation. Inviting the read- er to stroll the city, stopping at monuments and buildings, consulting a map drawn by authors Igor Klekh, Yuri Andrukhovych, and Natalka Sniadanko, she gives the widest meaning to translation as a key to the multifaceted ele- ments which define city life. The city, thus, becomes a construct of individual and collective readings. The essay includes references to the events of 2013– 2014 in Ukraine that have problematized even further unresolved issues of identity, politics of memory, and belonging. With an eye attentive to shifts in the role of language in the city, Lyubas shows how the aural dimensions of the spoken languages of yesterday have become visual places, traces. Yesterday’s commerce has become trade in cultural meanings and in competing claims to the city. The city’s architecture, its history, literary scene, and projections of the future are read as a “text” offering insights into urban experience and the ways it is mediated and interpreted. *** Ceri Morgan’s reading of Montreal focuses on two novels from the 1960s which challenge orthodox versions of the language situation in the city. In Yvette Naubert’s La Dormeuse éveillée (1965) and Claire Mondat’s Poupée (1963), active and passive linguistic translations become signposts for a par- ticular kind of modernity, dramatizing embodied everyday translation prac- isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 13  tices occurring in places of work, leisure, and consumption, like the café and department store. The texts are striking for their choice of settings and their sometimes seemingly relaxed mediation of French and English interactions at a time when many examples of le roman montréalais are highlighting clash- es between these. They prefigure, in fact, many of the everyday interactions between French and English in contemporary Montreal. As such, they offer important pointers as to the possibilities of negotiating differences. Gender is highlighted in the analysis, the body of the protagonist navigating between past and present gender conventions and mappings of Montreal’s majority languages, as well as across the very different histories of the protagonists (the French-Canadian maid, the family of Holocaust survivors). Translation be- comes a way of being in the world, of overcoming trauma. In many respects, Naubert’s and Mondat’s protagonists can be seen as “languagers”—that is, “people [. . .] who engage with the world-in-action, who move in the world in a way that allows the risk of stepping out of one’s habitual ways of speak- ing and attempt to develop different, more relational ways of interacting with the people and phenomena that one encounters in everyday life” (Phipps 2011, 365). Translation facilitates a mobility associated with feminine asser- tion; translation allows escapes from, or challenges to, the social constraints of the past. Naubert’s and Mondat’s heroines inhabit a kind of messy middle in their employing of the “tactics” as “always [. . .] partial, provisional and broken” (Phipps 2011, 375). Moving inside and outside the city, they embody a translation practice beyond representation and vital to a “relational” being in the world. *** Federico Bellentani considers the case of the relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Talinn as a practice of cultural reinvention. Here translation takes on its medieval spatial meaning as the physical transfer of a sacred body. This paper proposed an analysis of the marginalization, the removal, and the relo- cation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn. Employing the vocabulary of semi- otics, looking at monument as text, Bellentani argues that the removal cannot be interpreted through the clashing interpretations of Ethnic-Estonians and Russian speakers. Rather, the Bronze Soldier embodied an array of multifacet- ed interpretations and the process of its relocation elicited different emotional reactions. Its relocation two kilometers outside the center of the city had both spatial and ideological implications: it was an official attempt to displace its meanings toward a peripheral area of both Tallinn and Estonian culture as such—that is, to translate them into the context of contemporary European Estonia. 14 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  The final essay by Laurent Lamy tells the fascinating story of a transla- tional movement whose center was Renaissance Florence. The paradigm shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe, he argues, was in part possible be- cause of the combination of mystical and rational thought which emerged in the early Renaissance—largely through the translations of one Flavius Mithri- dates, born Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada (ca. 1445–1489), a colorful figure who was a Jewish convert to Christianity. From 1485 to 1487, he labored by the side of Pico della Mirandola, translating Kabbalistic literature. The col- laboration between the two scholars was one of the most fertile translation ventures in the history of ideas in the West; it provided the European intellec- tual elite with a reservoir of ideas and symbolic patterns that found resonance in provinces of thought “located many leagues from their country of origin.” The introduction of Persian and Chaldean solar theologies, and the concept of a plurality of worlds presented through the various perspectives offered by cosmological speculations of the Jewish Kabbalah, had a large impact on the evolving ideas of the intellectual elite of the Quattrocento. The translation of a critical mass of Kabbalistic and Arabian astronomical treatises—the begin- nings of which far exceeded the translations produced under the enlightened caliphate of Bagdad between the ninth and twelfth centuries—established, in a very short time span, a fertile interplay between sapiential traditions of an- cient times and embryonic ideas of modern science. Florence was, for several decades, the epicenter of this heightened activity around translation, which opened up a fault line that shook the geocentric status quo. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 15 

Unimi Open Journals

translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15748

Marseilles’ Sanitary Station: morphologies of displacement between memory and desire Simona Elena Bonelli [email protected] <Abstract> The former “Sanitary Station” of Marseille was built in 1948 by the architect Fernand Pouillon, its history closely linked to the history of the Phocaean city. The main entry and departure point for travelers and immigrants arriving by the sea, it was aban- doned for forty years and was almost destroyed in 2009. In 2013, it was transformed into the museum Regards de Provence, but still keeps the memory of its past: the “steam room” (part of this quarantine internment system) is a permanent installation and is part of a section called “Memories of the Sanitary Station.” Migrants from all over the world arriving in Marseille were “displaced” here to go through disinfection, screening, and a vaccination process in a bid to fight the city’s ever-present threat of epidemics. This was therefore a multilingual context, but also a place in which bodies were forced to undergo a transformation. Somehow, these people, like a text under the eyes of a translator, were carefully examined before being allowed access to a new space, a new context. The building itself is a palimpsest, made of different phases of transforma- tion: from Sanitary station to a place occupied by squatters to a museum. What makes the Sanitary Station an emblematic city space is the fact that the different “layers” of its transformations are all present—none has been cancelled. An urban structure that is at the same time—as Derrida puts it—translatable and untranslatable: “Un texte ne vit que s’il survit, et il ne sur-vit que s’il est à la fois traductible et intraduisible.” “La città non dice il suo passato, lo contiene come le linee d’una mano, scritto negli spigoli delle vie, nelle griglie delle finestre, negli scorrimano delle scale, nelle antenne dei para- fulmini, nelle aste delle bandiere, ogni segmento rigato a sua volta di graffi, seghettature, intagli, svirgole.” (Calvino, 1979, 18)1 In Invisible Cities, Marco Polo and Kublai Khan talk about the impossibility of defining what a city is and what it is not. Cities are the product of multiple and unpredictable interactions rather than the result of a rational plan. Urban space is read and interpreted by Italo Calvino as a place constantly crossed by fluctuations and rhythms. In one of the sections called “Cities and memory,” Marco Polo describes the city of Zaira that, he tells the Emperor, consists of 1 “The city [...] does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls” (Calvino 1997, 9). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 17  “relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past” (Calvino 1994, 9). The urban landscape is made of time and space, and, like texts, cities are made of signs that we can read and interpret. In this article I would like to read the past of an emblematic building, the Sanitary Station, “like the lines of a hand” of Marseille, trying to decipher its patterns, its trans- formations, its symbolic function inside the city. The former “Sanitary Station” of Marseille (figure 1) was built in 1948 by the architect Fernand Pouillon, and the history of this place is closely linked to that of the Phocaean city. Main entry and departure point for trav- ellers and immigrants arriving by the sea, it was abandoned for forty years and was almost destroyed in 2009. In 2013 it was completely transformed into the museum Regards de Provence, but it still keeps the memory of its past: the “salle des étuves” (the steam room, part of the quarantine internment system) (figure 1) is a permanent installation and is part of a section called “Memories of the Sanitary Station.” If the concept of memory recalls something that is buried in the past, what makes this building an exemplary space is the fact that all the different phases of its transformations are still there—they have not been canceled.2 The city of Marseille is not new to epidemics. The Mediterranean sea has always been a source of life and prosperity, but also of death: through the centuries, the population of Marseille has been devastated by plague and pes- tilence, and in the sixteenth century the first sanitation board was established, whose members inspected all incoming ships, cargoes, crew, and passengers. The worst plague outbreak in the history of Marseille occurred in 1720, when the merchant ship Grand Saint-Antoine brought pestilence-carrying rats and fleas into the Vieux Port. It was the “Great Plague of Marseille,” the epidemics that Antonin Artaud evokes in his Le Théâtre et son double (1964) to develop an analogy between theater and pestilence; the plague is a transforming force that purges the world of its violence and ugliness.3 Although this epidemic was considered the last outbreak of plague in France, at the beginning of the twentieth century small epidemics and sporadic cases were recorded in Mar- seille and Paris. 2 The book that retraces the several transformations from the Sanitary Station to the Museum Regards de Provence has the emblematic title of Métamorphoses (Muntaner and Durousseau 2013). 3 The streets of a plague-ridden city are blocked by mounds of unidentifiable corpses; at this point, Artaud writes, “[l]e théâtre comme la peste est une crise qui se dénoue par la mort ou par la guérison. Et la peste est un mal supérieur parce qu’elle est une crise complète après laquelle il ne reste rien que la mort ou qu’une extrême purification. De même le théâtre est un mal parce qu’il est l’équilibre suprême, qui ne s’acquiert pas sans destruction” (Artaud 1964, 25). 18 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  1. The former Sanitary Station of Marseille 2. The Salle des étuves After World War ii, there were fifteen million refugees, or “displaced people,” in Europe. Marseille organized the reception of thousands of immi- grants by creating a strategy of sanitary prophylaxis against plague, cholera, yellow fever, typhus fever, and smallpox. In 1948, the French architects An- dré Champollion, Fernand Pouillon, and René Egger were charged with the project of designing the Sanitary Station of Marseille. The main aim of their project was to create a place of disease prevention and control but, at the same time, to defy rigid spatial segregations and the exposure of individuals to a controlling centralized observation. For this reason they created a structure with several one-way corridors through which individuals could move in or- der to be washed and disinfected and undergo a medical examination (figure isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 19  3. Area for ablutions and disinfection 3). Everything was done to avoid any sense of humiliation to the passengers: wide, luminous spaces and above all a horizontal linearity that invested win- dows, objects, and at the same time the building’s structure created a place that evoked the atmosphere of a ship. These similarities between a ship and a place receiving potentially ill people suggests the Renaissance allegory of the “ship of fools” that, as Foucault explains, symbolizes an intermediate moment between the medieval exclusion of lepers outside the gates of the city and the exclusion of the mad within the social body (Foucault 1988). Every boat that arrived in Marseille found its uncanny “double” located on the threshold of the city, in a place that lies between the sea and the urban space, a liminal area that must be crossed if the individual wants to be considered healthy and, above all, inoffensive to the rest of the population. The threshold is an in-between state that separates two spaces of dif- ferent nature. As Walter Benjamin observed in his reflections on architecture: 20 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  The threshold is a zone. And in fact a zone of passage (Übergang). Transformation, passage, flux—all are contained in the word threshold. [. . .] We have become quite poor as far as threshold experiences go. Falling asleep is perhaps the only such ex- perience that has remained to us. (quoted in Sieburth, 19) But the notion of threshold has also fascinated Gérard Genette who, in the opening pages of Seuils, explains that “plus que d’une limite ou d’une frontière étanche, il s’agit ici d’un seuil ou—mot de Borges à propos d’une préface—d’un ‘vestibule’ qui offre à tout un chacun la possibilité d’entrer, ou de rebrousser chemin” (Genette 1987, 8).4 Philosophers like Wittgenstein and Benjamin have created several parallels between the forms of the city and the diverse forms of language, and semiotic studies invite us to read the city through its signifying forms. In his “Sémiologie et urbanisme,” Roland Barthes sees the city as a discourse, and this discourse, he writes, is truly a language: “Et nous retrouvons la vieille intuition de Victor Hugo: la ville est une écriture; celui qui se déplace dans la ville, c’est-à-dire l’usager de la ville (ce que nous sommes tous), est une sorte de lecteur qui, selon ses obligations et ses déplacements, prélève des fragments de l’énoncé pour les actualiser en secret” (Barthes 1985, 268).5 Architectural spaces can be read as chapters of a complex text—the city—made of streets, traffic, buildings, and so on that interact in a complex game of intertextuality. From this standpoint, the Sanitary Station is a multilingual context, a sort of Babel, but also a place in which the bodies of the immigrants had to undergo a transformation. Somehow these people, like a text in the eyes of a translator, were carefully examined before being allowed into a new space, a new context. A translation implies a movement, the concept of carrying something across. The English word derives from the Latin translatio, which itself comes from trans “across” and la-tio- “carrying”; the Italian language adds a cultural element to this image of movement with the use of the noun tradotta, which is a special train used for the transportation of military troops or deportees. By extension, in Italian it is possible to say that “l’assassino è stato tradotto in carcere” (“the murderer was taken, ‘translated’ to prison”). In his book The Pleasure of the Text, Barthes asks the question “Does the text have a human form, is it a figure, an anagram of the body?” (Barthes 1986, 16). We could ask ourselves whether the human body has 4 “More than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold or—a word Borg- es used apropos of a preface—a ‘vestibule’ that offers the possibility of either stepping inside or turning back” (Genette 1997, 1–2). 5 “And here we rediscover Victor Hugo’s old intuition: the city is writing. He who moves about the city, e.g., the user of the city (what we all are), is a kind of reader who, following his obliga- tions and his movements, appropriates fragments of the utterance in order to actualize them in secret” (Barthes 1986, 199). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 21  a textual status, that of a “readable” object of translation, whose position can be changed and relocated in a new context. The “transformation” of the refugees that arrived in Marseille took place in a building organized as a series of passageways that somehow evoke Benjamin’s arcades, although with some remarkable differ- ences. Sherry Simon writes that Benjamin uses the arcades as a cultural historian to represent an ambiguous urban space, neither inside nor outside, a passageway which is also a space of consumption, a new materialization of urban space. In the essay on translation, he uses the arcade to for- mulate a contrast between interpretive translation (which uses as its unit the “sentence” or the “proposition”) and literal translation (which proceeds word by word). The first, he says, produces a translation akin to a wall, the second a text which functions more like an arcade: ‘For if the sentence is the wall before the language of the original, literalness is the arcade.’ The glass roof allows light to flow through matter, just as the literally translat- ed text is a transparent surface which allows the light of the original to fall onto the new version, creating an interplay of surfaces. (Simon 2000, 75) I find this passage extremely interesting because it gives me the op- portunity to explore the relationship between the process of translation and the spaces of translation. Both in the Parisian arcade and in the Sanitary Sta- tion of Marseille, the presence of a glass construction is essential, but while in the arcade the glass roof has the aim of accentuating the transition zone between the outdoor world of the street and the interior space,6 in the Sanitary Station the lateral glass walls contribute to the brightness of the space but at the same time the concrete structure creates a screen to guarantee the privacy of those passing by. Benjamin sees the arcades as the entry point of the Parisian labyrinth, a place where the flâneur could dwell; the Sanitary Station is a one- way passage in which there is no time for dwelling: the “translation” of those who are already “dis-placed” people should be done quickly in order to obtain a transformed, clean version of their bodies. Like Genette, I would like to insist on the term “vestibule,” because, in addition to the concept of “thresh- old,” this word also conveys the idea of clothing if we accept the etymology from the Latin vestibulum, from vestis “garment” and -bulum, probably from the sense of “a place to dress.”7 When the immigrants arrived in the Sanitary Station, they were first of all asked to undress so that their clothes could be 6 Benjamin was attracted by the ambiguity of glass, by the transformative power of this building material through its architectural application: “It is not a coincidence that glass is so hard and smooth a material to which nothing can be fastened. It is also cold and sober. Things that are made of glass have no ‘aura.’ Glass is the enemy par excellence of secrecy. It is also the enemy of property” (quoted in Heynen 1999, 155). 7 Ovid, in his Fasti, links the term vestibulum to the Roman goddess of hearth and home Vesta. In any case, if the vestibule is now the place where outer clothing is put on or removed in leaving or entering a house, for the Romans it was the area in which they used to depose their clothes. 22 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  washed and disinfected; they then had to go through the communal showers that, thanks to a system of mobile partition walls, became individual show- ers. The city that has made “Savon de Marseille” its emblem distributed bars of soap and towels to the immigrants who, eventually, got back their clean clothes and could go upstairs for a medical examination. The Sanitary Station only remained active for a couple of years, un- til the World Health Organization coordinated a global vaccination program that made entities such as the station redundant. Before entering a country, people were supposed to show their vaccination cards; this was the beginning of preventive medicine. After having served as offices for the administrative clerks of the Direction du Contrôle Sanitaire aux Frontières, the Sanitary Sta- tion of Marseille was closed in 1971. A new chapter in this building’s life then began—that of refuge of squatters. The edifice that was used as an institution for disease prevention and control became a place of meetings and creativity for squatters and graffiti art- ists. The white aseptic walls of the Sanitary Station were filled with colorful po- ems, tags, and murals. Round images replaced the square tiles covering the walls, showers, and steam rooms. An ephemeral form of art violated the visual and ar- chitectural order and setting, breaking the rules of the space–time relationship. The body, the skin of the sanitary station was “scratched,”8 in the same way as the skin of the migrants was scratched to be immunized against smallpox. The squatters imposed a transformation on this building by “inoculating” the germs of a revolutionary art. In 2009, in order to protest against the permanent closing of the place, the squatters burned a car inside the building (figure 4), which was 4. Burned car in Sanitary Station 8 The term “graffiti” derives from the Italian word graffio, a “scratch” or “scribble”. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 23  nearly destroyed—fire as a sort of extreme catharsis that paved the way to the next transformation. The burned car is a trace, its cinders a rem(a)inder of something that is at the same time present and absent. In Feu la cendre, Derrida describes how one particular phrase, “il y a là cendre” (“cinders there are”), continually returned to him and insists on the importance of the trace: Si vous ne vous rappelez plus, c’est que l’incinération suit son cours et la consumation va de soi, la cendre même. Trace destinée, comme toute, à disparaître d’elle-même pour égarer la voie autant que pour rallumer une mémoire. La cendre est juste : parce que sans trace, justement elle trace plus qu’une autre, et comme l’autre trace. (Derrida 1984, 30)9 What remains from the destruction returns to the surface, to the skin; when the smoke dissipates, the incinerated place resurfaces. The evocation of haunting memories that reemerge from a fire is at the center of the artistic production of Claudio Parmiggiani, who in his work Delocazione (De-loca- tion) builds installations and sets them on fire, revealing the traces of the disappeared objects. This is what Didi-Huberman calls “une matière de l’ab- sence”—things disappear, but the memory of their presence still remains.10 The Regards de Provence foundation, in need of a permanent structure for its exhibitions in the city of Marseille, decided to rehabilitate this building and create a museum that collected artworks created in and about Provence. But before its permanent recuperation and conversion, before the ancient Sanitary Station was transformed into a Museum, a French photographer and installation artist was asked to fix an image in which the traces of the past could interact with the poetic metamorphoses that this place has experienced. Georges Rousse is an artist attracted by neglected and forgotten sites, by their solitude and emptiness; he takes his inspiration from the “wounds” suffered by an edifice to create an ephemeral “mise-en-scène” that he then immortalizes with photographs.11 One of the main characteristics of a photograph is its link with the referent, a sort 9 “If you no longer recall it, it is because the incineration follows its course and the consummation proceeds from itself, the cinder itself. Trace destined, like everything, to disappear from itself, as much in order to lose the way as to rekindle a memory. The cinder is exact: because without a trace it precisely traces more than an other, and as the other trace(s)” (Derrida 1991, 57). 10 In his book Génie du non-lieu, Georges Didi-Huberman explores the works of Parmiggiani. The Italian artist shows that fire does not cause the complete disappearance of an object, but, rather, it delocates it. The question of memory and survival therefore becomes essential: “Il se- rait donc abusive d’identifier l’œuvre de Parmiggiani à une simple nostalgie du passé (Delocazi- one est d’ailleurs plus proche d’Hiroshima que d’une reconstitution pompéienne). Cette œuvre vise plutôt un travail de la mémoire—une prise en considération de la survivance—qui a fait dire à l’artiste que ‘les veritables Antiques, c’est nous’” (Didi-Huberman 2001, 43). 11 His artistic intervention is multifaceted: “I call upon various methods of art: I am the designer of the project, the painter on-site, the architect by my interpretation of a given space and by the construction I organise there within, and finally the photographer who coordinates all these actions” (http://www.georgesrousse.com/english/news/rousse-speech.html). 24 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  of “reality effect” that makes the past reality of the object indubitable. In La Chambre claire, Barthes argues that the photographic referent is not the same as the referent of other systems of representation: whereas in painting the presence of the model is optional and in language the referents can be chimerical, in a photograph we cannot deny that the thing “has been there.”12 This significant aspect of referentiality seems to compensate for an inexplicable lack of images in relation to the activity of these spaces. In fact, neither the book Metamorphoses published by the Musée Regards de Provence (Muntaner and Durousseau 2013) nor the 45-minute documentary that, in the same Museum, explores the history of the plague in Marseille, immigration, and the building contain a single picture concerning the people who passed through the Sanitary Station, and there are only a few pictures of the areas and rooms from when it was active. Somehow, the artistic view of Georges Rousse is asked to capture, in single images, the sig- nificant past of these spaces, and he does so by insisting on the double liminality of the Sanitary Station: the instant captured by the photos of the French artist is not only that of a place that has represented for years the liminal area between the port and the city, but also that of a phase of an urban space that has gone through several transformations.13 The technique used by Rousse is that of anamorphosis; whereas trompe l’œil gives the illusion that a flat surface is three dimensional, his anamorphic images create the illusion that a three-dimensional area is flat (figures 5 and 6). Although it looks as if the geometric form has been digitally created, the illusion generated by these photographs is optical, and represents the outcome of several weeks of work so that the colorful geometric is only visible from a specific point of view. The anamorphic figure invites those who are watching it to move, to change their point of view, in order to bring into perfect focus the object of interpretation. Nevertheless, the installations created by Georges Rousse, once they are immortalized by the camera, do not ask the viewer to move, to change their perspective: his artwork is intended only for the lens, and not for an ob- server in the actual space. Rousse creates a “before” and “after” effect—first, the “deconstructed” red circle and then the perfectly round red circle reassembled by the camera. In doing so, he wanders in the rooms of the Sanitary Station with the eye of the photographer who is trying to find the right standpoint.14 12 Its essence is recorded in the formula “ça a été,” “that has been.” 13 In an interview about his installations at the future Musée Regards de Provence, Georges Rousse said that “[l]e port c’était la station sanitaire qui accueillait les immigrants mais c’est aussi le point de départ vers l’ailleurs. [. . .] Je voulais rendre compte de ce nouvel espace qui a perdu toute fonctionnalité et qui va disparaitre, cet entre-deux” (Muntaner and Durousseau 2013, 109) 14 “Je déambule dans les lieux avec l’œil du photographe pour repérer le bon point de vue jusqu’à l’image finale qui a besoin de l’appareil photographique comme outil de reproduction” (Muntaner and Durousseau 2013, 111). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 25 26 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  In these ephemeral installations that are immortalized only by the lens of a camera, the gaze of the artist leaves its place to another “gaze”: that of the Museum Regards de Provence, a museum that has slowly become a sort of palimpsest, made of its different phases of transformation. The permanent installation shows the old steam room and a documentary that retraces the history of this building, while the temporary exhibitions are housed in galler- ies on the ground and first floors. The several windows along both the front and the back walls of this long, horizontal building invite the observer to gaze outside, towards the port and the city. In the course of all its transformations, 5–6. the Sanitary Station has been “living on”; its trans-lation, its trans-positions Rousse, anamorphic have not destroyed it. Like a text, this building has survived only because, installation to paraphrase Derrida, it was at once translatable and untranslatable.15 This building outlives itself, is at the outskirts of its own living. Like Georges Rousse, Walter Benjamin was attracted by the decayed or abandoned spaces of the city; likewise, he was fascinated by “thresholds” and borders. He first visited Marseille in 1926, and then several times in 1928 and 1931. His last visit to the Phocaean city took place in 1940, shortly before his death. Marseille was for him like a book to be interpreted: In the early morning I drove through Marseilles to the station, and as I passed familiar places on my way, and then new, unfamiliar ones or others that I remembered only vaguely, the city became a book in my hands, into which I hurriedly glanced a few last times before it passed from my sight for who knows how long into a warehouse crate. (Benjamin 1999b, 447) Whereas Paris represents for Benjamin the ideal place to discover the traces of social meaning and the collective dreams of modernity, he finds Mar- seille hard to decipher, to the point where he once commented that no city so stubbornly resisted his efforts to depict it as did Marseille (Eiland 2014, 310). Benjamin sees each street as a vertiginous experience; for him the city-dweller should be “on the threshold of the metropolis as of the middle class” (Benja- min 2006, 40). Nevertheless, in his writings on hashish, and in particular in the text “Hashish in Marseilles,” he does not stay on the borders. Rather, he lets himself sink inside the “ventre of Marseilles”: 15 “Un texte ne vit que s’il sur-vit, et il ne sur-vit que s’il est à la fois traductible et intraduisible. [. . .] Totalement traductible, il disparaît comme texte, comme écriture, comme corps de langue. Totalement intraduisible, même à l’intérieur de ce qu’on croit être une langue, il meurt aussitôt. La traduction triomphante n’est donc ni la vie ni la mort du texte, seulement ou déjà sa survie. On en dira de même de ce que j’appelle écriture, marque, trace, etc. Ça ne vit ni ne meurt, ça survit. Et ça ne ‘commence’ que par la survie (testament, itérabilité, restance, crypte, détache- ment déstructurant par rapport à la rection ou direction ‘vivante’ d’un ‘auteur’ qui ne se noierait pas dans les parages de son texte)” (Derrida 1986, 147–149). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 27  I lay upon the bed, read and smoked. All the while opposite to me this glimpse of the ventre of Marseilles. (Now the images begin to take hold of me). The street that I’d so often seen is like an incision cut by a knife. (Benjamin 1978, 138) When, under the effect of hashish, Benjamin describes the streets of Marseille, he enters a surrealist dream world, made of strange sounds, images, and scents. His perception of what he sees in the streets—where he strolls to find a restaurant for dinner—is distorted, the dimensions of time and space are abolished.16 Unexpectedly, the words of a conversation in a little port bar sound to him like dialect: The people of Marseilles suddenly did not speak good enough French to me. They were stuck at the level of dialect. The phenomenon of alienation that may be involved in this, which Kraus has formulated in the fine dictum “The more closely you look at a word the more distantly it looks back” appears to extend to the optical. (Benjamin 1978, 144) Michel de Certeau writes that the city is a text, and that walking in a city has its own rhetoric: “Il y a une rhétorique de la marche. L’art de ‘tourn- er’ des phrases a pour équivalent un art de tourner des parcours. Comme le langage ordinaire, cet art implique et combine des styles et des usages” (De Certeau 2005, 15).17 Nevertheless, the legibility of a city changes; it is the per- spective of the viewer that defines the object of observation. When Benjamin quotes Kraus’s aphorism (“The closer one looks at a word, the further away it looks back”), he too evokes the importance of perspective. How should we read a city, its translation zones, its palimpsests? I would like to close this paper with another quote from Calvino’s Invisible Cities: In due modi si raggiunge Despina: per nave o per cammello. La città si presenta differente a chi viene da terra e a chi dal mare. [. . .] Ogni città riceve la sua forma dal deserto a cui si oppone; e così il cammelliere e il marinaio vedono Despina, città di confine tra due deserti. (Calvino 1994, 370)18 16 “Versailles, for one who has taken hashish, is not too large, nor eternity too long” (Benjamin 1978,138). 17 “There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of ‘turning’ phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path. Like ordinary language, this art implies and combines styles and uses” (De Certeau 1984, 100). 18 “Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. [. . .] Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts” (Calvino 1997, 17). 28 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Whereas the city of Zaira is part of a section devoted to memory, De- spina is a city of desire that opens paths and opportunities for visitors. There are multiple ways of seeing the same city, depending on which face of the city they see. Those who arrive at Despina have to shift their perspective, as if they were in front of an anamorphic image. By building the Sanitary Station, Mar- seille has tried to give itself a “face” from which the immigrants could see it, but France’s oldest city has not resisted the univocal direction imposed by this passage point: the Station operated for a few years, quickly transformed by artists who made this structure a place of exile, of displacement, a metaphori- cal place that contains a plurality of meanings and errant trajectories, and that lends itself to multiple interpretations. The story of those anonymous people who arrived in Marseille and whose body/corpus underwent a transformation in order to be admitted to a new context intertwines with the story of another migrant who, some years before, in 1940, had been trying to escape France for the United States: Walter Benjamin. He went from Paris to Marseille, which at that time was full of refu- gees, especially those from countries occupied by the German army. The philos- opher who used to be an extraordinary city dweller and who loved to get lost in the meanders of a city, found himself obliged to follow the route taken by many refugees. In Marseille he obtained a passport issued by the American Foreign Service, but when he discovered that the port was virtually closed he tried to cross the Spanish border by walking up into the mountains. He never managed to traverse the most important boundary of his life, however, and in Portbou he was refused entry into Spain. He was held in Portbou overnight and sent back to occupied France the next morning. The morphine Benjamin had brought with him from Marseille was strong enough to kill him. Hannah Arendt wrote about her dear friend and the Kafkian situation in which he found his death: A few weeks later the embargo on visas was lifted again. One day earlier Benjamin would have got through without any trouble; one day later the people in Marseille would have known that for the time being it was impossible to pass through Spain. Only on that particular day was the catastrophe possible. (Arendt 1990, 24) Benjamin died in a liminal space, in a liminal time; a bitter twist of fate for the philosopher who has taught us the important difference between “boundary” and “threshold”: “The threshold must be carefully distinguished from the boundary. A Schwell <threshold> is a zone. Transformation, passage, wave action are in the word schwellen, swell, and etymology ought not to over- look these senses” (Benjamin 1999, 494). Following Benjamin’s fundamental distinction, we might suggest that the Sanitary Station was initially born as a “boundary area” because of its isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 29  function of containment and delimitation, and that it has eventually “swol- len,” with an extraordinary series of metamorphoses, into a threshold, a place caught up in a tension, an innovative space. The Regards de Provence muse- um is now a site of rewriting, a place that combines memory of its past and a gaze towards the future. It has not lost its “in-between position,” though, caught as it is between the ancient Cathedral and the new buildings (Mucem, Villa Mediterranée) designed by internationally renowned architects. A poten- tial space for hybridization. <References> Arendt, Hannah. 1999. “Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940.” In Walter Benjamin, Illumina- tions, edited by Hannah Arendt; translated by Harry Zorn. London: Pimlico. 7–60. Artaud, Antonin. 1964. “Le Théâtre et la peste.” In Le Théâtre et son double. Paris: Gallimard. 25–26. Barthes, Roland. 1973. Le Plaisir du texte. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. . 1973. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang. . 1980. La Chambre claire: note sur la photographie. Paris: Gallimard. . 1985. “Sémiologie et urbanisme.” In L’Aventure sémiologique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. . 1986. “Semiology and the Urban.” In The City and the Sign: An Introduction to Urban Semiotics. Edited by Mark Gottdiener and Alexandros Ph. Lagopou- los. New York: Columbia University Press. 87–98. Benjamin, Walter. 1978. “Hashish in Marseilles.” In Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Edited by Peter Demetz. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Harcourt Brace. 137–145. . 1999a. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin Mc- Laughlin. Cambridge (Mass.) and London (England): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. . 1999b. Selected Writings. Edited by Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. . 2006. The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire. Edited by Mi- chael W. Jennings. Cambridge (Mass.) and London (England): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Calvino, Italo. 1979. Le città invisibili. Turin, Einaudi. . 1997. Invisible cities. Translated by William Weaver. London: Vintage Books. De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Ren- dall. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. . 2005. “Rhétoriques combinatoires.” In L’invention du quotidien. Tome 1—Arts de faire [1980–1990]. Folio Essais. Paris: Gallimard. Derrida, Jacques. 1984. Feu la Cendre/Ciò che resta del fuoco. Translated by Stefa- no Agosti. Firenze: Sansoni. . 1986. “Survivre.” In Parages. Paris: Galilée. 109-203. . 1991. Cinders. Translated by Ned Lukacher. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 30 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Didi-Huberman, Georges. 2001. Génie du non-lieu. Air, poussière, empreinte, han- tise. Paris: Minuit. Eiland, Howard, and M. W. Jennings. 2014. Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1988. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Vintage Books. Genette, Gerard. 1987. Seuils. Paris: Seuil. . 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge (Mass.): Cambridge University Press. Translated by Jane E.Lewin. Heynen, Hilde. 1999. Architecture and Modernity. A Critique. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. Muntaner, Bernard, and Thierry Durousseau. 2013. Métamorphoses. Station Sani- taire en Musée Regards de Provence. Marseille: Fondations Regards de Provence. Sieburth , Richard. “Benjamin the Scrivener.” in Benjamin: Philosophy, History, Aes- thetics. Ed. Gary Smith. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989. 13-37. Simon, Sherry. 2000. “The Paris Arcades, the Ponte Vecchio, and the Comma of Translation.” Translators’ Journal, vol. 45 (1): 73–79. <Simona Elena Bonelli> She is a translator and lives in Marseille. She studied English and French Literature (University of Siena, Italy) and received her MA and PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory from Car- diff University, UK. She has taught English Language and Literature at the Universities of Siena and Perugia (Italy). Bonelli has published Tito Andronico. Il testo come simulacro del corpo, and has edited Seg- ni particolari: l’immagine del viso, l’immaginario del nome proprio, both with Quattroventi, Urbino. Her books and essays cover topics relating to Elizabethan literature, philosophy, aesthetics, gender studies, and trans- lation theory. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 31 

Unimi Open Journals

translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15749

Translation and Fragmented Cities: Focus on Itaewon, Seoul Hunam Yun [email protected] <Abstract> Cities are open texts. They are perpetually transformed by their dynamic relationship with history and with the people who live in them. They are “rearticulated, transformed from a singular structure into a multilateral palimpsest that can be ‘written’ up and over, again and again,” with time. Therefore, the boundaries of cities’ identities continuously expand with this dynamic movement. There can be no single, fixed, or com- plete description of a city, which is why cities require continuous translation. However, cities are commonly represented as a single, fixed, and complete image in the process of translation through selective appropriation, and people consume that image. This paper attempts to reveal the process and ideological bias in such selective appropriation with a focus on Itaewon, South Korea. Historically, Itaewon has always been a site of different cultural encounters reflecting the historical twists and turns of Korea. After the Japanese invasion of the country in 1592 and the Manchu war of 1636, Japanese and Chinese soldiers stayed in the area. Then, during the colonial period, the Japanese army was stationed there, and after liberation, the American army was quartered there. Now, Mus- lims are flocking to the area, and it is becoming a city of immigrants. Because of these dynamic historical moments, Itaewon has been the site of cultural amalgamation and conflict, always retaining traces of the past. However, the images of Itaewon created by tourist books are ahistorical and fixed; the city has been fragmented as a commodity to be consumed through selective appropriation, and its dynamic history has been erased. The most common of these images are those of shopping centers and the red light dis- trict, images that have been reinforced by reproduction throughout decades. This paper investigates the process of this fragmentation of Itaewon and its underlying ideology. introduction I was motivated to consider the aspects of a city’s translation (in terms of in- tersemiotic translation in which nonverbal text is transferred into verbal text) when I found the translation of Itaewon, an area located in the northern part of Seoul, South Korea. Shockingly, the words that caught my eye were “Red Light District.” Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia, in its entry on Itaewon, highlighted only the Red Light District as a local attraction, as follows:1 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaewon (last accessed December, 2014). 32 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Contents 1. Local attractions 1.1 Red Light District 2. See also 3. Notes 4. External links With a brief explanation of the geographical location of Itaewon, Wikipedia introduces local attractions, focusing on the international dishes, hotels, shops, and clubs that tourists can enjoy: Many restaurants serving international dishes are found in this area […]. Major ho- tels such as The Grand Hyatt and local landmark The Hamilton Hotel can be found here as well as dozens of shops and services aimed at tourists. High quality leather products in Korea can be found […] as well as various types of traditional Korean souvenirs. […] Itaewon is one of the popular club congested area in Korea, […] Most of foreign people go to the clubs for clubbing and hooking up while they are staying in Korea.2 Then separate space was allocated to the introduction of the Red Light District under the same title: There is a portion of Itaewon known as “Hooker Hill” among GI’s of different allied nations stationed in South Korea. Although the stereotype of only American ser- vicemen frequenting this area is well-known, men from all other countries, including Middle-Eastern and African, are known to frequent this area as well. Furthermore, because South Korea is not widely socially accepting of homosexuals, there is an underground gay area within this district as well. The prominent image of Itaewon represented by Wikipedia is of a “retail” city—selling goods and bodies. An explanation of this followed: “This article is written like a travel guide rather than an encyclopedic description of the subject. [. . .]” (July 2013). This explanation is very significant in that it suggests that a travel guide does not present full, complete, and thorough information, but rather is se- lective regarding the information it includes. This is quite appropriate since a travel guide should be light enough for travelers to carry. However, the problem with selective information—in other words selective translation—is the image the translation produces. This paper is concerned with this point. Translation has been frequently presented as an activity to create an image of others or of selves, in the case of Itaewon, for example, this includes “a nostalgic image of a lost past” about Japanese people (Fowler 1992), images of the East by the West in colonial contexts (Niranjana 1992), or a self-image 2 The article has since been altered, but there is no significant difference in its content. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 33  by a colonized people (Tymoczko 1999). The process involves “a deliberate and conscious act of selection, assemblage, structuration, and fabrication— and even, in some cases, of falsification, refusal of information, counterfeiting, and the creation of secret codes” (Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002, xxi). However, little notice has been taken of translation as an activity to cre- ate images of cities and of the process this involves. French theologian Jacques Ellul states that the evolution of cities represents man’s fall from natural grace and the subsequent attempt to create a new, workable order (Kotkin 2005, xv). This may mean that cities are constructed and shaped through the dynamic rela- tionship with human beings, and they are formed, and transformed, by such re- peated attempts throughout the city’s history, keeping traces of every historical moment. That is, they are “rearticulated, transformed from a singular structure into a multilateral palimpsest that can be ‘written’ up and over, again and again” (Chambers 2012, 104) with time. Therefore, the boundaries of cities’ identities continuously expand with this dynamic movement. However, cities are commonly represented as a single and fixed image in the process of translation through selective appropriation, and people ac- cept and consume that image. In the history of translation studies, little atten- tion has been paid to these aspects of cities, that is, cities as a translated text. Cities are translated through special forms of communication, such as the environmental landscape, symbolic artifacts, local events, or other landmarks, and through verbal communication, such as cities’ names, slogans or statements. This paper attempts to reveal how verbal translation, especially for tourists, constructs an image of a city, with a focus on Itaewon. Itaewon has been a very particular and special space in Korean history. Unlike other areas of Seoul, which have a single ethic identity, Itaewon has been the space of expatriates. It has been a foreign and exotic land within Korea, a zone of con- tact where native and foreign cultures encounter each other, and a mediating channel though which foreign cultures are introduced. This paper first inves- tigates Itaewon as a site of cultural encounters and cultural translation against the background of Korean history, then it examines its translation in tourist books and the subsequent effects. itaewon as a site of cultural encounters and cultural translation When French historian Fernand Braudel stated, “A town is always a town, wherever it is located, in time as well as space” (Rybczynski 1995, 49), he must have been referring to the universality of the urban experience. As Kot- kin notes, the urban experience is universal “despite vast differences in race, 34 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  climate, and location” because “there is the visceral ‘feel’ of the city almost everywhere—the same quickening of pace on a busy street, an informal mar- ketplace, or a freeway interchange, the need to create notable places, the shar- ing of a unique civic identity” (2005, xv–vxi). The omnipresent visceral feel he refers to is created by the so called “non-places” found in almost every city. Non-places, a term coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé, refers to an- thropological spaces of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as “places.” As Augé points out, supermodernity produces nonplaces, “meaning spaces which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike in Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate the earlier places” (1995, 63). Nonplaces are temporary, ephemeral, fleeting spaces for passage, commu- nication, and consumption. Augé puts it thus: If place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place. [. . .] the same things apply to the non-place as to the place. It never exists in pure form; places reconstitute themselves in it; relations are restored and resumed in it; the ‘millennial ruses’ of ‘the invention of the everyday’ and ‘the arts of doing,’ so subtly analysed by Michel de Certeau, can clear a path there and deploy their strategies. Places and non-place are rather like opposed polarities: the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed. (Augé 1995, 63–64) Examples of nonplaces are air, rail, and motorway routes, aircraft, trains and road vehicles, airports and railway stations, hotel chains, leisure parks, large retail outlets, and the complex skein of cable and wireless net- works that mobilize extraterrestrial space for the purposes of a communication (Augé 1995). These nonplaces make urban scenes familiar and uniform, creating an illusion of universality in urban experiences. In extreme cases, those nonplaces may make urban experiences homogeneous so that they give the impression that “only the name of the airport changes” as described in the novel Invisible Cities by Italian writer Italo Calvino: If on arriving at Trude I had not read the city’s name written in big letters, I would have thought I was landing at the same airport from which I had taken off. The suburbs they drove me through were no different from the others, […] The downtown streets displayed goods, packages, signs that had not changed at all. […] You can resume your flight whenever you like, but you will arrive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail. The world is covered by the sole Trude, which does not begin, nor end. Only the name of the airport changes. (Calvino 1972/1974, 128) However, despite “the universality of the urban experience,” each city has a unique and special “feel,” which gives city tourists a different experience. One of the factors that make each city unique and special is its ascent and decline throughout history, the process of which is “both rooted in history isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 35  and changed by it” (Kotkin 2005, 147), in other words, the characteristics of “places” in Augé’s term. Cities are not stagnant; they are reconfigured, re- shaped, and rearranged with political, economic, social, and cultural changes throughout history. Just as Lotman points out in his discussion on the symbolism of St. Petersburg, “The city is a mechanism, forever recreating its past” (Lotman 1990, 194–195): architectural ensembles, city rituals and ceremonies, the very plan of the city, the street names and thousands of other left-overs from past ages act as code programs constantly renewing the texts of the past. Lotman also says that “in this sense, the city, like culture, is a mechanism which with- stands time” (Lotman 1990, 195). So, as Simon’s Cities in Translation (2012) suggests, cities are “intersec- tions of memory,” and the streets of the cities keep those memories. Itaewon is such a city. Compared to other areas in Seoul, it is an area with a rapid pace of change, and it has various images: diversity, ambiguity, disorder, chaos, exoticism, foreign land within the country, and so on. Such dynamicity and images throughout the history of the place stem mainly from its geographical location, specifically, its location near Han River. As Lotman puts it, there are two ways in which a city as a demarcated space may relate to the earth which surrounds it—concentric and eccentric: Concentric structures tend towards enclosure, separation from their surroundings which are classed as hostile while eccentric structures tend towards openness and contacts with other cultures. [. . .] The concentric situation of the city in semiotic space is as a rule associated with the image of the city on the hill. [. . .] The eccentric city is situated “at the edge” of the cultural space: on the seashore, at the mouth of a river. (Lotman 1990, 191–192) The peculiar situation of Itaewon, due to its location near the Han River, imbued it with openness. Indeed, various meanings and different sto- ries about the origin of the name show such characteristics. Itaewon has three different names and meanings, using different Chinese characters—梨 泰 院, 李 泰 院, and 異 胎 院—which are embedded in its geographical position and Korean history. Firstly, Itaewon was initially a place for travelers and trading. During the Joseon Dynasty, one of four Hanyang (present Seoul) won (院)—a won was a kind of inn established for government officials and travelers by the govern- ment—was located there. So the place was named Itaewon. The won (院) in the name “Itaewon” meant “inn offering lodgings to travelers” (smg 1998, 83). As more people frequented the area, inns for foreign envoys and markets were formed (Jang 2000, 59). Another story claims that Itaewon (梨 泰 院), meaning “area for pear trees,” was so named because pear trees were grown there. 36 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Itaewon was also a space of trauma. It was the area for alienated wom- en, women who had to choose isolation from the society because, with the scar of foreign invasion on their body, they could not be accepted in Korean society. During the Seven-Year War (1592–1598) against the Korean dynasty of Joseon, a Japanese military supply base was established in the Unjongsa Buddhist nun temple near present-day Itaewon. It is said that the Japanese commander Katō Kiyomasa and his soldiers seized the temple, raped the nuns, and then stayed for some time. They subsequently burned the temple before they left. The Buddhist nuns, who had lost their home, moved to nearby Yunggyeong Mountain and lived there. Thus, the area was called Itaewon (異 胎 院), which means “village for being pregnant with a foreigner’s child” (No- mi Lee 2011, 242–243; Hoefer et al. 1981; Jun-gi Kim 2012). Itaewon was also the place where Korean women, who had been tak- en to China during the second Manchu invasion of Korea in 1636, returned and settled down (Chosun Daily 2011).3 In Joseon society, which had a tradi- tion of monogamy, those women were despised as hwanhyangnyeo (“women who returned”) and so they could not return to their home. Therefore, they went to live with the nuns (Heu-suk Han 2001, 59). According to another story, the name originated from Itain (異 他 人), which means foreigners, in reference to Japanese soldiers, who surren- dered and were naturalized during the Seven-Year War, forming a community there (Jun-gi Kim 2012). This link between Itaewon with marginalized people might have facilitated the formation of neighboring Haebangchon (literally, “liberation village”). Haebangchon was the area for displaced people after liberation from Japanese colonial rule, for north Korean refugees after the Korean War of 1950–1953, and then for farmers who had left their rural hometowns for cities during the process of industrialization. Geographically situated near Han River, Itaewon was considered strategically important in terms of transportation and military withdrawal. Thus, Itaewon has frequently been an area for foreign troops, having been a logistics base for the Mongolian Army during the late Goryeo Dynasty and a supply base for the Japanese Army during the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592 (Choi 2003, 23); it was also used by Chinese forces during the Im-O mili- 3 서울 속 외국 이태원 백서. 美軍거리서 다국적 거리로 (Itaewon White Paper: From the Street of the US Military Army to Multinational Street). Chosun Daily, Feb 21, 2011. http://boomup.chosun. com (accessed December, 2014). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 37  tary revolt of 1882–1884, was the location of the Japanese military headquarters during the colonial period of 1910–1945, and was used by the US forces after the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule (No-mi Lee 2011, 242–243; Shin 2008, 193; Seoul Development Institute 2001). The deployment of foreign troops transformed and rearranged the topography of Itaewon. During the 1920s, for instance, the public cemetery, which was located near the present-day Central Mosque, was transformed into the Japanese military headquarters. The cemetery was moved to the Miari district, and the body of Yu Gwan-sun, a patriotic martyr for independence from Japanese colonial rule, was lost in the process. However, the biggest changes to and deepest influence on Itaewon came with the deployment of the US forces. On September 9, 1945, the US forces came to be stationed in Itaewon when the US Army commanding of- ficer John Hodge received the surrender of all the Japanese forces in Korea south of the 38th parallel and took over the Japanese barracks and military facilities. The US Army Military Government was established and lasted from 1945 to 1948. However, with the Korean War in 1950, the US forces came back to be stationed in Itaewon, and the history of the US forces in Itaewon began. The English and Korean languages came to be used together; shops and bars emerged; and prostitutes, orphans, widows, and people from the provinces crowded around the US Army base hoping to scrape together a living from working on the base, selling goods to the soldiers, and so on. Military camp town clubs for American soldiers were opened, and Itaewon became a space where “American soldiers consumed Korean women sexually” (Hyeon-mee Kim 2005, 26). Thus, the so called “Hooker Hill” was formed. However, most of the women who worked at Hooker Hill were vic- tims of the Korean War. As the war had produced many orphans and widows, girls and women had to take responsibility for earning a living. They had to support not only themselves, but also their families. Some of them had to send money to their families in their hometown.4 Under the circumstances, given that they could not find proper jobs, they had to choose prostitution, becoming yang-gongju5 (a foreigner’s whore), as described in Yeong-su Oh’s novel of Anna’s Will (1963): 4 A girl risked her life to avoid the government’s control over prostitution and died because she could not make a living if she was caught. Hearing this news, sixty yang-gongju held a demon- stration against the control (Dong-A Ilbo Daily, October 27 1960, 3). 5 Yang in yang-gongju means Western, and gongju means a princess. Women who sold their bodies to Western men, especially American soldiers, were called yang-gongju. 38 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  She had no clothes to cover her body A brick looked like a chunk of meat to her. How could you expect a girl, who is starving, To be a lady, to be faithful? I was starved. A mature girl had no place to lay down her body. Is this sin? So I became a whore called Anna. (translation mine) (Oh 1963, 330) As foreign official residences were established in the 1960s, military accommodation was built in 1963, and when the 121st Evacuation Hospital of the US Army was moved to Itaewon from Bupyeong district, more than 10,000 people relocated there. During the 1970s, the area became a shopping district for cheap branded goods; there was a prosperous textile industry, and the area enjoyed the reputation of one of the most popular tourist attractions in Korea among foreign tourists in the 1980s when international events were held in Seoul. Thus, it was while the US forces were stationed there that Itaewon came to be known for its shopping area and for Hooker Hill. However, Itae- won cannot be reduced to only a shopping area and Hooker Hill. Itaewon was both a colonized space and a space of freedom and resistance. Politically, it was an Americanized colonial space (Lee and Jung 2010, 191), a colonized space (Choi 2003), or a deterritorialized space in that the authority of the nation–state was applied differently from how it was applied in other areas of the country (Eun-sil Kim 2004). Culturally, it was the space of freedom and resistance where Korean people could escape oppression under the Yushin regime in the 1970s and experience American culture (Eun-sil Kim 2004, 27; No-mi Lee 2011, 243). Indeed, Itaewon was the only route to American culture in Korean society: It was a place to experience Americanism as an object of desire for a generation familiar with afkn radio programs, with singers trained on the musical stages at US military bases, and with Hollywood movies (Choi 2003,102) because foreign travel remained restricted in Korea until 1989. These characteristics made the area a dynamic space where heteroge- neous cultural codes and different subjectivities (including colonized “others,” fragmented “youths,” and a decolonized “new generation”) were encountered, (re)constructed, (re)signified, and transformed at a specific historical stage (Lee and Jung 2010, 191). It was a place where subcultures, such as the culture of the US army in the 1950s–1960s, the Go-Go culture in the 1970s, disco cul- ture in the 1980s, and hip-hop culture around the 1990s, were circulated, and it took on a leading role in Korea’s popular music and subculture. The “clubs” which actively interacted with subcultures of different generations formed a site that led Korean popular music and subculture (see Lee and Jung 2010). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 39  Itaewon, where American soldiers were previously the most numer- ous of the foreign residents, has become more multinational since 1993, when the Korean government introduced an industrial trainee system for foreign- ers. Foreign workers from India, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Uzbekistan, and so on settled in Itaewon because the area was more open to foreigners and foreign cultures. Thus, foreigners could feel more comfortable and secure there. Many expatriates found solace in its accommodating nature and chose to set up their homes there. As various cultures, languages, and lifestyles mix together and various cultural activities commingle, the exterior landscape of the area is changing, and the space of the area is being rearranged, creating a unique and distinctive atmosphere. Through these dynamics, the area is becoming the cultural frontier zone where various cultures have become multinational and multilingual (Hy- eon-mee Kim 2005, 26). Itaewon is also a site of both conflict and solidarity as shown in the Muslim community in the area: “Though Arab Muslim traders have been known to make infrequent trading expeditions to Korea since the Silla dy- nasty, the teachings of Muhammad never made a real impact until 1950 when Turkish troops arrived to fight for UN forces” (Hoefer 1981). In 1960, the Korean Muslim Federation was founded with a Korean, Haji Sabri Suh, as its leader. However, the Islamic community was established due to the need to understand the Islamic world after the oil crisis of 1973 and 1974 (Lee and Jung 2011, 242). In February 1975, an Islamic Center was established in Itae- won, Seoul, and an adjoining Central Mosque—the largest such onion-domed structure in northeast Asia—was opened in 1976 (Hoefer 1981). The Seoul Central Mosque had been built with both Korean and Middle Eastern funds to serve the 3,000 followers of the Prophet in the nation (Hoefer 1981). The Central Mosque is therefore not only a place for religious belief but also a symbolic site which shows Koreans’ effort to understand the Islamic world (Lee and Jung 2011, 242–243). A larger Muslim community was formed in Itaewon in 2005 when an- ti-American sentiment spread after two Korean middle school girls were acciden- tally run over and killed by an American armored personnel carrier, and American soldiers assaulted some citizens. As American soldiers were subsequently banned from bars and clubs, the economic base of the area declined and workers in the entertainment business left the area for cheaper accommodation elsewhere. Thus, the Muslim community was formed around the Central Mosque. The Muslim community is bringing about changes to Itaewon. One of the most noticeable changes is the increased number of Halal food restau- rants and the reduced number of local butcher’s shops (Heu-su Yi et al. 2008, 40 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  1. Itaewon, street view 2. Itaewon, Muslim settlement area 68). Furthermore, because of the strong solidarity among Muslims, the com- munity is often regarded as a closed community by other Koreans (Lee and Jung 2011, 250). The Muslim settlement in Itaewon is a segmentation of urban space formed by the pluralism of race and Islamic culture. However, the space is isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 41  never homogeneous to the citizens and Muslims living in the Muslim settle- ment, and the place of residence is perceived according to different meanings. That is, the citizens living in Itaewon view the Muslims as those who threaten their lives and view foreigners as the cause of economic conflicts as well. How- ever, for those Muslims in the settlement, the citizens’ hostility toward them has given rise to a view of them as a strange and potential threat. The place of conflict and alienation is an inevitable part of the process of initiating a new cultural solidarity (see Lee and Jung 2011). Another feature of Itaewon is the coexistence of mutually exclusive activities in the same place: the Muslim community adjoins Gay Hill, which was formed in the late 1990s when gay bars moved there from Euljiro-Jongro (Jung-eun Kim et al. 2010). The position of Itaewon as a place of expatriates makes negotiation across different cultures with no shared history the very condition of civic coexistence. Now, Itaewon is producing a varied atmo- sphere and landscapes as multinational cultures are dynamically mixed to- gether. translation and representation of itaewon as a nonplace Tourist books have an important role to play in presenting an image of a city to the outside world because most tourists depend on the books for informa- tion about the city they will visit. They obtain information about the history, culture, shopping centers, or entertainment facilities in the city and they con- sume the city based on this information. Tourist books provide guidelines to give tourists information and instructions to help them know or understand the city. Itaewon has been one of the most popular tourist areas in Seoul among foreign tourists to the extent that it has been said that “[y]ou may not know Seoul, but you should know Itaewon” (Saccone 1994, 79). Indeed, for most foreigners the area has become synonymous with Seoul. This section investigates how Itaewon has been presented in tourist books during the past thirty years. For this purpose, tourist books in English from 1981 until 2010 were examined; however, as not many tourist books are available that discuss Itaewon, the sample was limited to seventeen books. Insight Guides: Korea (Hoefer et al.), which was published in Hong Kong in 1981, offers comparatively detailed information, focusing on the or- igin of the name and Muhammadanism in Korea. Regarding the name, it quotes Allen and Donard Clark, a father-and-son team of Seoul historians as saying, “Following the Japanese invasion of 1592–1598, the area now called 42 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Itaewon came to be called ‘Itaein’ or ‘Itaein dong’ meaning ‘Foreigners’ Vil- lage,’ because of the Japanese soldiers who were quartered on this site,” and “When the war was over, some of the soldiers settled down, married Korean girls, and spent the rest of their lives here.” Then “the tradition carries on, though most American soldiers take their Korean brides home, to ‘the world.’ as they call the U.S. of A.” (Hoefer et al. 1981). Regarding Muhammadanism, the book says the teachings of Mu- hammad never made a real impact until the arrival of Turkish troops in 1950, as mentioned previously, and it goes on to explain the foundation of the Ko- rean Muslim Federation in 1960 and the establishment of an Islamic Center in 1975 and, later, the adjoining Central Mosque (Hoefer et al. 1981). Visitors Guide: Seoul Korea, which was published by Seoul Metro- politan Government (smg) in 1998, introduces some of Itaewon’s histor- ical traces: [the] “won” of the name has meant an inn offering lodgings to travelers of the Cho- son Dynasty. In the middle of the 17th century, there was a concentrated village of naturalized Japanese. From 1906, a Japanese Military Post was stationed in the area until liberation from Japanese colonial rule, and now US Military Post including headquarters is located there. (SMG 1998, 83) However, Insight Guides: South Korea (Le Bas), which was published in London in 2007, introduces the history of Itaewon using a more poetic tone: but foreigners, not all of them Western, now occupy multi-story apartment buildings. [. . .] Imagine the astonished reactions of the Buddhist monks who, for some 500 years, kept a free hostel for travelers near here. What exists now, albeit breathtaking, may prove to be too developed for their tastes: the Grand Hyatt Hotel’s mirrored façade; and the twin minarets of the onion-domed mosque below, from which re- sounds the muezzin’s call to afternoon prayer. (Le Bas 2007, 135-139) The book then adds that centuries ago, Itaewon was used as a stop- over point for visitors to the capital, that Japanese troops were housed there during the Japanese Occupation, and that, after the Korean War, they were then replaced by American soldiers. Although the descriptions in the above three tourist books are not enough to show the dynamicity of Itaewon, they at least reveal the historicity of the area. However, other tourist books introduce Itaewon, focusing on it as place for con- sumerism and as a shopping area and entertainment district as follows: known as a part of the city that never sleeps. [. . .] a one-stop hub for foreign visitors, including shopping, tours, lodging and information services. It also offers many ven- ues in which to enjoy Korean and foreign cultures and cuisines. (kotra 2006, 249) now a growing mecca for bargain hunters. [. . .] It is lined on both sides with hundreds isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 43  of shops and arcades selling ready-made sports clothes [. . .] It is also an entertain- ment spot that boasts well over 200 restaurants, bars and clubs. (Suzanne Crowder Han 1989, 74) crowded with shops of all kinds from custom tailors to jewelers, from antiques deal- ers to clothiers. [. . .] In the evening Itaewon becomes a dynamic entertainment dis- trict packed with discos, nightclubs, bars, and karaokes of all sizes. (Saccone 1994, 79–80) the shopping paradise of diverse visitors from all parts of the world. (kowoc 2002, 63) Itaewon offers tailor-made and ready-made clothes [. . .] There is a spirited night life, too. (Chunsung Kim 2004, 90) it was one of the only places in the country in which you could buy “Western” items [. . .] While it remains a great place to shop for cheap tailored suits and shoes, Itae- won’s popularity also made it a byword for transactions of a more sexual nature – hostess bars sprung up all over the place. (Paxton 2008, 109) It’s a bastardized district that’s neither Korean nor Western, but a skewed yet intrigu- ing combination of both. Clothing, gifts . . . (Nilsen 2009, 44 and 92) a lively expat entertainment zone with bars and clubs aplenty, both gay and straight. Market stalls line the main street and the district comes to life in the evening. (Rob- inson and Zahorchak 2009, 55) Once a shady red-light district, it’s been cleaned up [. . .] You can still find ladies of the night walking down certain streets at night, but during the day, it’s a shopper’s paradise. (Cecilia Hai-Jin Lee 2010, 63) Translation of Itaewon in the above tourist books is no different from that in Wikipedia, as was pointed out in the introduction. Rather than being presented as a dynamic space where memories are imprinted, heterogeneous cultures mix together, and new cultures emerge, Itaewon is represented in these books as a large retail outlet for the selling and buying of goods, just like nonplaces, to use Augé’s term (1995, 63), which have no urban relations, history, or identity. The way Itaewon is translated is similar to the process of reification in that it presents fragmented information about the city in the process of com- modification for tourism, and thereby stops us understanding the totality of the city. According to Lukács (1971), under capitalism everything is reified as the result of a unified structure of consciousness—that is, seeing everything in a completely discrete way, where everything is separated and fragmented and taken out of the process to which it belongs. Lukács claims this is caused by the fact that everything is turned into a commodity under capitalism, which thus prevents us from seeing the totality of the place and the deeper processes that are going on. In a capitalist society, a city is presented as a commodity for the tour- ist industry, and its images are created, manipulated, or distorted in the pro- 44 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  cess of translation in order to create a profit. A city’s function as a place for entertainment and shopping is frequently emphasized in presenting the city because “the criteria of the successful tourist industry mainly puts priority on spending on entertainment and shopping” (Yi and Oh 1994, 21). Itaewon’s image is presented as a place for selling and entertaining; removed from its historicity, the image is fragmented. fragmented image, fragmented experience What does this fragmented image have to do with the city? The most direct influence may be the way the city is consumed by tourists. For example, the following recent reviews of the city by tourists6 show that the way they con- sume the city is closely related to the image presented in tourist books: Itaewon: Lots of Shopping. There are shops and a district for almost every imaginable type of product and some are open until very late at night […]. (October 20, 2002) Itaewon: Capital of Kitsch. [. . .] filling up with good restaurants and chain stores. You can find Nike outlets selling all manner of shoes and sports gear, Body Shops filled with makeup and luxurious bath products, and dozens of clothing stores and tailors specializing in Chinese silk dresses. (October 19, 2003) Itaewon: Cheap shops and street fashion. You can find bargains of any kind and a lot of the big clothing chains [. . .]. (January 28, 2004) Itaewon: Near military base. Itaewon does have some shops [. . .] Itaewon is located near a US military base, so don’t mind the soldiers in camouflage wandering around town. At night time, Itaewon transforms itself [. . .] One of the native Koreans told me that most Korean girls do not hang around in that area, afraid to be mistaken as a prostitute. (February 22, 2005) Itaewon is perhaps the most famous shopping area for foreigners in Korea. (January 13, 2006) Itaewon: Buying a Custom-Made Suit in Itaewon. (May 6, 2007) Itaewon: Very Touristy and Expensive, not a Sample of Korea. The Itaewon shopping area covers a 1.4 km in length [. . .] The area has a vibrant night life scene with many bars and nightclubs. (July 24, 2008) Itaewon: Special Tourism Shopping Zone of Seoul (April 4, 2011) 6 All citations are taken from http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/South_Korea/Soul_ tukpyolsi/Seoul-1058426/Shopping-Seoul-Itaewon-BR-1.html (accessed December, 2014), which is an interactive site aimed at sharing travel knowledge, which includes chat, forums, travelogues, photos, and maps. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 45  Although one reviewer describes Itaewon as an unexpected treasure trove, most of the reviews show that tourists’ experience of Itaewon is superfi- cial and fragmented, alienated from its memories and ongoing history just like the images of the city in the tourist books. They just experience Itaewon as a non-place where things are sold and bought. Considering the general purpose of tourist books, it can be said that the translation of Itaewon that is circulated and reproduced has directed tourists’ pattern of consuming the city. The city is, of course, a place where things are traded, but it is not only a place where things are traded. As Calvino’s Invisible Cities suggests, a city is an assemblage of memory, desire, signs, names, and other features. So what is traded is not only things but also memories, desires, signs, names, and other things, as shown by Invisible Cities’ Euphemia: You do not come to Euphemia only to buy and sell, but also because at night, by the fires all around the market, seated on sacks or barrels or stretched out on pile of car- pets, at each word that one man says—such as “wolf,” “sister,” “hidden treasure,” “battle,” “scabies,” “lovers”—the others tell, each one, his tale of wolves, sisters, treasures, sca- bies, lovers, battles. And you know that in the long journey ahead of you, when to keep awake against the camel’s swaying or the junk’s rocking, you start summoning up your memories one by one, your wolf will have become another wolf, your sister a different sister, your battle other battles, on your return from Euphemia, the city where memory is traded at every solstice and at every equinox. (Calvino 1972/1974, 36–37) Itaewon is also a place that has its memories, desires, signs, and names, and is the place where those memories, desires, signs, and names are traded; thus it deserves to be known for various reasons, not just as a selling place. So the experience of the city could be more complex than simply trading things. The fragmented experience together with the reproduced image has produced a negative image about Itaewon, so that it loses its attraction as a tourist site. Furthermore, as neighboring commercial areas are created, Itae- won has also lost its merits as a shopping area. Realizing the risk, the gov- ernment designated the area a special tourism district in 1997 and decided to hold the Itaewon Global Village Festival twice a year in an attempt to revive Itaewon as a site of dynamic cultural exchanges. conclusion In the tourism industry, cities are rearranged according to the economic principles of commercialism in a capitalist society. Cities can be classified as a sacred city, a fashion city, a commercial city, and so on, and this clas- sification is translated spatially or verbally, creating a representative image of the city. 46 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  3. Different views of Itaewon Tourist books are one of the media where cities are verbally trans- lated. Itaewon has been verbally translated as a shopping and entertainment area in tourist books, and such a translated image has been consumed among tourists. However, this image has been fragmented, and so has been the expe- rience of tourists. The experience of cities may be more multiple and more multilateral than the one the tourist books can produce as shown in the description of the city of Irene in Invisible Cities: If you saw it, standing in its midst, it would be a different city; Irene is a name for a city in the distance, and if you approach, it changes. For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene. (Calvino 1972/1974, 125) isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 47  4. Itaewon, historical view Therefore, cities cannot be fixed to a single image or translation. The various translations of the name of Itaewon itself—foreigners’ village, village for being pregnant with a foreigner’s child, village for pear trees—show that the area cannot be translated into one fixed image. The inherent and unique properties of Itaewon have been formed by the totality of geographical and historical moments. Itaewon has been a place for travelers and trading, a space of trauma caused by the conflictive history of Korea, a foreigners’ village, a foreign land within the country, a colonized space, a space of freedom and resistance, a deterritorialized zone, a window onto Western culture, a space of conflicts and solidarity, a space for cultural translation, and so on. The area has accumulated its memories throughout history while being repeatedly rewrit- ten, functioning as “a culture-generator.” Indeed, regarding cities as “culture-generators,” Lotman says: The city is a complex semiotic mechanism, a culture-generator, but it carries out this function only because it is a melting-pot of texts and codes, belonging to all kinds of languages and levels. The essential semiotic polyglottism of every city is what makes it so productive of semiotic encounters. The city, being the place where different national, social, and stylistic codes and texts confront each other, is the place of hybridization, recodings, semiotic translations, all of which makes it into a powerful generator of new information. (Lotman 1990, 194) Itaewon has been, to use Lotman’s words “the place of hybridization, recodings, semiotic translations” (Lotman 1990, 194). However, a selective translation of such a city in the tourist books has focused on the fragmented image in the process of the commodification of the city as a tourist site. This fragmented image has been reproduced during past decades, fixing the image to Itaewon and obstructing cognition of the totality or the whole nature of the 48 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  city. This way, translation may be damaging to cities especially when a dis- torted image obtains authority through reproduction. As a culture-generator, a city deserves its proper translation. <References> Augé, Marc. 1995. Non-places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermoder- nity. Translated by John Howe. London: Verso. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bewes, Timothy. 2002. Reification or the Anxiety of Late Capitalism. London: Verso. Calvino, Italo. 1972. Invisible Cities. Translated by William Weaver (1974). Florida: Har- court Brace & Company. Chambers, Iain. 2012. “The Translated City.” Translation 1: 101–106. Choi, Jong-il. 2003. 이태원에 나타난 아메리카나이제이션에 관한 연구 (A Study on “Amer- icanization” expressed in Itaewon space). Unpublished thesis. Seoul Nation- al University. Fowler, Edward. 1992. “Rendering Words, Traversing Cultures: On the Art and Politics of Translating Modern Japanese Fiction.” Journal of Japanese Studies 18: 1–44. Han, Heu-suk. 2001. 용산 속의 전쟁사와 군사문화 (War history and military culture within Yongsan). Seoul: Yongsan Cultural Council. Han, Suzanne Crowder. 1989. Seoul: a Pictorial Guidebook. Host of the ’86 Asian Games and ’88 Olympics. Seoul: Hollym. Hoefer, Hans, and et al. 1981. Insight Guides: Korea. Hong Kong: Apa Productions. Im, Myung Soo. 1981. Tour in Seoul. Seoul: Saenggaksa. Jang, Hak-jin. 2000. 이태원 상업가로 매력요소 분석에 관한 연구 (Analysis of merits of Itae- won as a commercial district). Unpublished thesis. Seoul National University. Kim, Chunsung. 2004. A Guide for Foreign Tourists about Korea. Seoul: HyunHakSa. Kim, Eun-sil. 2004. “지구화 시대 근대의 탈영토화된 공간으로서 이태원에 대한 민족지적 연구.” (Eth- nographic study on Itaewon as a modern deterritorialized space in the glo- balized age. In 변화하는 여성문화 움직이는 지구촌 (Changing women culture, moving global village), 13–60. Seoul: Pureun Sasangsa. Kim,Hyeon-mee.2005.글로벌 시대의 문화번역: 젠더, 인종, 계층의 경계를 넘어(Culturaltrans- lation in the global age: beyond gender, race, and class). Seoul: Another Culture. Kim, Jung-eun, et al. 2010. “이태원 경관 읽기 (Reading Itaewon Landscape).” Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture Journal 2010 (0): 141–145. Kim, Jun-gi. 2012. 이태원’, 한국민속문학사전 (The encyclopedia of Korean folk litera- ture). National Folk Museum of Korea. http://folkency.nfm.go.kr/munhak/ index.jsp (accessed December, 2014). Kotkin, Joel. 2005. The City. New York: Modern Library. kotra. 2006. Guide to Living in Korea. Seoul: KOTRA. kowoc (Korean Organizing Committee for the 2002 FIFA World Cup). 2002. Spec- tator Guide10—Venue Cities in Korea. Seoul: KOWOC. Le Bas, Tom. 2007. Insight Guides: South Korea. 8th edition. London: Insight Guides. Lee, Cecilia Hae-Jin. 2010. Frommer’s South Korea. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Lee, Na-young, and Min-yoo Jung. 2010. “탈/식민성의 공간, 이태원과 한국의 대중음 악 – 이태원 ‘클럽’들의 형성과 변화과정을 중심으로 (1950–1991)” (History of popular music and (re)formation of ‘clubs’ at Post/Colonial Space, Itaewon in South Korea, 1950–1991).” Society and History 87: 191–229. Lee, No-mi. 2011. “국내 외국인 소수집단 거주지의 갈등과 연대 – 이태원 무슬림 거주지를 중 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 49  심으로” (A study on conflict and solidarity in foreign settlement—focused on Itaewon Muslim Settlement). Korean Culture Study 21(0): 237–263. Lotman, Yuri M. 1990. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Translated by Ann Shukman. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Lukács, Georg. 1971. History and Class Consciousness. Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nilsen, Robert. 2009. South Korea. Berkeley, CA: Avalon Travel. Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1992. Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press. Oh, Yeong-su. 1963. “Anna’s Will.” The Complete Works of Oh Yeong-su. Seoul: Hyundaeseogwan. 263–330. Paxton, Norbert. 2008. The Rough Guide to Korea. London: Rough Guides. Robinson, Martin, and Jason Zahorchak. 2009. Seoul. City Guide. London: Lonely Planet. Rybczynski, Witold. 1995. City Life: Urban Expectations in the New World. New York: Scribner’s. Saccone, Richard .1994. Travel Korea Your Way. New Jersey: Hollym. Seoul Development Institute. 2001. 이태원 장소 마케팅 전략연구 (Study on marketing strategies for Itaewon). Seoul: Seoul Development Institute. Shin, Ju-baek. 2007. “용산과 일본군 용산기지의 변화 (Changes of Yongsan and Japa- nese Military Base in Yongsan) (1884–1945).” Seoul Studies 29: 189–218. Simon, Sherry. 2012. Cities in Translation. London: Routledge. SMG (Seoul Metropolitan Government). 1998. Visitors Guide. Seoul Korea. Seoul: SMG. Tymoczko, Maria. 1999. Translation in a Postcolonial Context. Manchester: St. Je- rome. Tymoczko, Maria, and Edwin Gentzler, eds. 2002. Translation and Power. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Yi. Heu-su, et al. 2008. “서울 이태원동 일대의 이슬람 타운화 과정에 관한 연구 (Study on the Process of Islamic Town Formation in Itaewon).” Korean Association of Islamic Studies Journal 18(2): 47-86. Yi, Hyeok-jin, and Ho-tak Oh. 1994. “관광산업으로서의 쇼핑상품에 관한 이론적 고찰 (Theoretical Approaches to Shopping Items as Tourism Industry).” Regional Development Journal 19: 21-52. <Hunam Yun> She is a translation scholar and translator. She first obtained her BA in English literature at Korea University, Seoul. After studying translation studies at Warwick University, UK, she obtained her MA and PhD in Translation Studies in 2000 and 2011 respectively. She has taught translation theory and practice for over fifteen years at Hongik University in Seoul and translated Walter Scott, Andersen, George MacDonald, and Beatrix Potter into Korean. Her main topics in- clude globalization and translation, literary translation, drama translation, translational norms, and screen translation and she authored Introduc- tion to Translation Theory and Practice. She now focuses on writing and translating while living in New York. 50 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 

Unimi Open Journals

translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15750

Of Translational Spaces and Multilingual Cities: Reading the Sounds of Lagos in Sefi Atta’s Swallows and Everything Good Will Come* Elena Rodríguez Murphy University of Salamanca, Spain [email protected] <Abstract> Over the last few years, there has been an increasing number of Nigerian au- thors who in their writing have centered on portraying the different sounds and accents of one of Nigeria’s most diverse and vibrant cities, Lagos. This article aims to analyze the way in which Sefi Atta, a leading voice in what has come to be known as “the third generation of Nigerian writers,” describes in her novels Swallow (2005) and Everything Good Will Come (2010) the manner in which some of Nigeria’s vernacular languages, such as Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, as well as Nigerian English and Nigerian Pidgin, permeate this incredibly plu- ral and multilingual city where varying ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups have been made to live together in the same translational space as a result of the colonial era. As Achille Mbembe (2010) has underlined, one of the main bequests of colonialism has been the unequal development of the different countries and regions of Africa. This situa- tion has led to an uneven distribution of people within multiple spaces. In this way, cities such as Lagos, Dakar, Accra, or Abidjan have actually become major metropolitan centers where interaction and negotiations among diverse peoples are commonplace and transcul- tural forms of different elements such as modes of dress, music, or language are constantly emerging. Without a doubt, translation is a main feature of coexistence in Lagos given its multilingual environment and the way in which various ethnic and linguistic communities share everyday life. “Language is part of the audible surface of the city.” (Cronin and Simon 2014, 120) in translation: reading the sounds of the city Over the last few years, there has been an increasing number of Nigerian au- thors who in their writing have centered on portraying the different sounds and accents of one of Nigeria’s most diverse and vibrant cities, Lagos. In this * This article is part of the research project entitled “Violencia simbólica y traducción: retos en la representación de identidades fragmentadas en la sociedad global” [Symbolic Violence and Translation: Challenges in the Representation of Fragmented Identities within the Global Soci- ety] (FFI2015-66516-P; MINECO/FEDER, UE), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 51  regard, as Toni Kan Onwordi has underlined in a brief description included on the cover of Sefi Atta’s second novel Swallow, “no contemporary Nigerian writer is better than Sefi Atta at evoking the smells, sounds and the sheer madness of this sprawling cosmopolitan city of Lagos.” Along with Chris Aba- ni, Helon Habila, Maik Nwosu, Jude Dibia, and Akin Adesokan, and other members of what has come to be known as “the third generation of Nigerian writers,” in her narrative Sefi Atta ably describes the way in which diverse peoples negotiate everyday life on the city’s populated streets. Although there are many ways in which one may try to understand the workings of urban reality, analyzing “the practice of everyday life” (see De Certeau 1984) in a postcolonial city such as Lagos through language and translation can offer new and interesting perspectives in various fields of study. Indeed, Atta’s novels Everything Good Will Come (2005) and Swallow (2010) provide the reader with a valuable linguistic experience of Lagos through the inclusion in her texts of the multilingual transactions that permeate the city. As Simon interestingly points out in her book Cities in Translation, Much of the abundant literature in recent decades has emphasized the visual aspects of urban life. And yet the audible surface of languages, each city’s signature blend of dialects and accents, is an equally crucial element of urban reality [. . .] “hearing” introduces the observer into layers of social, economic and cultural complexity. (Si- mon 2012, 1) Thus, reading in Atta’s fiction the sounds and diverse range of accents that characterize the city brings the reader closer to the complexity of its lin- guistic reality, in which translation appears as an indispensable tool which has gradually allowed for the emergence of what McLaughlin has termed “new urban language varieties”: The burgeoning growth of Africa’s cities that began during the latter part of the colo- nial period and continues with increasing momentum into the twenty-first century has given rise to a multiplicity of innovative and often transformative cultural practices that are associated primarily with urban life, not least of which is the emergence of new urban language varieties. (McLaughlin 2009, 1) Lagos is, without a doubt, a multilingual and multiethnic city that can actually be defined as “a translation space [where] the focus is not on mul- tiplicity but on interaction” (Simon 2012, 7). Therefore, given its multilingual environment and the way in which various ethnic and linguistic communities have come to share its everyday life, translation can clearly be considered one of the main features of activity in Lagos. In this way, beyond dichotomist un- derstandings, translation becomes an indispensable medium through which a common coexistence may, although not always successfully, be negotiated: 52 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Multilingual contexts put pressure on the traditional vocabulary of transfer and its concepts of source and destination. Communities which have had a longstanding re- lationship inhabit the same landscape and follow similar rhythms of daily life. Facing one another across the space of the city, they are not “foreign” and so translation can no longer be configured only as a link between a familiar and a foreign culture, be- tween a local original and a distant destination, between one monolingual community and another. [. . .] The Other remains within constant earshot. The shared understand- ings of this coexistence change the meaning of translation from a gesture of benev- olence to a process through which a common civility is negotiated. (Simon 2012, 7) lagos: a multilingual and multiethnic megacity In his book Sortir de la grande nuit (2010), Achille Mbembe recently under- lined the fact that one of the main bequests of colonialism has been the un- equal development of the different countries and regions of Africa. In fact, “[n]o major coastal cities existed in Western Africa before the colonial period. However, as a result of the mostly maritime-based logistics of colonialism, countries in the sub-region began an urbanization path strongly associated with the coast” (United Nations Human Settlements Programme [UN-Hab- itat] 2014, 99). This situation has gradually led to an uneven distribution of people within multiple spaces, hence cities like Lagos, Dakar, Accra, and Ab- idjan have actually become major metropolitan centers where interaction and negotiations are commonplace and transcultural forms of different elements such as modes of dress, music, or language are constantly emerging. It be- comes apparent, therefore, that in many African cities such as Lagos attaining even the minimum often requires complex styles of staying attuned to the shifting intersections of gestures, excitements, languages, anxieties, determinations and comportments enacted across markets, streets and other venues. The city is a field of affect where specific dispositions and attainments are contingent upon the ways actors’ bodies, histories and capacities are mobilized and enacted. (Simone 2007, 237) As Ato Quayson explains in regard to Oxford St., in the Ghanaian capital of Accra the streets in many African cities may be seen as archives, rather than just geographical locations, where it is possible to find “a rich and intricate relationship between tradition and modernity, religion and secularity as well as local and transnational circuits of images and ideas” (Quayson 2010, 72). Lagos is a burgeoning city, the largest in Nigeria (Falola and Genova 2009, 202), and, according to the figures published by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in its 2014 report The State of African Cities 2014. Re-imagining Sustainable Urban Transitions, it “has recent- ly joined the ranks of the world’s megacities” (2014, 17). Lagos has undoubt- edly been shaped by its history, not only as one of the most important ports isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 53  in West Africa from the eighteenth century onwards, but also as the federal capital of Nigeria (1914–1991). In this respect, although Abuja has been the federal capital of the country since 1991, Lagos, whose population is expected to rise to over eighteen million by 2025 (United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 23–25), is now the center of one of the largest urban areas in Western Africa and continues to be a main hub in the southwestern region of Nigeria for the circulation of peoples as well as goods. Growing urbaniza- tion and rural–urban migration are responsible for the cultural heterogeneity of this major Western African city, which was at one point described “as an ancient city inhabited by the Awori and Ijebu people, both subgroups of the Yoruba” (Falola and Genova 2009, 202). Nevertheless, as a result of Nigeria’s national history, Lagos is currently populated by varying and distinct ethnic groups. Although there is still a Yoruba majority, it can be said that “Nigeria’s myriad ethnic and religious identities are found throughout the city’s neigh- borhoods, usually managing to coexist, though periodically sparking tensions” (Lewis 2009, 115). The artificial boundaries which were drawn when Nigeria was created by British administrators in 1914,1 have given rise to an incredibly heteroge- neous space both in ethnical and linguistic terms. As can be seen in the map below, there is an extremely wide range of ethnic groups which, as a conse- quence of colonialism, have come to inhabit the same nation; this has often provoked ethnic and religious tensions, the Biafran War (1967–1970) being a case in point: The Nigeria of today [...] is a relatively new creation, dating back to the early 20th century. Boundaries prior to that time included numerous chieftaincies and empires that expanded and contracted geographically without regard to modern Nigeria’s boundaries. For the early peoples of Nigeria, only geographic boundaries, such as the Sahara Desert or Atlantic Ocean, might have kept them in place. Western European powers competing for territory and political control in Africa during the late-19th cen- tury determined Nigeria’s boundaries to suit their needs. Much of Nigeria’s western, eastern, and northern borders are the results of rivalry and compromise by Euro- pean powers. As a result, ethnic groups and former kingdoms straddle boundaries. [...] Modern-day Nigeria is a conglomeration of hundreds of ethnic groups, spanning across different geographical zones. [...] To identify a single Nigerian culture is diffi- cult. (Falola and Genova 2009, xxx-xxxi) 1 The name ‘Nigeria’ is credited to the colonial editor of the Times of London, Flora Shaw, who later married the new entity’s governor, Lord Frederick Lugard. The name stuck. But the new name was not accompanied by any sense of national unity. [. . .] The British yoking together of so many different peoples into a huge state [. . .] shaped the future of about a fifth of Africa’s sub-Saharan population” (Campbell 2013, 2). 54 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  From a demographic point of view, within Nigeria the Hausa-Fulani, the Igbo, and the Yoruba can be considered to be the largest of the ethnic groups. According to Iyoha (2010, 169), around 29% of the population is Hausa-Fulani who live mainly in the northern regions in cities such as Kano, Sokoto, and Kaduna. The Yoruba, more or less 21%, are based primarily in the southwest of the country, in cities such as Ife-Ife, Lagos, and Ibadan. On the other hand, the Igbo, approximately 18% of the population, inhabit the areas situated in the southeast of Nigeria, for example in Port Harcourt, Owerri, and Enugu. These aforementioned groups can, however, be said to live all around the country. Other, numerically smaller ethnic groups include the Tiv, the Nupe, the Igala, and the Jukun in the Middle Belt region and the Ijaw, the Itsekiri, the Urhobo, the Ogoni, and the Ibibio in the Niger Delta. They have long been demanding greater political and economic representation within the national space, as Saro-Wiwa has pointed out on many occasions in regard to the Ogoni people: Colonialism is not a matter only of British, French, or European dominance over Af- ricans. In African society, there is and has always been colonial oppression. In my case, the Ogoni had never been conquered by their Igbo neighbors. But the fact of British colonialism brought both peoples together under a single administration for the first time. And when the British colonialists left, the numerically inferior Ogoni were consigned to the rule of the more numerous Igbos, who always won elections in the Region since ethnic loyalties and cultural habits were and continue to be strong throughout Nigeria. (Saro-Wiwa 1992, 155) Not only is Nigeria diverse in terms of its ethnicity, but it also boasts an enormous variety of languages and dialects—more than four hundred ac- cording to Garuba (2001, 11) and more than five hundred according to the isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 55  Ethnologue database (Simons and Fennig 2017). As Adekunle (1997) and Adeg- bija (2000, 2004) highlight, multilingualism is a common feature of many West African regions, and Nigeria can be said to be the country where the largest number of different languages is spoken. Together with English, which is used as an official language and is employed in diverse forms, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba have become the three major national languages.2 Moreover, a wide range of languages and dialects spoken by the different Nigerian ethnic groups is to be found: Apart from the indigenous languages, which are the mother tongues of Nigerians, there also exist non-indigenous languages. They include English, which has become a second language; Nigerian Pidgin (the language in Nigeria with probably the larg- est number of speakers), which derives from the contact between English and the indigenous languages; Classical Arabic, which is learnt by Muslims; and other for- eign languages such as French, German, and Russian, which are taken as academic subjects at the secondary and tertiary levels of education. (Igboanusi 2002, 13–14) Faced with this highly complex web of languages, many Nigerians have resorted to both English and Nigerian Pidgin (NP)3 as a way of favoring communication with each other: Originally mainly restricted to trade, Pidgin has spread to become the language of market places, sports, the army and police force, taxi drivers, playgrounds, university campuses, and generally of interethnic discourse in lower-class and informal con- texts. In recent decades it has therefore been utilized for mass communication—in advertising, political campaigning, government propaganda, announcements, and mass media, e.g. news broadcasts on the radio [. . .] It is labeled “the most widely spoken language in Nigeria” [. . .] Though the language still carries a strong stigma in the eyes of many educated Nigerians, many others have come to use it in informal conversations, also in banks, offices, and businesses, utilizing its ethnographic role as a code of friendliness and proximity. (Schneider 2007, 205–206) Nonetheless, it is interesting to take into consideration that whilst NP and the vernacular languages are normally used in informal and familiar conversations, administrative and educational matters are mainly dealt with in English: “For a great many speakers from different groups, English is [...] valued as a language of prestige, a sign of education, and a mark of modernity” 2 “The dominance of English in the Nigerian Constitution continued until 1979, when the Con- stitution that emerged under a military regime specifically provided for the use of the three major languages (Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba) in addition to English for proceedings in the Na- tional Assembly: ‘The business of the National Assembly shall be conducted in English, and in Hausa, Ibo, and Yoruba when adequate arrangements have been made therefore (Section 51)’” (Bamgbose 1996, 358). 3 It is important to bear in mind that, as Igboanusi points out, “Nigerian English” (NE) and “Ni- gerian Pidgin” (NP) are considered to be different languages: “Nigerian Pidgin is different from Nigerian English (the variety of English used in Nigeria). However, the line between them is sometimes difficult to draw, particularly at the lexical level” (Igboanusi 2008, 78). 56 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  (Simpson 2008,194). According to different critics (Bamgbose 1971; Bamgbose 1996, 366; Igboanusi 2002; Gut 2004, 813), only a small percentage of the Ni- gerian population may understand or speak English, but, despite the fact that in recent years there have been repeated attempts to increase the importance of the vernacular languages, it continues to be used on a regular basis, espe- cially by the local elites: As ex-colonial people, Nigerians hold English in great awe. They so overrate English that literacy in English is considered the only mark of being an educated person. For example, for them science and technology are not within the reach of any person who cannot master the English language. Not surprisingly, therefore, the language, unlike any of the Nigerian mother tongues, is regarded as being politically neutral for adoption by the people. [. . .] Consequently, political expediency makes the English lan- guage the ready language for adoption for national literacy today. (Afolayan 2001, 83) Just as in other African countries, the increasing use of new technologies such as the Internet and cable TV among specific sectors of Nigerian society has resulted in a growing interest on the part of the younger generation in learning the English language. This situation has been skillfully described by the widely acclaimed Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who, on many occasions, has stated that English is no longer considered by some as a “foreign” language, but rather as a Nigerian language adapted to the Nigerian cultural context: I’d like to say something about English [...] which is simply that English is mine. Some- times we talk about English in Africa as if Africans have no agency, as if there is not a distinct form of English spoken in Anglophone African countries. I was educated in it; I spoke it at the same time as I spoke Igbo. My English-speaking is rooted in a Nigerian experience and not in a British or American or Australian one. I have taken ownership of English. (Adichie, quoted in Uzoamaka 2008, 2) The general trend encountered in multilingual communities consists in usage gradually determining the role each language has in particular domains, and Nigeria is no exception. Although English remains the most important language in education and matters pertaining to government and administration, the vernacu- lar languages—such as Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo as well as NP—are used primarily in informal contexts. Taking these matters into consideration, it is important to underline the “diglossic,” or rather “poliglossic,” relations that, as Zabus (2007) and Bandia (2008) point out, have been established between the different languages that are employed in many of the countries in West Africa, including Nigeria:4 4 It is interesting to mention here that, according to Warren-Rothlin, in Nigeria digraphia is also a social reality which can result in social divisions (Warren-Rothlin 2012, 6–7). There also exist multiple orthographies and writing scripts within the country (ibid. 7). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 57  For our purposes, the sociolinguistic concept of diglossia needs to be expanded to include not only Ferguson’s genetically linked “high” and “low” varieties (to which he erroneously attributed scripturality and orality, respectively) but unrelated languages as well. Indeed, in a country like Ghana, Ewe is not a dialect of English and has a written literature of its own but, functionally, Ewe is to English what a dominated or subordinate language is to a dominant or superordinate language. [. . .] Also, the West African auxiliary languages resulting from languages in contact such as pidgins have a diglossic relation to the dominant European language that is similar to the more conventional relation between a prestige or power language and its regional dialect. Conversely, a statistically dominant language like Wolof in Senegal can be consid- ered as being hegemonic like French and would thus be in diglossia with a minor language like Ndût. (Zabus 2007, 14) In the case of the Nigerian linguistic landscape, English has gradually come to be accepted as the dominant language in some domains while specific forms of some of the vernacular languages such as Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba have been gaining ground in others. In many instances, however, these vernac- ular languages are in a diglossic situation in relation to the English language. Likewise, although it is now defined as “the most widely spoken language in Nigeria,” NP appears to be in a diglossic situation with respect to English. It is also important to bear in mind that the three major vernacular languages can be categorized as hegemonic vis-à-vis those considered as minor. Thus, faced with the linguistic variation characteristic of a territory like Nigeria, it may be said that, in Zabus’s own words, “[w]e can therefore advance the notions of ‘triglossia’ or even ‘polyglossia,’ and ‘intertwined diglossias’” (Zabus 2007, 14). The Nigerian cultural and linguistic situation that we have been describing, although very succinctly, is reflected in the city of Lagos where, as illustrated by the different examples that follow, diverse languages, and therefore translation, are used on a daily basis, not only in the ever-chang- ing “discourse ecologies” (Quayson 2010) that exist on its streets, but also in the conversational exchanges that take place in its crowded markets, “motor parks,” taxis or buses. In this regard, in their work both Adedun and Shodipe have underlined the fact that, although most people in Lagos use Yoruba and Nigerian Pidgin in their daily interactions, Hausa, Igbo, and other vernacular languages together with English are also a common feature in this cosmopol- itan African city: The nature of Lagos, which accommodates various ethnic, and religious groups, ac- counts for the present state of its language repertoire. [. . .] Without any doubt, Lagos is a potpourri of different peoples and tribes and these have had a noticeable impact on the linguistic repertoire, language choice, and language shift in the area. (Adedun and Shodipe 2011, 131) 58 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  the sounds of lagos in swallow and everything good will come One of the main characteristics of Atta’s work, as mentioned previously, is the accuracy with which she manages to portray the city of Lagos and the wide range of sounds that fill its streets and buildings. Both in her first novel, Every- thing Good Will Come (EG in the citations, below), and in her second novel, Swallow (SW in the citations, below), in addition to other works, Atta de- scribes different parts of the city along with its diverse languages and accents: Our continent was a tower of Babel, Africans speaking colonial languages: French, English, Portuguese, and their own indigenous languages. Most house help in Lagos came from outside Lagos; from the provinces and from neighboring African coun- tries. If we didn’t share a language, we communicated in Pidgin English. (EG, 212) Sheri’s younger siblings greeted me as I walked across the cement square. “Hello, Sister Enitan.” “Long time no see.” “Barka de Sallah, Sister Enitan.” (EG, 247) Street hawkers sat behind wooden stalls in a small market . . . They were Fulani peo- ple from the North. The men wore white skull caps and the women wrapped chiffon scarves around their heads. [. . .] They talked loud in their language, and together they sounded like mourners ululating. (EG, 198) Baba came to collect his monthly salary [. . .] “Compliments of the season,” I said. “How are you?” I spoke to him in Yoruba, addressing him by the formal you, because he was an elder. He responded with the same formality because I was his employer. Yoruba is a lan- guage that doesn’t recognize gender—he the same as she, him the same as her—but respect is always important. (EG, 312). In her fiction, Atta includes many instances in which translation ap- pears as an indispensable tool and a necessary medium through which ev- eryday life may be negotiated in Lagos, a place where diverse peoples and languages have come to share a common space. For instance, when Enitan, the main character in Everything Good Will Come, is sent to Royal College in La- gos and encounters girls from varying ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, cul- tural and linguistic translation becomes indispensable on a day-to-day basis: I met Moslem girls [. . .] Catholic girls [. . .] Anglican girls, Methodist girls. One girl, San- gita, was Hindu [. . .] I learned also about women in my country, from Zaria, Katsina, Kaduna who decorated their skin with henna dye and lived in purdah [. . .] Uncle Alex had always said our country was not meant to be one. The British had drawn a circle on the map of West Africa and called it a country. Now I understood what he meant. The girls I met at Royal College [in Lagos] were so different. I could tell a girl’s ethnic- ity even before she opened her mouth. Hausa girls had softer hair because of their Arab heritage. Yoruba girls like me usually had heart-shaped faces and many Igbo girls were fair-skinned; we called them Igbo Yellow. We spoke English, but our native tongues were as different as French and Chinese. So, we mispronounced names and spoke English with different accents. Some Hausa girls could not “fronounce” the isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 59  letter P. Some Yoruba girls might call these girls “Ausas,” and eggs might be “heggs.” Then there was that business with the middle-belters who mixed up their L’s and R’s. (EG, 44–45) Moreover, when Enitan meets one of her neighbors, a Muslim girl named Sheri, they are each faced with both cultural and linguistic translation. Since they come from different ethnic communities and religious backgrounds, Enitan, who is Yoruba, and Sheri, a “half-caste” with Hausa roots, need to understand one another’s cultural and linguistic circumstances before they can become friends: [Sheri] was funny, and she was also rude, but that was probably because she had no home training. She yelled from our gates. “I’ll call you aburo, little sister, from now on. And I’ll beat you at ten-ten, wait and see.” (EG, 16) The woman in the photograph by [Sheri’s] bedside table was her grandmother. “Alha- ja,” Sheri said. “She’s beautiful.” [...] There were many Alhajas in Lagos. This one wasn’t the first woman to go on hajj to Mec- ca, but for women like her, who were powerful within their families and communities, the title became their name. [...] She pressed the picture to her chest and told me of her life in downtown Lagos. She lived in a house opposite her Alhaja’s fabric store. She went to a school where children didn’t care to speak English. After school, she helped Alhaja in her store and knew how to measure cloth. I listened, mindful that my life didn’t extend beyond Ikoyi Park. What would it be like to know downtown as Sheri did, haggle with customers, buy fried yams and roasted plantains from street hawkers, curse Area Boys and taxi cabs who drove too close to the curb. [...] Sheri was a Moslem and she didn’t know much about Christianity. [...] I asked why Moslems didn’t eat pork. “It’s a filthy beast,” she said, scratch- ing her hair. I told her about my own life. (EG, 33–34) As Enitan mentions in several parts of the novel, although Hausa resonates in the streets and markets of Lagos, without translation into other languages it is not always understood by the Yoruba majority or by people from other ethnic communities. That is why, in many cases, people from di- verse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds who live in the city translate their vernacular languages into Pidgin English or English: Our gate man unlocked the gates. His prayer beads hung from his wrist. I realized I must have disturbed his prayer. Soon it would be the Moslem fasting period, Rama- dan. “Sanu, madam,” he said. “Sanu, mallam,” I replied in the only Hausa I knew. (EG, 201) In my first year of marriage, there was a hawker who sat by the vigilante gates of our state. She was one of those Fulani people from the north. We never said a word to each other: I could understand her language no more than she could mine. (EG, 243) This situation is also underlined by another Nigerian writer, Buchi Emecheta, in her well-known novel The Joys of Motherhood: The early market sellers were making their way to the stalls in single file. [Nnu Ego] 60 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  in her haste almost knocked the poor man down [. . .] There followed a loud curse, and an unintelligible outpouring from the mouth of the beggar in his native Hausa language, which few people in Lagos understood. (Emecheta 1994, 9) In the colorful markets of Lagos and other African cities, peoples from varied ethnic and linguistic environments constantly mingle and in- teract. Markets, as Simone puts it, are “the site for incessant performance, for feigned connections and insider deals, for dissimulation of all kinds, for launching impressions and information, rumors and advice” (Simone 2008, 81). Hence, given the mélange of languages and cultures, “[t]he resulting con- fusion about what is really going on breeds its own makeshift interpreters, who pretend to have real skills of discernment and can steer customers to the best price, quality, or hidden deal” (Simone 2008, 81). In the extract below, taken from Everything Good Will Come, Enitan, who was brought up in Ikoyi, one of Lagos’s affluent neighborhoods,5 high- lights the fact that class differences are extremely important in the city and can greatly influence the way in which people talk to one another: Pierre, my present house boy, began to wash the vegetables [. . .] I needed Pierre to place the okras on the chopping board. “Ici,” I said pointing. “Over there, please.” Pierre raised a brow. “Là bas, madame?” “My friend,” I said. “You know exactly what I mean.” It was my fault for attempting to speak French to him. [. . .] “I beg, put am for there,” I said [in Nigerian Pidgin]. [. . .] The general help we called house boys or house girls. [. . .] They helped with daily chores in exchange for food, lodgings, and a stipend. Most were of working age, barely educated. [. . .] (EG, 212) In this particular situation, because Pierre, the house boy, comes from the neighboring Republic of Benin, Enitan tries to translate her orders into French. Nevertheless, in the end, she resorts to a translation into Pidgin En- glish, which, as stated earlier in the article, is the language normally used as the medium of communication among peoples who belong to different ethnic and linguistic groups in Lagos. On other occasions, however, depending on the educational level of the speakers and the specific context in which interaction takes place, when 5 According to Fourchard (2012a, 68), this comes as a direct result of the colonial era, when the city of Lagos was divided into a residential area reserved for Europeans (Ikoyi) and a commer- cial area in which Europeans lived, worked, traded, and interacted with Africans (Lagos Island). In this regard, Lagos, like other contemporary African cities, may be described as what Triulzi (2002, 81) refers to as “the ‘site of memory’ of colonisation, with its divisions (the colonial city was conceived and grew opposite to and separate from the native town), its visible remains (buildings, town plans, statues) and its obligatory ‘synthesis’ of tradition and modernity.” isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 61  people whose ethnicities differ speak with one another, they translate their vernacular languages into English, instead of Pidgin English: We [Rose and Tolani] always spoke in English because she couldn’t speak Yoruba and I couldn’t understand her own language, Ijaw. (SW, 8) Enitan and Tolani, the main protagonists of Everything Good and Swallow respectively, recount their stories in English yet, as Atta herself has pointed out (quoted in Rodríguez Murphy 2012, 107–108), it actually consists of a transcultural form of English (Rodríguez Murphy 2015b, 72), which is inscribed with Nigerian vernacular languages and expressions as well as with Nigerian cultural markers: “[Nigerian readers] tell me they enjoy seeing those kinds of Englishes in my work. They come up to me and say: ‘Oh, you really do know Nigeria, you really do know Lagos very well.’ They enjoy it” (Atta quoted in Rodríguez Murphy 2012, 108). In her work, Atta manages to reflect the different varieties of English used in Lagos. These varieties have come to be defined as NE, and now form part of the wide range of “World Englishes” (see Kachru 1992 and Kachru, Kachru, and Nelson 2006) or “New Englishes” (see Crystal 2003), in reference to local adaptations of the English language which suit specific cultural contexts. This can be seen in the following examples: Yellow Sheri’s afro was so fluffy, it moved as she talked [. . .] She had a spray of rashes and was so fair-skinned. People her color got called “Yellow Pawpaw” or “Yellow Banana” in school. (EG, 18) Peter Mukoro tapped my arm. “I was calling that lady, that yellow lady in the kitchen, but she ignored me. Tell her we need more rice. Please.” (EG, 125–126) I’d heard men say that women like Sheri didn’t age well: they wrinkled early like white women. It was the end of a narration that began when they first called her yellow banana, and not more sensible, I thought. (EG, 206) In diverse passages of Atta’s novels, we may observe that the word “yellow” has come to acquire a specific meaning in NE: “a NE way of describ- ing a fellow Black who is fairly light-skinned” (Igboanusi 2002, 303). Area boys “You won’t believe. We were having a peaceful protest, calling on the government to reconsider our demands, when we noticed a group in the crowd who did not belong to our union. [. . .] They were shouting insults and acting rowdy [. . .]” The people she was talking about had to be area boys. They waited for any protest so they could misbehave. (SW, 133) In this extract taken from Swallow, Atta uses the term “area boy,” a phrase now commonly heard in urban settings, which, in NE, makes reference to a job- 62 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  less young man who participates in criminal acts and is often involved in criminal activities. Such a term is one of many linguistic reflections of what, according to some critics (Fourchard 2012b, Lewis 2009), is now happening in the streets of the city where, for several decades, criminal activity has been on the increase. High-life music As he spoke, I fell asleep dreaming of him, an eleven-year-old boy with khaki shorts holding a rifle made of sticks, dancing to high-life music with his mother and learning how to drink palm-wine from his father’s calabash. (EG, 116-117) “High-life music,” sometimes referred to just as “highlife,” is a very well-known musical genre in the Western regions of Africa,6 “a brand of music style combining jazz and West African elements, popular in Nigeria and other West African countries. In BE, ‘high life’ denotes a style of life that involves spending a lot of money on entertainment, good food, expensive clothes, etc.” (Igboanusi 2002, 138). As Igboanusi remarks, it is important to take into con- sideration that there is a difference between the way the term is used in British English and the meaning it has come to acquire in Nigerian English. Not only “Highlife,” but also other types of transcultural Nigerian mu- sic such as apala or juju music are often mentioned in Atta’s novels. Along with language, another element that permeates daily life in Lagos and many Nigerian cities is music that, as in other countries on the African continent, has been adapted and translated to suit diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds: Through the fence we heard Akanni’s juju music. Sheri stuck her bottom out and began to wriggle. She dived lower and wormed up. (EG, 15) The street was narrow and juju music blared from a battered cassette player perched on a wooden stool. Street hawkers sat around selling boxes of sugar, bathing spong- es, tinned sardines, chewing sticks, cigarettes, and Bazooka Joe gum. (EG, 89) Lagos. The street on which we lived was named after a military governor. Our neigh- borhood smelled of burned beans and rotten egusi leaves. Juju and apala music, disco and reggae music jumped from the windows, and fluorescent blue cylinders lit up the entire place past midnight. (SW, 21) In her writing, Atta includes both NE and NP, and also the vernacu- lar languages with which she was brought up, Yoruba and Hausa. This helps situate the reader in Lagos’s translational spaces, where the sounds of different accents and languages share a common linguistic environment: 6 Although “highlife music” is a popular genre in West Africa, it is necessary to emphasize that each region has managed to maintain its own specificity: “Generally, as the music and its ac- companying highlife dance spread across West Africa, each region maintained its ethnic spec- ificity by composing songs in the local language, and some bands, especially the multinational ones, created compositions in English or pidgin English” (Ajayi-Soyinka 2008, 526). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 63  He pronounced his visions between chants that sounded like the Yoruba words for butterfly, dung beetle, and turkey: labalaba, yimiyimi, tolotolo. (EG, 10) Yoruba people believed in reincarnation. The Yoruba religion had a world for the living and another for spirits. There was a circle of life and other complex concepts regarding deity, royalty, and fate that I couldn’t fully understand. For anyone to understand the Yoruba cosmos was a challenge without the wisdom and guidance of a babalawo [. . .] (SW, 88) On the day of the Moslem festival, Id-el-fitr, I left home for the first time that month to break fast with the Bakares. [. . .] As I drove through their gates, I heard a ram bleat- ing in the back yard of the Bakare’s house. It had been tied to a mango tree for two weeks and would be slain for the Sallah feast. (EG, 245) “How’s your husband?” Mama Gani asked. Her gold tooth flashed. “He’s fine,” I said [. . .] “Still nothing about your father?” “Still nothing,” I said. She clapped her hands. “Insha Allah, nothing will happen to him, after the kindness he’s shown us.” (EG, 245) The multilingualism which is typical in Lagos makes communication based on translation and transculturation inevitable. The following dialogues from Everything Good Will Come and Swallow clearly illustrate this point: We heard a cry from the road. “Pupa! Yellow!” A taxi driver was leaning out of his window. [. . .] “Yes, you with the big yansh,” he shouted. Sheri spread her fingers at him. “Nothing good will come to you!” [. . .] “And you, Dudu,” the taxi driver said. Startled, I looked up. “Yes you with the black face. Where is your own yansh hiding?” I glared at him. “Nothing good will come to you.” He laughed with his tongue hanging out. “What, you’re turning up your nose at me? You’re not that pretty, either of you. Sharrap. Oh, sharrap both of you. You should feel happy that a man noticed you. If you’re not careful, I’ll sex you both.” Sheri and I turned our backs on him. (EG, 135-136) There was a strong smell of simmering palm oil in the flat. Rose was in the kitchen. [. . .] She laughed at my expression. “My sister,” she said. “You think say I no know how to cook or what?” “I’ve just seen Mrs. Durojaiye,” I said, shutting the door. “I saw her too.” “She says you visited her?” She clucked. “The woman done craze [. . .]” (SW, 135) On my way to the bus stop, I passed a group of women selling roasted corn under a breadfruit tree. [. . .] I heard two men discussing women. “Statuesque,” one of them said. “The first one is black and skinny, the second is yellow and fat. I can’t decide. I love them both. You think say I fit marry both of them?” (SW, 236) At the bus stop, an army officer with his stomach protruding over his belt parted the crowd to board a bus. “Single-file line,” he repeated and lifted his horsewhip to warn those who protested. [. . .] “Those who give orders,” I said in a voice loud enough for the others to hear. “Question them. You can’t just obey without thinking.” [. . .] “Oh, I hate people like this,” [a] woman said. “What is wrong with her? Move your 64 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  skinny self, sister.” [. . .] “Sister [. . .]. Move before I move you to one side, oh!” “Abi she’s deaf?” “Maybe she done craze.” “Sister, ‘dress oh!” “Yes, address yourself to the corner and continue to tanda for dat side with your body like bonga fish.” “Tss, keep shut. Don’t start another fight.” (SW, 188–189) Enitan’s and Tolani’s stories take place in a particular context which Atta succeeds in describing in great detail through a specific use of language that evokes, in the mind of the reader, the smells, images and languages which define the city of Lagos, where it is possible to come across interesting con- trasts and a wide range of lifestyles as well as “cultural inscriptions [. . .] seen in mottos and slogans on lorries, cars, pushcarts and other mobile surfaces that may be encountered on the street” (Quayson 2010, 73): Millions lived in Lagos [. . .] Most days it felt like a billion people walking down the labyrinth of petty and main streets: beggar men, secretaries, government contractors (thieves, some would say), Area Boys, street children [. . .] There was a constant din of cars, popping exhaust pipes, and engines, commuters scrambling for canary-yellow buses and private transport vans we called kabukabu and danfo. They bore bible epi- taphs: Lion of Judah, God Saves [. . .] There were countless billboards: Pepsi, Benson and Hedges, Daewoo, Indomie Instant Noodles, Drive Carefully, Fight Child Abuse [. . .] a taxi driver making lurid remarks; people cursing themselves well and good; All right-Sirs, our urban praise singers or borderline beggars, who hailed any person for money. Chief! Professor! Excellency! [. . .] My favourite time was early morning, before people encroached, when the air was cool and all I could hear was the call from Cen- tral Mosque: Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar. (EG, 98–99) In the different examples cited above, one can appreciate to what extent Atta accomplishes a very creative and engaging use of language in her novels. She skillfully manages to transmit the specific characteristics of the cultures that have come to constitute her identity;7 similarly she also succeeds in representing the diverse range of accents that define the city of Lagos as a translational space, where “[a]ccents, code-switching and translation are to be valued for the ways in which they draw attention to the complexities of difference, for the ways in which they interrupt the self-sufficiencies of ‘mono’ cultures” (Simon 2012, 1). 7 “I had an unusual upbringing [. . .] and was surrounded by people from other ethnic groups and religions. Many Nigerian writers I meet feel that they are Yoruba, Igbo or something else, but I actually feel Nigerian and it comes out in my writing. I write about people who don’t have any strong ethnic allegiance or people who are in mixed marriages. [. . .] What I have picked up is language from different parts of the world and it comes out in my writing. I have to be very careful when I am writing in the voices of people who have not had my experiences. My second novel, Swallow, is written in the voice of a Yoruba woman, for instance. I couldn’t use language I had picked up here or in England” (Atta as cited in Collins 2007, 7). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 65  conclusion As several critics (Bandia 2008, Bandia as cited in Rodríguez Murphy 2015a, Gyasi 1999, Mehrez 1992, Inggs and Meintjes 2009) have rightly emphasized, the high rate of multilingualism or “polilingualism” (Bandia 2008, 136–137, Bandia as cited in Rodríguez Murphy 2015a, 149) which characterizes many of the African postcolonies,8 including Nigeria, is of great importance for translation studies in this day and age. Without a doubt, taking into account the ever-growing transculturation and transnationalization of cultures in our present-day global world, multilingualism can be considered an increasingly relevant feature both in literature and society: As a corollary of colonization, the displacement and migration of peoples brought about changes that would challenge the notion of a national language and a homo- geneous culture paving the way for understanding language and culture from the point of view of a transnational experience. According to Bhabha, hybridity, a main characteristic of the postcolonial condition, disrupts the relation between national language and culture, and points to a culture of difference, of displacement of signifi- cation, of translation. (Bandia 2008, 139). In this regard, in many African cities new transcultural and hybrid forms of diverse elements are being created every day. Ranging from trans- cultural types of music (Osumare 2012), such as afrobeat or highlife music, to other transcultural phenomena, including the Azonto dance in Ghana (Jaka- na, 2012) and the Nollywood film industry, which is now a major influence in Lagos’s streets and markets (Haynes 2007, Fuentes-Luque 2017). In the specific case of language, and as we have seen in the examples quoted from Atta’s novels, the prominence of the multilingualism that permeates African cities in general, and the continuous emergence of new hybrid linguistic forms and new semantic associations, which are typical features of the discourse em- ployed in situations involving interaction in urban areas, are, and will contin- ue to be, compelling topics when analyzing issues related to translation and translatability in the twenty-first century. 8 Here “postcolony” (Mbembe 2010) refers to the postcolonial context which, according to Bandia, is part of the colonial space: “Colonial space is ‘the postcolony’ itself, but it is also that space where people with postcolonial experiences, people with postcolonial backgrounds, exist” (Bandia as cited in Rodríguez Murphy 2015a, 149). This “colonial space” should not be understood as a static entity, but rather as characterized by ongoing translation, translocation and transculturation. 66 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  <References> Adedun, Emmanuel and Mojisola Shodipe. 2011. “Yoruba-English bilingualism in cen- tral Lagos—Nigeria.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 23 (2): 121–132. Adegbija, Efurosibina E. 2000. “Language Attitudes in West Africa.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 141 (1): 75–100. . 2004. Multilingualism: A Nigerian Case Study. Trenton/Asmara: Africa World Press. Adekunle, Mobolaji. 1997. “English in Nigeria: Attitudes, Policy and Communicative Realities.” In New Englishes: A West African Perspective, edited by Ayo Bamgbose, Ayo Banjo, and Andrew Thomas, 57–86. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press. 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Falola, Toyin, and Ann Genova. 2009. Historical Dictionary of Nigeria. Lanham, Toron- to, and Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press. Fourchard, Laurent. 2012a. “Lagos.” In Power and Powerless. Capital Cities in Africa, edited by Simon Bekker and Göran Therborn, 66–82. Cape Town: HSRC Press. . 2012b. “Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria.” In The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ayodeji Olukoju, edited by Saheed Aderinto and Paul Osifodunrin, 243–276. New- castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Fuentes-Luque, Adrián. 2017. “Nollywood Stands Up: Mapping Nigeria’s Audiovi- sual Sector.” In Translation Studies beyond the Postcolony, edited by Ko- isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 67  bus Marais and Ilse Feinauer, 130-153. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Garuba, Harry. 2001. “Language and Identity in Nigeria.” In Shifting African Identities, edited by Simon Bekker, Martine Dodds, and Meshack M. 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Iyoha, Milton A. 2010. “Leadership, Policy Making, and Economic Growth in African Countries: The Case of Nigeria.” In Leadership and Growth, edited by David Brady and Michael Spence, 165–193. Washington: World Bank Publications. Jakana, Alex. 2012. “Could Ghana’s new Azonto dance craze take over the world?” BBC News. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-18495493. Kachru, Braj B. 1992. “World Englishes: Approaches, Issues and Resources.” Lan- guage Teaching 25 (1): 1–14. Kachru, Braj B., Yamuna Kachru, and Cecil L. Nelson, eds. 2006. The Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Lewis, Peter M. 2009. “Negotiating Lagos: Viewing Lagos Wide and Close.” SAIS Review 29 (1): 115–120. Mbembe, Achille. 2010. Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée. Paris: La Découverte. McLaughlin, Fiona, ed. 2009. The Languages of Urban Africa. London: Continuum. Mehrez, Samia. 1992. “Translation and the Postcolonial Experience: The Franco- phone North African Text.” In Rethinking Translation. Discourse, Subjectiv- ity, Ideology, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 120–138. London and New York: Routledge. Osumare, Halifu. 2012. The Hiplife in Ghana: West African Indigenization of Hip-Hop. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Quayson, Ato. 2010. “Signs of the Times: Discourse Ecologies and Street Life on Oxford St., Accra.” City & Society 22 (1): 72–96. Rodríguez Murphy, Elena. 2012. “An Interview with Sefi Atta.” Research in African Literatures 43 (3): 106–114. . 2015a. “An Interview with Professor Paul Bandia.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 23 (1): 143–154 . 2015b. Traducción y literatura africana: multilingüismo y transculturación en la narrativa nigeriana de expresión inglesa (Translation and African litera- ture: multilingualism and transculturation in anglophone Nigerian writing). Granada: Comares. Saro-Wiwa, Ken. 1992. “The Language of African Literature: A Writer’s Testimony.” Research in African Literatures 23 (1): 153–157. Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English. Varieties around the World. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. 68 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Simon, Sherry. 2012. Cities in Translation. Intersections of Language and Memory. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2007. “Deep into the Night the City Calls as the Blacks Come Home to Roost.” Theory, Culture & Society 24 (7–8): 224–237. . 2008. “Some Reflections on Making Popular Culture in Urban Africa.” African Studies Review 51 (3): 75-89. Simons, Gary F. and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2017. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Twentieth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com. Simpson, Andrew, ed. 2008. Language and National Identity in Africa. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Triulzi, Alessandro. 2002 “African Cities, Historical Memory and Street Buzz.” In The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, edited by Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, 78–91. London and New York: Routledge. United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). 2014. The State of African Cities 2014. Re-imagining sustainable urban transitions. Nairobi: UN-Habitat. Uzoamaka, Ada. 2008. “Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Creative Writing and Literary Activism.” http://www.iun.edu/~minaua/interviews/interview_ chimamanda_ngozi_adichie.pdf Warren-Rothlin, Andy. 2012. “Arabic script in modern Nigeria.” In Advances in Minority Language Research in Nigeria (vol. I), edited by Roger M. Blench and Stuart McGill, 105–121. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Zabus, Chantal. 2001. “Oil Boom, Oil Doom. Interview by Chantal Zabus.” Interview with Ken Saro-Wiwa, in No Condition is Permanent: Nigerian Writing and the Struggle for Democracy, edited by Holger G. Ehling and Claus-Peter Holste-von Mutius, 1–12. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. First pub- lished 1993 by Rodopi (Amsterdam and New York). . 2007. The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. <Elena Rodríguez Murphy> holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Salamanca (Spain), where she works in the Depart- ment of Translation and Interpreting. Her research interests include Af- rican literatures, translation studies, and linguistics. She has published several articles and book chapters on these areas of study, including “An Interview with Sefi Atta” (published Research in African Literatures, 2012) and “An Interview with Professor Paul Bandia” (Perspectives, 2015). She is the author of Traducción y literatura africana: multilingüis- mo y transculturación en la narrativa nigeriana de expresión inglesa (Granada, 2015). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 69 

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translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15751

Translation and Asymmetrical Spaces, the Strait of Gibraltar as a Case in Point África Vidal and Juan Jesús Zaro University of Salamanca, Spain [email protected] University of Malaga, Spain [email protected] <Abstract> As a geographical location, defined by Paul Bowles as “the center of the uni- verse,” which separates continents—Europe in the North and Africa in the South—but also world views, cultures, religions, and languages, the Strait of Gibraltar was and remains an authentic translation space. At present, the metaphor of the separation that the Strait evokes incessantly continues to be valid every day, taking into account, for example, events such as the succesive waves of African immigrants who have been arriving on the European coasts for several years “illegally.” In addition to these tensions, there are cities located in the Strait, such as Tangier and Gibraltar, that are by themselves multilingual and multicul- tural places and therefore spaces of translation and conflict that deserve specific sections in this paper. While Tangier, during the second half of the twentieth century was a unique “interzone” characterized by cosmopolitanism and the coexistence of spaces and multiple and confronted texts, Gibraltar is now a territory reinvented as a result of its past, in which hybridity would be a fundamental part of its complex and young identity. introduction Spaces can be real and imagined. Spaces can tell stories and unfold histories. Spaces can be interrupted, appropriated, and transformed through artistic and literary practice. (hooks 1991, 152) Human beings access reality by means of translations, of provisional, rele- vant, interesting or interested versions of realities which are continually being contextualized, rectified, and translated. With the hermeneutic and ethical journeys of each individual, we come to realize that translating is an inevitable means of encountering the other. Not only of encountering the other, but also of coming face to face with immigration and national identities, the global and the local, the problem of marginal groups, difference, or encountering what we sometimes agree with and sometimes detest. And we come across all of these things because when we translate we invade spaces, we occupy alien, far-away spaces which overlap and clash. When we translate, we shape these spaces and walk over the tracks we find on the way; but, on occasion, when we move around in others’ spaces, our aim is also to rewrite them and translate them. Translating is shifting smells, flavors, or passions from places that are 70 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  not ours. Translation is movement, flow, and passage between spaces that are not, and should never be, unidirectional or closed. Our starting-point in this paper is that all cultural experience arises at the crossroads between language, topos, and identity, and that precisely the ex- perience of what is different is produced by the destabilization of these cross- roads (Robinson 1998, 24). Our point of departure, therefore, is that translat- ing, and more specifically translating spaces, is a very political activity which is certainly not neutral—it is the locus where the coexistence of heterogeneity becomes possible, and as a result space must always be under construction (Massey 2011, 9). As an example of this way of understanding translation, we aim to focus on the Strait of Gibraltar, with the cities of Tangier and Gibraltar at opposite sides of its coast. It is a fascinating area because it is the space that joins Africa and Europe, a space of cultural encounter that espouses the concept of hybridity, a hybridity distinct from syncretism, creolization, and métissage, which would suggest that the dynamics of cultural encounters give rise to new, long-lasting identities. On the contrary, these are spaces in which the hybrid is that space in construction just mentioned that problematizes binary oppositions since each is part of the construction of the other. Within this context, translating in these spaces means offering a culturally constructed version away from dualisms. The analysis of this space, which includes the Strait, Tangier, and Gi- braltar, will lead us to reflect on the fact that translating is today the condition of living of many cities with a double or triple history behind them. The study of these spaces will make clear that translation, far from being a benevolent act of hospitality toward a guest from another space, is a relentless transaction (Si- mon 2003, 77), a hybrid act which does not mean a new synthesis but a zone of negotiation, dissent, and exchange, a locus that short-circuits patterns of alterity in order to express the drift of contemporary identities (Simon 1999, 39–40). The Strait of Gibraltar, which is in turn a clash space between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, is the starting point of this essay; it is here that all stories—those that go to the North and those that remain in the South—begin and it is also the narrative constructions on the Strait that make this space such a complicated, multicultural space, because “places without stories are unthinkable” (Price 2004, xxi). In fact, the Strait of Gibraltar and the stories shaping it throughout the centuries make it a space of conflicts, silences, discontinuities, and exclu- sions that turn it into a place which is unstable and multilayered, never fin- ished, never determined, processual, porous (Price 2004, 5). Because although the Strait of Gibraltar is currently a natural border between two continents (Africa and Europe) and two countries (Morocco and Spain), and it is unique isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 71  in that it also has Gibraltar (an overseas territory of the United Kingdom), and Ceuta (a Spanish city with its own statute of autonomous government) on opposite sides of its shores, the truth is that, throughout history, both sides have been united longer than they have been separated. They were governed as one territory by the Romans and also during the eight centuries of Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. In 1492, after the fall of the Kingdom of Granada, the two shores separated forever, a separation that was only occa- sionally interrupted during the time of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco (1913–1956). Since 1956, when the kingdom of Morocco became independent, the two shores have once again become administratively, politically, and cul- turally independent. The waters of the Strait are, therefore, a palimpsest accumulating well-known stories and also, unfortunately, other stories we will never hear about because they were lost forever with the bodies that have sunk to the depths. The waters of the Strait are “a layered text of narratives of belonging and exclusion, always negotiated, always struggled over, never finished” (Price 2004, 7); they are the intermediate, imaginary zone between Africa and the West that every culture needs: “Somewhere every culture has an imaginary zone for what it excludes, and it is that zone we must try to remember today” (Cixous and Clément 1986, 6). And that imaginary zone is the line that joins the two “dual cities” (Simon 2012, 3 and following pages) we shall go on to examine in detail, Tangier and Gibraltar. Currently, communication between both sides of the Strait is in the form of fast or traditional ferries between Tarifa, Algeciras, and Gibraltar on the European side and Ceuta and Tangier in Africa. Crossings take between thirty and ninety minutes. Sometimes crossings cannot be made due to storms or strong winds, especially in winter. One of these ferries is called “the whale,” a carrier of unknown treasures which, with a curious symbolism reminding us of Captain Ahab’s quest to hunt down Moby Dick, is pursued by an old fish- erman from Tangier in the film Moroccan Chronicles (1999) by the Moroccan director Moumen Smihi. The journey between the two shores is made legally by almost three million people a year and illegally by more than ten thousand, who use their own means to get across in “pateras.” The Strait of Gibraltar is the only gateway into and out of the Mediterranean for all marine traffic. It is estimated that more than 82,000 ships cross it every year. As Alfred Chester points out in his short story “Glory Hole”: “The hills of Spain are there like civilized laughter across the narrow water; two ferries a day, or six, or ten— who can remember anymore? Spain is on the other, the inaccessible side of Styx” (Chester 1990, 221). The possibility of building a bridge or a tunnel between both shores 72 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  has often been discussed. From the technical viewpoint, the tunnel option would appear to be the most feasible, even though the depth of the water of the Strait would make it the deepest (and most expensive) tunnel in Europe. However, the existence of a tunnel or bridge across the Strait would be a huge improvement in traffic and mobility between both sides, something which, from a symbolic and political point of view, would not seem to be totally acceptable at this moment in time: the idea of a tunnel or bridge, ultimately a metaphor of union and communication between the two shores, clashes with other well-known metaphorical narratives about the Strait which focus more on the idea of battle and separation. One is the familiar mythological tale of the “columns,” identified fairly vaguely as the Rock of Gibraltar and Mount Hacho in Ceuta, which Hercules separated to open up a passage for the Atlantic Ocean. Another is the myth surrounding Julian, Count of Ceu- ta, a Visigoth governor of the city who is alleged to have facilitated entry of Muslim troops into the Spanish mainland in 711, enabling them to put an end to the Visigothic rule established after the fall of the Roman Empire. This act changed the history of Spain forever. It is said that Julian did this out of revenge after his daughter was raped in Toledo by Rodrigo, the last Visigothic king of Spain who would finally be defeated and killed by the invading army in the Battle of Guadalete. In this sense, the fact that it was a question of honor that caused the Muslim invasion of Spain has led to numerous interpre- tations. In his novel Reivindicación del conde don Julián (1970), Juan Goytisolo identifies with the main character more than one thousand years later in his desire to put an end to the essential, homogeneous, and nationalist–Catholic Spain of the Franco regime, in the same way that the Visigothic count had indirectly helped to put an end to Christian Spain and, ultimately, promote miscegenation and the fusion of races. We must not forget that the last sig- nificant act of war in the Strait took place in August 1936, when around eight thousand troops from the rebel Spanish army in Morocco were transported by sea to the Spanish mainland to join the rebel troops once the Civil War started. The history of the Strait, therefore, has been, and continues to be, a history of conflict involving the clash of two different civilizations, established on the two continents located on either side of this stretch of water, which also economically represent two very different zones—Europe on the north side and Africa on the south, which are profoundly asymmetrical in economic terms. It is, in this sense, perhaps the most unequal border in the whole world, and crossing the Strait was, and perhaps still is, travelling to another reality. This is how it was described by the Spanish traveller and spy Ali Bey when he said in 1814, on crossing from Tarifa to Tangier, that whoever crosses the isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 73  Strait goes “en tan breve espacio de tiempo a un mundo absolutamente nuevo, y sin la más remota semejanza con el que se acaba de dejar, se halla realmente como transportado a otro planeta” (Bey 2009, 147). Nowadays, the most vis- ible aspect of this conflict is that of illegal migrants, who, as we have pointed out above, use the Strait to enter Europe, and who in recent years consist mainly of people from sub-Saharan countries. This is why this intermediate space that is the sea is the space in movement that, although in the middle, is the space of the beginning and the end, the space of the in-between which necessarily has to be crossed by these fragmented lives. It is the only space in which, unfortunately, they will be full citizens. However, there are other conflicts in the area, including claims from other countries for territories they consider to have been illegally occupied for centuries. This is the case, above all, of Spain and Gibraltar, but also of Morocco and Ceuta. Exile, or immigration for political or ideological reasons, is also linked to the history of the Strait of Gibraltar. Many historical diasporas have traversed it, including, for example, the Jews (around 80,000) or the Moriscos (around 300,000) when they were expelled from Spain in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively, who abandoned Spain and crossed over to Africa. Some Spanish Jews settled in towns in the north of Morocco, where they lived for centuries with a largely Muslim population. Many migrated to Israel shortly after the new state was founded and now form part of the Sephardic community, one of the most visible and well-known communities of that country. The Spanish Moriscos who took refuge in Morocco, on the other hand, contributed their andalusí character to Moroccan culture and it is now one of its signs of identity. And not only that, but the space we will examine below is, as well as being a multicultural space, or perhaps precisely for that reason, a multilingual space. Four languages live side by side on both shores: Spanish on the Spanish side in Ceuta, in Gibraltar, and to a much lesser degree throughout North Morocco; English in Gibraltar; and French and Arabic in Morocco. The two most used languages, Spanish and Arabic, correspond to diatopical dialect forms, Andalusian Spanish in Spain and colloquial Moroccan Arabic or dāriŷa on the Moroccan coast of the Strait. The Andalusian variant is also used by the citizens of Gibraltar, which immediately makes them Andalusians for the rest of Spain when they speak Spanish, although they do in fact speak a hybrid variety called “llanito,” a kind of small-scale European Spanglish. Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand, has a strong Berber substrate and influences from French and Spanish and is an identitarian dialect, far removed from modern standard Arabic and unintelligible to many Moroccans. Due to their own particular history, a number of coastal towns on the Strait, such as Tangier 74 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  for example, can be considered to be multilingual spaces where it is possible to be understood in three or four languages. Others, like Gibraltar, are clearly bilingual. Ceuta is similarly an interesting example, as it is also becoming a bilingual city due to the increasing Muslim population, to which we must likewise add a significant Hindu community which is completely bilingual in Spanish and Hindi. These multicultural and multilingual spaces will allow us to better understand the Strait’s coastal “dual cities”—to use Sherry Simon’s terminol- ogy—which we will examine below. tangier, a dual city The place [Tangier] was counterfeit, a waiting room between connections, a transition from one way of being to another… (Bowles 2006, 382). Tangier is not part of Morocco. It’s international. Paul Bowles interviewed by Abdelhak Elghandor (Elghandor 1994, 16) From the end of the 1940s until Moroccan independence in 1956, the city of Tangier, located to the extreme west of the African coast of the Strait of Gi- braltar, had a unique political status, that of being an “international zone.” But it was, at the same time, a multilayered space where many languages existed, and still do exist, at the same time, a space where translation was never a mere language transfer but a practice of writing that took place at the crossroads (Simon 2012, 8). Perched on the northern tip of Morocco with its eyes trained across the Strait of Gibraltar toward Spain, “Tangier certainly has long been at the crossroads, a point of intersection of various civilizations, notably African/ Islamic and European Christian” (Hibbard 2009, 1). This is why Tangier is a space that has always generated multiple discourses; it is a city that has always “spoken,” because it is a site of representation. However, the discourses it has generated have been different translations of reality, rewritings of a space that some, Westerners, exoticized, and others, Moroccans, understood differently, as a way of “writing back to the West” (Elkouche 2008, 1). Tangier was, on the one hand, a space of rich British expatriates and, on the other, the receiving space of many expatriates from Paris during the years between the World wars, artists and writers who sought in the “interna- tionalized” Tangier what the Lost Generation had searched for in the French capital a few years earlier, a space open to less conventional ways of life. The era during which both artists and writers lived in Tangier was especially rele- isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 75  1. View of Tangier vant with regard to political and social change, because during these years the Maghreb moved on from being an area under European colonial control to one of postcolonial independence Halfway between nations, cultures, and languages, Tangier became an “interzone,” to use Burroughs’s word—that is, “a place of intermediacy and ambiguity, a place that remains outside standard narratives of nationhood and identity. It proved to be an expedient location for [writers] to sort out the multiple crises of identity, desire, and loss that motivated their writing” (Mul- lins 2002, 3). In this sense, we must not forget that, as Tangier’s legal situation allowed moral permissiveness with regard, for example, to sexuality and drugs 76 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain and was considered to be a mental illness in the United States, it was logical that this unorthodox space should attract many gay artists of the time, from Jean Genet to Robert Rauschenberg, William Burroughs and Paul Bowles (who lived in Tangier for over fifty years, from 1947 until his death in 1999). To these names we could add a long list of intellectuals who spent time in Tangier, such as Gertrude Stein, Francis Bacon, Djuna Barnes, Brion Gysin, Samuel Beckett, Alfred Chester, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Aaron Copeland, Juan Goytisolo, Ian Fleming, and many others. Because Tangier was the promised land of the bohemian Diaspora and refuge of many rich, eccentric Westerners (see Pulsifer 1992 and Walonen 2011) who sought ways of life that constituted an alternative to the orthodoxy of their countries of origin. This is something that, in spite of everything, the city is still proud of and still attracts a lot of tourists. A recent tourist brochure, Tangier in Morocco, published by the Mo- roccan National Tourist Office, states: “The streets of Tangier are teeming with artistic and literary memories. Countless painters, novelists, playwrights, poets, photographers, actors, filmmakers and couturiers from every nation under the sun have stayed here a while or made their home here, inspired and bewitched by the city’s magic” (Moroccan National Tourist Office n.d., 12). Truman Capote, in a 1950 article entitled “Tangier” (Capote 2013), reminds us of the radical heterogeneity and idiosyncrasies arising from this huge amount of freedom. Tangier was the space on the border between Eu- rope and Africa, between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity; a place where nationalities, cultures, and languages mixed to the point of promiscuity. In fact, in Morocco translation is still a means of survival today. Although the official language is Arabic, the economic and cultural life of the country has always been carried out in several languages. The educated classes speak and write standard Arabic and French, while the majority of people use varieties of Moroccan Arabic or Berber variants. In the north many people speak Span- ish and also English, particularly those involved in tourism and commerce. Therefore, “no single Moroccan language can universally speak to and for all Moroccans; rather, Moroccans must daily translate among themselves, or in the formation of literary narratives, both written and oral” (Sabil 2005, 176). It is no surprise, then, that this open locus, especially that of Tangier when it was an International Zone, should have been so attractive a place for writers whose lives and works were considered unorthodox in Western circles. Tangier was a space where for many years national structures and rigid codes of ethics were deconstructed and where confusion of all binary logic was favored. However, the spaces inhabited by Westerners in Tangier were gen- isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 77  erally separate from those inhabited by Moroccans. We see this in the case of Bowles, whose descriptions of the spaces his characters are situated in speak of class, race, or cultural differences. Moreover, Bowles describes in many of his translations the horror of not having a place in space, in For Bread Alone by Choukri (2010), for example. The above-mentioned rich British expats created a series of separate places that reflected English ways of life, places of worship like St. Andrew’s Church, tea parties and lavish parties with film stars (Finlayson 1992, 271 and following pages), although it is also true that the density of the population and the physical and social distribution of the city led to inevitable contact between the communities. The center of Tangier had been designed initially for around 12,000 people and it remained un- changed when population numbers increased. So, the streets were always full of people, cultures, and religions as reflected in the pages of Burroughs’s The Naked Lunch or Bowles’s Let it Come Down. The narrow streets in the center showed multiplicity and the two main axes of the town, the Boulevard Pas- teur running from east to west, and the Rue du Statut running from north to south, crossed at Place de France, “a bustling roundabout ringed by popular cafés frequented by the diplomatic community and Moroccan nationalists” (Edwards 2005, 130). In Tangier, the European powers were initially the producers of spac- es, the power groups who designed, distributed, named, and built spaces and who also established the rules for the use of these spaces. This divided spatial- ity is typical, as Fanon reminds us in The Wretched of the Earth, of colonizing processes: “The first thing which the native learns is to stay in his place, and not to go beyond certain limits” (Fanon 1968, 52). The space of colonial order is always one of luxury, cleanliness, and entertainment; the other formed of wretched places, as we see, for example, in Choukri’s For Bread Alone. Without a doubt, for Bowles and many other writers and artists, Tang- ier was a “third space,” in Edward Soja’s sense of the term—that is, “the space where all places are capable of being seen from every angle, each standing clear; but also a secret and conjectured object, filled with illusions and allu- sions, a space that is common to all of us yet never able to be completely seen and understood” (Soja 1996, 56). Perhaps this is why Bowles never considered himself to be Tangierian but, rather, a vocational stateless person. In March 1992 he said in an interview, “I am not American and I am not Moroccan. I’m a visitor on earth. You have to be Muslim to really be accepted in Morocco, to be a part of it” (Choukri 2008, 304). Bowles was also against the Westernization of Moroccan spaces after independence—for him geography was a way of reading identity. Spaces were texts and the scenery was the reflection of his characters’ inner self, some- 78 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  thing the critics have discussed in detail (Pounds 1985; Olson 1986; Hassan 1995; Caponi 1998; Patteson 2003; Walonen 2011) and that he himself recognized in some of his travel writings such as Their Heads are Green and their Hands are Blue (1963), and in his novels and several interviews. Characters like Thami in Let it Come Down identify with the place and the space, but when they are taken somewhere else like New York many of his characters feel out of place. It was in his translations of oral texts by Moroccan narrators (Ahmed Yacoubi, Layachi Larbi, Abdeslam Boulaich, and Mohammed Mrabet, among others), howev- er, that he rewrites in that contact zone that is no good to imperialism, like many other postcolonial translations, but comes from within the Other(‘s) space, “involves a much looser notion of the text, interacts intensely with local forms of narrative and is a revigorating and positive global influence [. . .] a con- tinuous life-giving and creative process” (Simon and St-Pierre 2000, 10). After October 1956, when Tangier was no longer an International Zone (in 1961 it became part of Morocco), people came to suspect that “the good times, the high-living years for foreign residents with substantial assets in Tangi- er, might be ending” (Finlayson 1992, 75). In 1957 the British Post Office closed its offices; the Spanish Post Office did the same in 1958. In addition, many banks and companies closed and transferred their branches to other countries. The lux- ury goods shops on Boulevard Pascal were replaced by shops selling local crafts and clothing. But one of the most revealing details of the change was “a new edict banning the sale of liquor within a certain distance from a mosque” and another determining the places that stayed and those that did not: “There were a great many mosques, and a great many Spanish, Jewish and other foreign-owned bars. The mosques stayed open, the bars closed” (Finlayson 1992, 75). That is, the places that Lefebvre calls “representations of space” (1991, 33) closed, that experience of space referring to hegemonic ideological representations, to space constructed by professionals and technocrats (engineers, architects, urban plan- ners, geographers, etc.), a space where ideology, power, and knowledge are in- variably linked to representation. Besides, when it was no longer an International Zone, many Moroccans living in the country moved to Tangier, which changed the city space. The clean, luxurious Tangier of today is Muslim, the best areas be- long to citizens of countries in the Persian Gulf and to Moroccans who have made their fortune from drug-trafficking between Africa and Europe, traffick- ing in which the city is a crucial point (Walonen 2011, 127). The city and its population have evolved and so has their interaction with the first world, to such an extent that the essentialist vision of the Muslim population, which to- day reproaches the former foreign residents of the Tangier of the International Zone, might have changed. The foreign residents and tourists currently in isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 79  Tangier (many attracted by the literary past of the city) still mix with the local people, but probably in a different way to that of the foreign community of the Tangier of the 1940s and ‘50s. Despite this, it is curious that in the tourist brochure mentioned above, Tangier in Morocco, Tangier’s special character, compared to that of other Moroccan cities, is highlighted in the following words: “Today, the city still has its cosmopolitan side, with a wide variety of outside influences contributing to its cultural diversity and unique personali- ty” (Moroccan National Tourist Office n.d., 7). Or with these other puzzling words: “There is something altogether unique about the town, something impalpable, indefinable –a sense of freedom that hangs in the air like the scent of orange blossom” (Moroccan National Tourist Office n.d., 5). Tangier, with its linguistic and cultural contrasts and the social and classist inequalities reflected in its spaces, is therefore the living example that spaces are socially created entities, political constructions that reveal prejudices, asymmetries, and inequalities. But, in addition, the places are “practiced” spaces (De Certeau 1988, 117). De Certeau compares spatiality, place and narrative, and, for him, the narrative ends up “transforming places into spaces or spaces into places” (De Certeau 1988, 130). The writer and the translator take the reader by the hand when they describe an apartment, a street, a country, or a border. gibraltar, a translational city [...] dual cities have their origins in conquest, when a stronger language group comes to occupy or impinge upon a pre-existent language which may itself have displaced another before it. (Simon 2012, 3) The city of Gibraltar (Jebel-al-Tariq, or “the mountain of Tarik,” an Arab leader who led the Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 ce), resting on its Rock, has been, as we all know, a British colony since the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1704 Gibraltar was occupied by an English fleet involved in the War of the Spanish Succession and included in the Spanish territories ruled by the Archduke Charles of Austria, one of the pretenders to the throne (the other was Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis xvi of France and legitimate heir according to the last will and testament of the last king of Spain, Charles II, who had died in 1700). However, the detachment that expelled the citizens from the city—they founded the town of San Roque, whence an irate stone lion stills looks threateningly over at the Rock—never left, not even when the war ended and Philip V was proclaimed King. One of the conditions of the famous Treaty of Utrecht (1713) was that Spain should recognize British sovereignty over the Rock of Gibraltar, the city, and the 80 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  port. The Treaty, which has never been revoked and is, therefore, still in force today, continues to be invoked by Spain today on the grounds that, among other things, the land occupied by Gibraltar Airport is in a neutral area that had never been signed over to the British and, therefore, was occupied illegally during the First World War. More than three hundred years of British sovereignty have made Gi- braltar a unique enclave. It is located on the southern tip of Andalusia and its only land border is with Spain. This Lilliputian territory is 5.8 square kilo- meters in size and has a population of almost 30,000 inhabitants, making it one of the most densely populated places in the world (4,290 inhabitants per square kilometer). As the original Spanish population of the city abandoned the Rock after the British occupation, it soon filled with immigrants from several places—Genoa, Portugal, India, Malta, Morocco, and Spain, among others—and also had a significant Jewish community, who had migrated to Gibraltar to “serve” the British troops and their families. As we have men- tioned above, the city is also practically bilingual, English is spoken, as well as “llanito” or a kind of Spanglish spoken on the Rock which the locals call “suichito” or “switch,” a hybrid language where code switching is constantly used. Many Gibraltarians also speak fluent Spanish with a marked Andalusian accent. Relations with Spain have never been easy. In Spain, whatever the ideology of the ruling party, Gibraltar is always considered to be a colonized territory which should be returned to Spain as it was taken by force in an act of war. Today most Gibraltarians think that the Treaty of Utrecht is obsolete, that history has shown that Gibraltar is a territory demographically, linguis- tically, and culturally different from Spain, and that the current autonomous status of the territory, approved by all its inhabitants, is proof of its democrat- ic nature. Although the United Nations declared in 1964 that Gibraltar should be “decolonized,” under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht it could never be an independent country—it could only be British or, should the latter abandon the territory, Spanish. At that time, the United Kingdom refused to enter into any kind of negotiation with Franco’s Spain, and the Spanish gov- ernment, in retaliation, closed the land border between Gibraltar and Spain, leaving Gibraltar isolated via land from 1969 to 1985. Recent attempts to set up negotiations to try to reach an agreement of British and Spanish cosovereignty of the territory have met the refusal of almost all the Gibraltarians. In any case, there is still a problem between Gibraltar and Spain which is visible, especially at the moment, in the “queues” of cars and people that have been forming at the Spanish border crossing every summer since 2013, when the Spanish government decided to periodically tighten the con- isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 81  trol of vehicles and persons, which only adds to the active conflicts in the area of the Strait. In this case, however, it is a political conflict more than a social or cultural one, but it affects the daily life of people who live in the area and have become hostages, in a way, of decisions taken very far away for reasons they often do not understand. This “distance” from the centers of power can be seen in the references to the population of Gibraltar in the media. Therefore, while the Spanish government said these queues were “necessary” to stop smuggling, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, Fabián Picardo, denounced the “passivity” of the British government in this affair for fear of worsening relations with Spain (Ayllón 2014), and the Spanish workers on the Rock expressed their disagreement with the measures put into place by their own government (Romaguera 2013). This is, therefore, a deep-rooted problem with no easy solution. Gi- braltar is a prosperous place with a high standard of living—it is, in fact, the second most prosperous territory in the European Union, which is in stark contrast with the Spanish region surrounding it. The Campo de Gibraltar is a depressed area with a high level of unemployment and is still far behind other areas of Spain. But, this prosperity is due, above all, to the fact that it is a tax haven where companies and financial institutions pay hardly any taxes, which would explain the huge amount of investment and increasing number of com- panies registered on the Rock. From Spain it is argued that this prosperity is largely due to fiscal rules and regulations, which are very different to those in Spain and prevent investment, for example, reaching Campo de Gibraltar, the area around the Rock. The Gibraltarian stereotype as seen from Spain is that of a smuggler on a motorbike who takes advantage of his situation as an islander with respect to Spain to obtain economic benefits, but who, deep down, is just an Andalusian in denial. From the Gibraltarian point of view, Spaniards are considered to be provincial individuals anchored in the past who have never been able to understand that Gibraltar is not a part of Spain, that its population is more heterogeneous in comparison to that of Spain, and that it is so prosperous. Whatever the case, we cannot forget that currently more than seven thousand Spaniards work in Gibraltar and that many Gibral- tarians have invested large amounts of money in properties in Spain. This “insularity” or impermeability of Gibraltar, even though it is not an island as such, has led to it being a place of stability and freedom in contrast with the turbulent history of its neighbor. During the nineteenth century, the Rock was a refuge for Spanish exiles who had to abandon their country for political reasons and were making their way to the United Kingdom or other European countries. During the twentieth century the Rock, as a British terri- tory, maintained standards of religious freedom and tolerance which were un- 82 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  2. Views of Gibraltar known in Spain, especially during the Franco regime, and this would make it a more advanced society in all aspects. We cannot forget the famous wedding of John Lennon and Yoko Ono which took place in Gibraltar in 1969, a media event highlighting the “modernity” of the Rock, which was much closer to the “swinging London” of the 1960s than backward, conservative Spain. In any case, the closure of the border crossing in 1969 made communication between Gibraltar and Spain almost nonexistent. Today, Gibraltar (or “Gib” as it is known in Britain) could be any town on the southern coast of England, or perhaps the Channel Islands. There are typical references found in British territories, red telephone box- es, “bobbies” and the Union Jack, which continues to fly in many places. The supermarkets and shops belong to British groups—Marks and Spencer, BHS, Boots, Morrisons, and so on—and the pubs are authentic. However, this translation of a southern space to a northern one does not include all the codes or elements: in Gibraltar people drive on the right, as they do in Spain; the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the most “British” space in the whole area, is built in an oriental style with horseshoe arches over doors and windows; at the entrance to the city the Muslim fort, which could never be seen in an English town, is still standing strong; and the Andalusian accent of the inhabitants when they speak Spanish or “llanito” assimilates them to their neighbors in Campo de Gibraltar. There are two theories regarding the origin of the term “llanito,” both related to the clash between languages. Ac- cording to one theory, “llanito” was coined in Gibraltar in the early twentieth century by Andalusian workers who would hear Gibraltar mothers call their “yanitos” (the Spanish diminutive for Johnny—Johnnito) and began to call all Gibraltarians “yanis” (Johnnys), which led in turn to the current “llanitos” isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 83  or “yanitos.” The other theory is that the word derives from the large num- ber of “Giovannis,” or “Giannis” as they are familiarly called, in the large Genoese colony which settled on the Rock. The simultaneous use of Spanish and English can often be very amusing. Main Street, the commercial artery of the city, is also called the “Calle Reá,” and Gibraltar is “Gibrartá,” both in “llanito” and Andalusian Spanish. Manuel Leguineche (2002, 2) mentions his surprise when a Gibraltarian bobby replied “Zí, zeñó” to the question “Do you speak English?” This way of speaking is only the reflection of the coexistence of asym- metrical spaces where at least two cultures live side by side or occasionally clash. It is a way of speaking that, as Susan Bassnett states (in Simon 2012, n.p.), shows the fundamental importance of languages shaping cultural, geo- graphical, and historical space. In effect, the particular language used in Gi- braltar demonstrates the power of language to mark the urban landscape, to understand it, and how important it is to listen to cities (Simon 2012, xix and 1), especially these types of cities which are contact zones (see Pratt 1992), noisy streets of polyglot neighborhoods. These are very clear examples that language is an area of negotiation, a space where connections are created through rewritings and where ideas circulate, converge, and clash in the translational city, which imposes its own patterns of interaction and these emerge out of their spaces and their own narrative pasts (Simon 2012, 2). But in Gibraltar, as in Tangier or the Strait, languages share the same terrain but rarely participate in a peaceful and egali- tarian conversation. And there is some, albeit not a great deal of, Gibraltarian literature, written mostly in Spanish by authors like Héctor Licudi, Alberto Pizzarello, or Elio Cruz (see Yborra Aznar 2005). More recent writers, how- ever, write in both languages (Mario Arroyo, for example) or only in English. One of the most interesting current Gibraltarian authors is Trino Cruz, a poet who writes in Spanish, translates Moroccan poetry from Arabic, and defends the multiethnic and multilinguistic character of the territory. These and many other authors allow us to see that translation (or self-translation, depending on your point of view) “can no longer be configured only as a link between a familiar and a foreign culture, between a local original and a distant destination, between one monolingual community and another. [. . .] The Other remains within a constant earshot. The shared understandings of this coexistence change the meaning of translation from a gesture of benevolence to a process through which a common civility is negotiated” (Simon 2012, 7). As we have seen, given its history and the composition of its popu- lation, Gibraltar is now also a hybrid or “dual” city whose complex, young identity is based, above all, on the wishes of its population to maintain their 84 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  status as a British overseas territory and not be absorbed in any way by Spain in the long term. It is clear that the friendly relations between the two parties at the beginning of the twentieth century collapsed, probably permanently, when the border crossing was closed from 1969 until 1985, isolating the two peoples and provoking in Gibraltar both anti-Spanish feelings and a lack of proficiency in the Spanish language. Even so, certain data (Grocott and Stock- ey 2012, 125) show that the inhabitants of the Rock consider themselves to be more and more Gibraltarian and less British, although it is not clear what this feeling, whose signs of identity are still fairly vague yet real, consists of, the city now celebrates a “National Day” on September 10 to commemorate the date of the first referendum, held in 1967, to reject annexation to Spain; the red and white flag of Gibraltar can be seen more and more often flying over the territory, “llanito” is sometimes used in the local press instead of English, and the project to publish the first local paper Calpe Press is already under way. This nationalist feeling would only assimilate Gibraltar to tiny European nations such as Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and San Marino, which are historically much older. If this “national” sentiment were to become consol- idated, which does not appear to have happened yet, Gibraltar would be an example of a relatively new “heterogeneous,” hybrid, multilingual communi- ty, seeking to define its own identity, composed in turn of hybrid elements from different cultures. concluding remarks Living in different places means growing separate selves, learning other languages and ways of being, and looking at the world from different vantage points, without ever quite belonging to any of them. The state of being of a foreigner wherever I am has become second nature to me. It is a condition that sharpens the eye and the ear, that keeps awareness on its toes, and that takes nothing for granted. It means also that whatever I am, the ghosts of other places and other lives are hovering close. (Reid 1994, 3) The linguistic forms used in a space like Gibraltar cause us to reflect on how diffi- cult it can become to find or create equivalent idioms for local, nonstandard lan- guages, but in general everything mentioned above in relation to other spaces such as Tangier and the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar confirms that “the translator’s dilemmas are not to be found in dictionaries, but rather in an understanding of the way language is tied to local realities [. . .] and to changing identities” (Simon 1995, 10). This is why nowadays, in a global and transcultural society, translation is a transversal and interdisciplinary activity that has much to do with geography, while only a few years ago they were both considered to be fields of research far removed from each other (Bassnett 2011; Vidal 2012). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 85  By examining in this essay spaces such as Tangier and Gibraltar, cit- ies of ethnicities with shifting centers and peripheries, sites of transitory events, movements, memories, open spirals of heterogeneous collaborations and con- taminations, heterotopic, multiform and diasporic realities, spaces which un- dermine the presumed purity of thought (Chambers 1994, 93 and 95), we hope to have shown the need to access both space and translation in a different way, to have questioned what we understand today by space and why translation has forced us to very seriously analyze how ideology and power interfere in the creation of a space and a translation, what cultural contact points we have seen between peoples whose spaces become joined or clash in translations of those texts that define them in this way; what role is played by cartography of the plac- es understood as texts; and how this concept of knowledge is instrumentalized in asymmetrical and multidirectional contexts. From this point of view, translating in the hybrid spaces studied here, spaces like the Strait, Tangier, or Gibraltar that are sites of displacement, in- terference, and constructed and disputed historicities (Clifford 1997, 25), has shown itself to be a border experience able to produce powerful political vi- sion, the subversion of binarism which makes us wonder how translatable these places/metaphors of crossing are, how like and unlike diasporas. What does it take to define and defend a homeland? What are the political stakes in claiming a “home” in hooks’s (1991) sense? How are ethnic communities’ “insides” and “outsides” sustained, policed, subverted, crossed by historical subjects with different degrees of power (Clifford 1997, 36)? Considered from this state of things, translation is a foundational activity, an activity of cultural creation that takes into account the unstable and liminal identities it trans- forms and that partakes of the incompleteness of cultural belonging in spaces informed by estrangement, diversity, plurality, and already saturated with a logic of translation (Simon 1996, 152, 165, and 166) and dual cities may not serve only to impose an alien and oppressive presence but also to be part of a process of exchange which involves “an active chain of response, a vivifying interaction” (Simon and St-Pierre 2000, 10). This article is part of the research projects entitled “Violencia simbólica y traducción: retos en la representación de identidades fragmentadas en la sociedad global” (Symbolic violence and translation: challenges in the representation of fragmented identities within the global society) and “La traducción de clásicos en su aspecto editorial: una visión transatlántica” (Publishing strategies in the translation of classics: a transatlantic approach) (respectively FFI2015-66516-P and FFI2013-41743-P; MINECO/FEDER, UE) financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. 86 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  <References> Ayllón, Luis. 2014. “Picardo enfurece contra Cameron.” http://abcblogs.abc. es/luis-ayllon/public/post/picardo-enfurece-contra-cameron-16073. asp/ Bassnett, Susan. 2011. “From Cultural Turn to Transnational Turn, A Transnational Journey.” In Literature, Geography, Translation. 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Smihi, Moumen, dir. 1999. Moroccan Chronicles/Chroniques Marocaines/Waqa’i maghribia. 35mm, 70 minutes. Distributed by POM films (Montreuil). Soja, Edward W. 1996. Thirdspace. Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell. Vidal, M. Carmen África. 2012. La traducción y los espacios: viajes, mapas, fronteras. Granada: Comares. Walonen, Michael K. 2011. Writing Tangier in the Postcolonial Transition. Space and Power in Expatriate and North African Literature. Surrey: Ashgate. 88 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Yborra Aznar, José Juan. 2005. “La frontera estéril. La literatura en español en Gi- braltar.” In El español en el mundo. Anuario del Instituto Cervantes. Madrid: Instituto Cervantes. <M. Carmen África Claramonte> is Professor of Translation at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Her research interests include trans- lation theory, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, contemporary art, and gender studies. She has published a number of books, anthologies, and essays on these issues, including Traducción, manipulación, des- construcción (Salamanca, 1995), El futuro de la traducción (Valencia, 1998), Translation/Power/Subversion (coedited with Román Álvarez, Clevedon, 1996), En los límites de la traducción (Granada, 2006), Tra- ducir entre culturas: diferencias, poderes, identidades (Frankfurt, 2007), Traducción y asimetría (Frankfurt, 2010), La traducción y los espacios: viajes, mapas, fronteras (Granada, 2013), ”Dile que le he escrito un blues.” Del texto como partitura a la partitura como traducción (Frank- furt, 2017), and La traducción y la(s) historia(s) (Comares, 2017). She is a practicing translator specializing in the fields of philosophy, literature, and contemporary art. <Juan Jesús Zaro> has been professor of translation studies at the University of Málaga since 2008. His research interests include trans- lation theory, history of translation, and literary translation. He obtained an MA from New York University, as a Fulbright student, and a PhD in English Literature from the University de Granada (1983). He has pub- lished a number of books, anthologies, and articles, including Manual de Traducción/A Manual of Translation (Madrid, 1998), Shakespeare y sus traductores (Bern, 2008), Traductores y traductores de literatura y ensayo (Granada, 2007), and Diez estudios sobre la traducción en la España del siglo xix (Granada, 2009). He is also a practicing translator and has translated, among other books, Charles Dickens’ Historia de dos ciudades (Cátedra, 2000); Samuel Butler’s El destino de la carne (Alba Editorial, 2001), Edith Wharton’s El arrecife (Alba Editorial, 2003), and Jane Austen’s Persuasión (Cátedra, 2004). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 89 

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Introduction Sherry Simon This special issue explores eight spaces of translation—geographical sites, urban spaces, and architectural structures—whose cultural meanings are shaped through language interactions and transfer. Each study confirms the idea that places are created through itineraries and narratives, wanderings and stories, which evolve over time. Situated in the complex cityscapes of Itae- won, Lagos, Lviv, Montreal, Talinn, Renaissance Florence, Marseille, and the historically rich interzone of Gibraltar, these places illustrate the formative powers of translation in defining sensory experience and memory. The idea of space and place receives diverse interpretations in these essays—contributing to a field of inquiry which is rapidly evolving. Space is not understood as a simple container where translation takes place, but rather as a site where production and interpretation are intermingled, where translations occur and where identity is reinterpreted. Spaces are indicators of regimes of translation, of the forces that converge to allow or impede the transfer of languages and memories. From the architectural structure of a san- itary station to the dialogue between Gibraltar and Tangier, from the pages of novels to bronze statues, from multilingual markets to the studies where scholars are bent over treatises on Kabbalistic thought—these diverse spaces explode the notion of the “where” of translation. *** In her reading of the Sanitary Station of Marseille, Simona Bonelli uses the lens of translation and memory to evoke a place of multiple pasts— linked to the history of Marseille in its function as a place of migration and passage. Originally designed as a medical checkpoint, a place for screening mi- grants, then long abandoned, it has now become a museum which neverthe- less maintains traces of its previous functions. Citing Barthes, Bonelli shows that architectural spaces can be read as chapters of a complex text, continually retranslated. Following the Station in its transformations over the years, she defines it as a palimpsest representing “a place of exile, of displacement, a metaphorical place that contains a plurality of meanings, errant trajectories, isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 11  and that lends itself to multiple interpretations.” Initially born as a “boundary area” because of its function of containment and delimitation, the Sanitary Station has eventually “swollen,” through a series of metamorphoses, into a threshold—a place caught up in a tension of the present. This passage from boundary to threshold is enabled by a history of translation. *** Hunam Yun’s textured analysis of the district of Itaewon, in Seoul, South Korea, emphasizes the rich history of twists and turns that has marked this zone. This is a history which is not, however, apparent in the capsule “translations” found in tourist guides. As an area which has seen a strong mil- itary presence across the centuries, most recently for stationing the Japanese army during the colonial period and subsequently the American army, as a place now attracting many migrants, and also as a place strongly associated with sexuality and sex workers, Itaewon has been the site of cultural amalga- mation and conflict. As Yun shows, the various translations of the name of Itaewon itself—foreigners’ village, village for being pregnant with a foreign- er’s child, village for pear trees—show that the city as a “a culture-generator” (Lotman) cannot be translated into one fixed image. Itaewon has been a place for travelers and trading, a space of trauma caused by the conflictual history of Korea, a foreigners’ village, a foreign land within the country, a colonized space, a space of freedom and resistance, a window onto Western culture, a space for cultural translation . . . Yun contrasts the selective translations and commodifications of the city with the richness of its reality and history. As a culture-generator, a city deserves a more adequate translation. *** Elena Murphy draws a portrait of the multilingual city of Lagos through readings of Nigerian authors who portray the different sounds and accents of one of Nigeria’s most diverse and vibrant cities. The multilingual texts of Sefi Atta, a leading voice in what has come to be known as “The Third Generation of Nigerian Writers,” replicate the language negotiations of the city. Languages such as Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, as well as Nigerian English and Nigerian Pidgin, flow through Atta’s novels, just as they flow through the city. Particularly interesting is the diversity of cultural forms and spaces which express this plurality—types of music such as afrobeat or highlife music, dance, film, as well as the spaces of Lagos’s streets and markets. Translation is present in varied forms, aiding in the creation of new hybrid linguistic forms and new semantic associations, typical features of interaction in urban areas. 12 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  The Straits of Gibraltar, with its twin cities of Gibraltar and Tang- ier, stand as emblematic spaces of translation—but also as spaces whose hy- bridities force a rethinking of translation itself. To negotiate across hybrid spaces is to concentrate on the border experience as generating a powerful political vision, working against binaries, against inside and outside. In such zones, translation is a foundational activity, an activity of cultural creation. África Vidal and Juan Jesús Zaro provide a portrait of the Strait of Gibraltar as a natural border between two continents (Africa and Europe), between two countries (Morocco and Spain), and between two cities (Gibraltar, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, and Ceuta, a Spanish city with its own statute of autonomous government), and offer nuanced descriptions of the cultural histories of those spaces as they have been in interaction with one another. Governed as one territory by the Romans and also during the eight centuries of Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, the Straits then be- come an indication of division across empires. The waters of the Strait carry “a layered text of narratives of belonging and exclusion.” Anastasiya Lyubas reads the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv as a space comprised of buildings, communities, maps, memories, and languages spo- ken, written, and read—a tactile, textile, and textual fabric. The “real” city, she argues, cannot be experienced without linguistic mediation. Inviting the read- er to stroll the city, stopping at monuments and buildings, consulting a map drawn by authors Igor Klekh, Yuri Andrukhovych, and Natalka Sniadanko, she gives the widest meaning to translation as a key to the multifaceted ele- ments which define city life. The city, thus, becomes a construct of individual and collective readings. The essay includes references to the events of 2013– 2014 in Ukraine that have problematized even further unresolved issues of identity, politics of memory, and belonging. With an eye attentive to shifts in the role of language in the city, Lyubas shows how the aural dimensions of the spoken languages of yesterday have become visual places, traces. Yesterday’s commerce has become trade in cultural meanings and in competing claims to the city. The city’s architecture, its history, literary scene, and projections of the future are read as a “text” offering insights into urban experience and the ways it is mediated and interpreted. *** Ceri Morgan’s reading of Montreal focuses on two novels from the 1960s which challenge orthodox versions of the language situation in the city. In Yvette Naubert’s La Dormeuse éveillée (1965) and Claire Mondat’s Poupée (1963), active and passive linguistic translations become signposts for a par- ticular kind of modernity, dramatizing embodied everyday translation prac- isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 13  tices occurring in places of work, leisure, and consumption, like the café and department store. The texts are striking for their choice of settings and their sometimes seemingly relaxed mediation of French and English interactions at a time when many examples of le roman montréalais are highlighting clash- es between these. They prefigure, in fact, many of the everyday interactions between French and English in contemporary Montreal. As such, they offer important pointers as to the possibilities of negotiating differences. Gender is highlighted in the analysis, the body of the protagonist navigating between past and present gender conventions and mappings of Montreal’s majority languages, as well as across the very different histories of the protagonists (the French-Canadian maid, the family of Holocaust survivors). Translation be- comes a way of being in the world, of overcoming trauma. In many respects, Naubert’s and Mondat’s protagonists can be seen as “languagers”—that is, “people [. . .] who engage with the world-in-action, who move in the world in a way that allows the risk of stepping out of one’s habitual ways of speak- ing and attempt to develop different, more relational ways of interacting with the people and phenomena that one encounters in everyday life” (Phipps 2011, 365). Translation facilitates a mobility associated with feminine asser- tion; translation allows escapes from, or challenges to, the social constraints of the past. Naubert’s and Mondat’s heroines inhabit a kind of messy middle in their employing of the “tactics” as “always [. . .] partial, provisional and broken” (Phipps 2011, 375). Moving inside and outside the city, they embody a translation practice beyond representation and vital to a “relational” being in the world. *** Federico Bellentani considers the case of the relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Talinn as a practice of cultural reinvention. Here translation takes on its medieval spatial meaning as the physical transfer of a sacred body. This paper proposed an analysis of the marginalization, the removal, and the relo- cation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn. Employing the vocabulary of semi- otics, looking at monument as text, Bellentani argues that the removal cannot be interpreted through the clashing interpretations of Ethnic-Estonians and Russian speakers. Rather, the Bronze Soldier embodied an array of multifacet- ed interpretations and the process of its relocation elicited different emotional reactions. Its relocation two kilometers outside the center of the city had both spatial and ideological implications: it was an official attempt to displace its meanings toward a peripheral area of both Tallinn and Estonian culture as such—that is, to translate them into the context of contemporary European Estonia. 14 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  The final essay by Laurent Lamy tells the fascinating story of a transla- tional movement whose center was Renaissance Florence. The paradigm shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe, he argues, was in part possible be- cause of the combination of mystical and rational thought which emerged in the early Renaissance—largely through the translations of one Flavius Mithri- dates, born Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada (ca. 1445–1489), a colorful figure who was a Jewish convert to Christianity. From 1485 to 1487, he labored by the side of Pico della Mirandola, translating Kabbalistic literature. The col- laboration between the two scholars was one of the most fertile translation ventures in the history of ideas in the West; it provided the European intellec- tual elite with a reservoir of ideas and symbolic patterns that found resonance in provinces of thought “located many leagues from their country of origin.” The introduction of Persian and Chaldean solar theologies, and the concept of a plurality of worlds presented through the various perspectives offered by cosmological speculations of the Jewish Kabbalah, had a large impact on the evolving ideas of the intellectual elite of the Quattrocento. The translation of a critical mass of Kabbalistic and Arabian astronomical treatises—the begin- nings of which far exceeded the translations produced under the enlightened caliphate of Bagdad between the ninth and twelfth centuries—established, in a very short time span, a fertile interplay between sapiential traditions of an- cient times and embryonic ideas of modern science. Florence was, for several decades, the epicenter of this heightened activity around translation, which opened up a fault line that shook the geocentric status quo. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 15 

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Marseilles’ Sanitary Station: morphologies of displacement between memory and desire Simona Elena Bonelli [email protected] <Abstract> The former “Sanitary Station” of Marseille was built in 1948 by the architect Fernand Pouillon, its history closely linked to the history of the Phocaean city. The main entry and departure point for travelers and immigrants arriving by the sea, it was aban- doned for forty years and was almost destroyed in 2009. In 2013, it was transformed into the museum Regards de Provence, but still keeps the memory of its past: the “steam room” (part of this quarantine internment system) is a permanent installation and is part of a section called “Memories of the Sanitary Station.” Migrants from all over the world arriving in Marseille were “displaced” here to go through disinfection, screening, and a vaccination process in a bid to fight the city’s ever-present threat of epidemics. This was therefore a multilingual context, but also a place in which bodies were forced to undergo a transformation. Somehow, these people, like a text under the eyes of a translator, were carefully examined before being allowed access to a new space, a new context. The building itself is a palimpsest, made of different phases of transforma- tion: from Sanitary station to a place occupied by squatters to a museum. What makes the Sanitary Station an emblematic city space is the fact that the different “layers” of its transformations are all present—none has been cancelled. An urban structure that is at the same time—as Derrida puts it—translatable and untranslatable: “Un texte ne vit que s’il survit, et il ne sur-vit que s’il est à la fois traductible et intraduisible.” “La città non dice il suo passato, lo contiene come le linee d’una mano, scritto negli spigoli delle vie, nelle griglie delle finestre, negli scorrimano delle scale, nelle antenne dei para- fulmini, nelle aste delle bandiere, ogni segmento rigato a sua volta di graffi, seghettature, intagli, svirgole.” (Calvino, 1979, 18)1 In Invisible Cities, Marco Polo and Kublai Khan talk about the impossibility of defining what a city is and what it is not. Cities are the product of multiple and unpredictable interactions rather than the result of a rational plan. Urban space is read and interpreted by Italo Calvino as a place constantly crossed by fluctuations and rhythms. In one of the sections called “Cities and memory,” Marco Polo describes the city of Zaira that, he tells the Emperor, consists of 1 “The city [...] does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls” (Calvino 1997, 9). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 17  “relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past” (Calvino 1994, 9). The urban landscape is made of time and space, and, like texts, cities are made of signs that we can read and interpret. In this article I would like to read the past of an emblematic building, the Sanitary Station, “like the lines of a hand” of Marseille, trying to decipher its patterns, its trans- formations, its symbolic function inside the city. The former “Sanitary Station” of Marseille (figure 1) was built in 1948 by the architect Fernand Pouillon, and the history of this place is closely linked to that of the Phocaean city. Main entry and departure point for trav- ellers and immigrants arriving by the sea, it was abandoned for forty years and was almost destroyed in 2009. In 2013 it was completely transformed into the museum Regards de Provence, but it still keeps the memory of its past: the “salle des étuves” (the steam room, part of the quarantine internment system) (figure 1) is a permanent installation and is part of a section called “Memories of the Sanitary Station.” If the concept of memory recalls something that is buried in the past, what makes this building an exemplary space is the fact that all the different phases of its transformations are still there—they have not been canceled.2 The city of Marseille is not new to epidemics. The Mediterranean sea has always been a source of life and prosperity, but also of death: through the centuries, the population of Marseille has been devastated by plague and pes- tilence, and in the sixteenth century the first sanitation board was established, whose members inspected all incoming ships, cargoes, crew, and passengers. The worst plague outbreak in the history of Marseille occurred in 1720, when the merchant ship Grand Saint-Antoine brought pestilence-carrying rats and fleas into the Vieux Port. It was the “Great Plague of Marseille,” the epidemics that Antonin Artaud evokes in his Le Théâtre et son double (1964) to develop an analogy between theater and pestilence; the plague is a transforming force that purges the world of its violence and ugliness.3 Although this epidemic was considered the last outbreak of plague in France, at the beginning of the twentieth century small epidemics and sporadic cases were recorded in Mar- seille and Paris. 2 The book that retraces the several transformations from the Sanitary Station to the Museum Regards de Provence has the emblematic title of Métamorphoses (Muntaner and Durousseau 2013). 3 The streets of a plague-ridden city are blocked by mounds of unidentifiable corpses; at this point, Artaud writes, “[l]e théâtre comme la peste est une crise qui se dénoue par la mort ou par la guérison. Et la peste est un mal supérieur parce qu’elle est une crise complète après laquelle il ne reste rien que la mort ou qu’une extrême purification. De même le théâtre est un mal parce qu’il est l’équilibre suprême, qui ne s’acquiert pas sans destruction” (Artaud 1964, 25). 18 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  1. The former Sanitary Station of Marseille 2. The Salle des étuves After World War ii, there were fifteen million refugees, or “displaced people,” in Europe. Marseille organized the reception of thousands of immi- grants by creating a strategy of sanitary prophylaxis against plague, cholera, yellow fever, typhus fever, and smallpox. In 1948, the French architects An- dré Champollion, Fernand Pouillon, and René Egger were charged with the project of designing the Sanitary Station of Marseille. The main aim of their project was to create a place of disease prevention and control but, at the same time, to defy rigid spatial segregations and the exposure of individuals to a controlling centralized observation. For this reason they created a structure with several one-way corridors through which individuals could move in or- der to be washed and disinfected and undergo a medical examination (figure isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 19  3. Area for ablutions and disinfection 3). Everything was done to avoid any sense of humiliation to the passengers: wide, luminous spaces and above all a horizontal linearity that invested win- dows, objects, and at the same time the building’s structure created a place that evoked the atmosphere of a ship. These similarities between a ship and a place receiving potentially ill people suggests the Renaissance allegory of the “ship of fools” that, as Foucault explains, symbolizes an intermediate moment between the medieval exclusion of lepers outside the gates of the city and the exclusion of the mad within the social body (Foucault 1988). Every boat that arrived in Marseille found its uncanny “double” located on the threshold of the city, in a place that lies between the sea and the urban space, a liminal area that must be crossed if the individual wants to be considered healthy and, above all, inoffensive to the rest of the population. The threshold is an in-between state that separates two spaces of dif- ferent nature. As Walter Benjamin observed in his reflections on architecture: 20 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  The threshold is a zone. And in fact a zone of passage (Übergang). Transformation, passage, flux—all are contained in the word threshold. [. . .] We have become quite poor as far as threshold experiences go. Falling asleep is perhaps the only such ex- perience that has remained to us. (quoted in Sieburth, 19) But the notion of threshold has also fascinated Gérard Genette who, in the opening pages of Seuils, explains that “plus que d’une limite ou d’une frontière étanche, il s’agit ici d’un seuil ou—mot de Borges à propos d’une préface—d’un ‘vestibule’ qui offre à tout un chacun la possibilité d’entrer, ou de rebrousser chemin” (Genette 1987, 8).4 Philosophers like Wittgenstein and Benjamin have created several parallels between the forms of the city and the diverse forms of language, and semiotic studies invite us to read the city through its signifying forms. In his “Sémiologie et urbanisme,” Roland Barthes sees the city as a discourse, and this discourse, he writes, is truly a language: “Et nous retrouvons la vieille intuition de Victor Hugo: la ville est une écriture; celui qui se déplace dans la ville, c’est-à-dire l’usager de la ville (ce que nous sommes tous), est une sorte de lecteur qui, selon ses obligations et ses déplacements, prélève des fragments de l’énoncé pour les actualiser en secret” (Barthes 1985, 268).5 Architectural spaces can be read as chapters of a complex text—the city—made of streets, traffic, buildings, and so on that interact in a complex game of intertextuality. From this standpoint, the Sanitary Station is a multilingual context, a sort of Babel, but also a place in which the bodies of the immigrants had to undergo a transformation. Somehow these people, like a text in the eyes of a translator, were carefully examined before being allowed into a new space, a new context. A translation implies a movement, the concept of carrying something across. The English word derives from the Latin translatio, which itself comes from trans “across” and la-tio- “carrying”; the Italian language adds a cultural element to this image of movement with the use of the noun tradotta, which is a special train used for the transportation of military troops or deportees. By extension, in Italian it is possible to say that “l’assassino è stato tradotto in carcere” (“the murderer was taken, ‘translated’ to prison”). In his book The Pleasure of the Text, Barthes asks the question “Does the text have a human form, is it a figure, an anagram of the body?” (Barthes 1986, 16). We could ask ourselves whether the human body has 4 “More than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold or—a word Borg- es used apropos of a preface—a ‘vestibule’ that offers the possibility of either stepping inside or turning back” (Genette 1997, 1–2). 5 “And here we rediscover Victor Hugo’s old intuition: the city is writing. He who moves about the city, e.g., the user of the city (what we all are), is a kind of reader who, following his obliga- tions and his movements, appropriates fragments of the utterance in order to actualize them in secret” (Barthes 1986, 199). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 21  a textual status, that of a “readable” object of translation, whose position can be changed and relocated in a new context. The “transformation” of the refugees that arrived in Marseille took place in a building organized as a series of passageways that somehow evoke Benjamin’s arcades, although with some remarkable differ- ences. Sherry Simon writes that Benjamin uses the arcades as a cultural historian to represent an ambiguous urban space, neither inside nor outside, a passageway which is also a space of consumption, a new materialization of urban space. In the essay on translation, he uses the arcade to for- mulate a contrast between interpretive translation (which uses as its unit the “sentence” or the “proposition”) and literal translation (which proceeds word by word). The first, he says, produces a translation akin to a wall, the second a text which functions more like an arcade: ‘For if the sentence is the wall before the language of the original, literalness is the arcade.’ The glass roof allows light to flow through matter, just as the literally translat- ed text is a transparent surface which allows the light of the original to fall onto the new version, creating an interplay of surfaces. (Simon 2000, 75) I find this passage extremely interesting because it gives me the op- portunity to explore the relationship between the process of translation and the spaces of translation. Both in the Parisian arcade and in the Sanitary Sta- tion of Marseille, the presence of a glass construction is essential, but while in the arcade the glass roof has the aim of accentuating the transition zone between the outdoor world of the street and the interior space,6 in the Sanitary Station the lateral glass walls contribute to the brightness of the space but at the same time the concrete structure creates a screen to guarantee the privacy of those passing by. Benjamin sees the arcades as the entry point of the Parisian labyrinth, a place where the flâneur could dwell; the Sanitary Station is a one- way passage in which there is no time for dwelling: the “translation” of those who are already “dis-placed” people should be done quickly in order to obtain a transformed, clean version of their bodies. Like Genette, I would like to insist on the term “vestibule,” because, in addition to the concept of “thresh- old,” this word also conveys the idea of clothing if we accept the etymology from the Latin vestibulum, from vestis “garment” and -bulum, probably from the sense of “a place to dress.”7 When the immigrants arrived in the Sanitary Station, they were first of all asked to undress so that their clothes could be 6 Benjamin was attracted by the ambiguity of glass, by the transformative power of this building material through its architectural application: “It is not a coincidence that glass is so hard and smooth a material to which nothing can be fastened. It is also cold and sober. Things that are made of glass have no ‘aura.’ Glass is the enemy par excellence of secrecy. It is also the enemy of property” (quoted in Heynen 1999, 155). 7 Ovid, in his Fasti, links the term vestibulum to the Roman goddess of hearth and home Vesta. In any case, if the vestibule is now the place where outer clothing is put on or removed in leaving or entering a house, for the Romans it was the area in which they used to depose their clothes. 22 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  washed and disinfected; they then had to go through the communal showers that, thanks to a system of mobile partition walls, became individual show- ers. The city that has made “Savon de Marseille” its emblem distributed bars of soap and towels to the immigrants who, eventually, got back their clean clothes and could go upstairs for a medical examination. The Sanitary Station only remained active for a couple of years, un- til the World Health Organization coordinated a global vaccination program that made entities such as the station redundant. Before entering a country, people were supposed to show their vaccination cards; this was the beginning of preventive medicine. After having served as offices for the administrative clerks of the Direction du Contrôle Sanitaire aux Frontières, the Sanitary Sta- tion of Marseille was closed in 1971. A new chapter in this building’s life then began—that of refuge of squatters. The edifice that was used as an institution for disease prevention and control became a place of meetings and creativity for squatters and graffiti art- ists. The white aseptic walls of the Sanitary Station were filled with colorful po- ems, tags, and murals. Round images replaced the square tiles covering the walls, showers, and steam rooms. An ephemeral form of art violated the visual and ar- chitectural order and setting, breaking the rules of the space–time relationship. The body, the skin of the sanitary station was “scratched,”8 in the same way as the skin of the migrants was scratched to be immunized against smallpox. The squatters imposed a transformation on this building by “inoculating” the germs of a revolutionary art. In 2009, in order to protest against the permanent closing of the place, the squatters burned a car inside the building (figure 4), which was 4. Burned car in Sanitary Station 8 The term “graffiti” derives from the Italian word graffio, a “scratch” or “scribble”. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 23  nearly destroyed—fire as a sort of extreme catharsis that paved the way to the next transformation. The burned car is a trace, its cinders a rem(a)inder of something that is at the same time present and absent. In Feu la cendre, Derrida describes how one particular phrase, “il y a là cendre” (“cinders there are”), continually returned to him and insists on the importance of the trace: Si vous ne vous rappelez plus, c’est que l’incinération suit son cours et la consumation va de soi, la cendre même. Trace destinée, comme toute, à disparaître d’elle-même pour égarer la voie autant que pour rallumer une mémoire. La cendre est juste : parce que sans trace, justement elle trace plus qu’une autre, et comme l’autre trace. (Derrida 1984, 30)9 What remains from the destruction returns to the surface, to the skin; when the smoke dissipates, the incinerated place resurfaces. The evocation of haunting memories that reemerge from a fire is at the center of the artistic production of Claudio Parmiggiani, who in his work Delocazione (De-loca- tion) builds installations and sets them on fire, revealing the traces of the disappeared objects. This is what Didi-Huberman calls “une matière de l’ab- sence”—things disappear, but the memory of their presence still remains.10 The Regards de Provence foundation, in need of a permanent structure for its exhibitions in the city of Marseille, decided to rehabilitate this building and create a museum that collected artworks created in and about Provence. But before its permanent recuperation and conversion, before the ancient Sanitary Station was transformed into a Museum, a French photographer and installation artist was asked to fix an image in which the traces of the past could interact with the poetic metamorphoses that this place has experienced. Georges Rousse is an artist attracted by neglected and forgotten sites, by their solitude and emptiness; he takes his inspiration from the “wounds” suffered by an edifice to create an ephemeral “mise-en-scène” that he then immortalizes with photographs.11 One of the main characteristics of a photograph is its link with the referent, a sort 9 “If you no longer recall it, it is because the incineration follows its course and the consummation proceeds from itself, the cinder itself. Trace destined, like everything, to disappear from itself, as much in order to lose the way as to rekindle a memory. The cinder is exact: because without a trace it precisely traces more than an other, and as the other trace(s)” (Derrida 1991, 57). 10 In his book Génie du non-lieu, Georges Didi-Huberman explores the works of Parmiggiani. The Italian artist shows that fire does not cause the complete disappearance of an object, but, rather, it delocates it. The question of memory and survival therefore becomes essential: “Il se- rait donc abusive d’identifier l’œuvre de Parmiggiani à une simple nostalgie du passé (Delocazi- one est d’ailleurs plus proche d’Hiroshima que d’une reconstitution pompéienne). Cette œuvre vise plutôt un travail de la mémoire—une prise en considération de la survivance—qui a fait dire à l’artiste que ‘les veritables Antiques, c’est nous’” (Didi-Huberman 2001, 43). 11 His artistic intervention is multifaceted: “I call upon various methods of art: I am the designer of the project, the painter on-site, the architect by my interpretation of a given space and by the construction I organise there within, and finally the photographer who coordinates all these actions” (http://www.georgesrousse.com/english/news/rousse-speech.html). 24 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  of “reality effect” that makes the past reality of the object indubitable. In La Chambre claire, Barthes argues that the photographic referent is not the same as the referent of other systems of representation: whereas in painting the presence of the model is optional and in language the referents can be chimerical, in a photograph we cannot deny that the thing “has been there.”12 This significant aspect of referentiality seems to compensate for an inexplicable lack of images in relation to the activity of these spaces. In fact, neither the book Metamorphoses published by the Musée Regards de Provence (Muntaner and Durousseau 2013) nor the 45-minute documentary that, in the same Museum, explores the history of the plague in Marseille, immigration, and the building contain a single picture concerning the people who passed through the Sanitary Station, and there are only a few pictures of the areas and rooms from when it was active. Somehow, the artistic view of Georges Rousse is asked to capture, in single images, the sig- nificant past of these spaces, and he does so by insisting on the double liminality of the Sanitary Station: the instant captured by the photos of the French artist is not only that of a place that has represented for years the liminal area between the port and the city, but also that of a phase of an urban space that has gone through several transformations.13 The technique used by Rousse is that of anamorphosis; whereas trompe l’œil gives the illusion that a flat surface is three dimensional, his anamorphic images create the illusion that a three-dimensional area is flat (figures 5 and 6). Although it looks as if the geometric form has been digitally created, the illusion generated by these photographs is optical, and represents the outcome of several weeks of work so that the colorful geometric is only visible from a specific point of view. The anamorphic figure invites those who are watching it to move, to change their point of view, in order to bring into perfect focus the object of interpretation. Nevertheless, the installations created by Georges Rousse, once they are immortalized by the camera, do not ask the viewer to move, to change their perspective: his artwork is intended only for the lens, and not for an ob- server in the actual space. Rousse creates a “before” and “after” effect—first, the “deconstructed” red circle and then the perfectly round red circle reassembled by the camera. In doing so, he wanders in the rooms of the Sanitary Station with the eye of the photographer who is trying to find the right standpoint.14 12 Its essence is recorded in the formula “ça a été,” “that has been.” 13 In an interview about his installations at the future Musée Regards de Provence, Georges Rousse said that “[l]e port c’était la station sanitaire qui accueillait les immigrants mais c’est aussi le point de départ vers l’ailleurs. [. . .] Je voulais rendre compte de ce nouvel espace qui a perdu toute fonctionnalité et qui va disparaitre, cet entre-deux” (Muntaner and Durousseau 2013, 109) 14 “Je déambule dans les lieux avec l’œil du photographe pour repérer le bon point de vue jusqu’à l’image finale qui a besoin de l’appareil photographique comme outil de reproduction” (Muntaner and Durousseau 2013, 111). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 25 26 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  In these ephemeral installations that are immortalized only by the lens of a camera, the gaze of the artist leaves its place to another “gaze”: that of the Museum Regards de Provence, a museum that has slowly become a sort of palimpsest, made of its different phases of transformation. The permanent installation shows the old steam room and a documentary that retraces the history of this building, while the temporary exhibitions are housed in galler- ies on the ground and first floors. The several windows along both the front and the back walls of this long, horizontal building invite the observer to gaze outside, towards the port and the city. In the course of all its transformations, 5–6. the Sanitary Station has been “living on”; its trans-lation, its trans-positions Rousse, anamorphic have not destroyed it. Like a text, this building has survived only because, installation to paraphrase Derrida, it was at once translatable and untranslatable.15 This building outlives itself, is at the outskirts of its own living. Like Georges Rousse, Walter Benjamin was attracted by the decayed or abandoned spaces of the city; likewise, he was fascinated by “thresholds” and borders. He first visited Marseille in 1926, and then several times in 1928 and 1931. His last visit to the Phocaean city took place in 1940, shortly before his death. Marseille was for him like a book to be interpreted: In the early morning I drove through Marseilles to the station, and as I passed familiar places on my way, and then new, unfamiliar ones or others that I remembered only vaguely, the city became a book in my hands, into which I hurriedly glanced a few last times before it passed from my sight for who knows how long into a warehouse crate. (Benjamin 1999b, 447) Whereas Paris represents for Benjamin the ideal place to discover the traces of social meaning and the collective dreams of modernity, he finds Mar- seille hard to decipher, to the point where he once commented that no city so stubbornly resisted his efforts to depict it as did Marseille (Eiland 2014, 310). Benjamin sees each street as a vertiginous experience; for him the city-dweller should be “on the threshold of the metropolis as of the middle class” (Benja- min 2006, 40). Nevertheless, in his writings on hashish, and in particular in the text “Hashish in Marseilles,” he does not stay on the borders. Rather, he lets himself sink inside the “ventre of Marseilles”: 15 “Un texte ne vit que s’il sur-vit, et il ne sur-vit que s’il est à la fois traductible et intraduisible. [. . .] Totalement traductible, il disparaît comme texte, comme écriture, comme corps de langue. Totalement intraduisible, même à l’intérieur de ce qu’on croit être une langue, il meurt aussitôt. La traduction triomphante n’est donc ni la vie ni la mort du texte, seulement ou déjà sa survie. On en dira de même de ce que j’appelle écriture, marque, trace, etc. Ça ne vit ni ne meurt, ça survit. Et ça ne ‘commence’ que par la survie (testament, itérabilité, restance, crypte, détache- ment déstructurant par rapport à la rection ou direction ‘vivante’ d’un ‘auteur’ qui ne se noierait pas dans les parages de son texte)” (Derrida 1986, 147–149). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 27  I lay upon the bed, read and smoked. All the while opposite to me this glimpse of the ventre of Marseilles. (Now the images begin to take hold of me). The street that I’d so often seen is like an incision cut by a knife. (Benjamin 1978, 138) When, under the effect of hashish, Benjamin describes the streets of Marseille, he enters a surrealist dream world, made of strange sounds, images, and scents. His perception of what he sees in the streets—where he strolls to find a restaurant for dinner—is distorted, the dimensions of time and space are abolished.16 Unexpectedly, the words of a conversation in a little port bar sound to him like dialect: The people of Marseilles suddenly did not speak good enough French to me. They were stuck at the level of dialect. The phenomenon of alienation that may be involved in this, which Kraus has formulated in the fine dictum “The more closely you look at a word the more distantly it looks back” appears to extend to the optical. (Benjamin 1978, 144) Michel de Certeau writes that the city is a text, and that walking in a city has its own rhetoric: “Il y a une rhétorique de la marche. L’art de ‘tourn- er’ des phrases a pour équivalent un art de tourner des parcours. Comme le langage ordinaire, cet art implique et combine des styles et des usages” (De Certeau 2005, 15).17 Nevertheless, the legibility of a city changes; it is the per- spective of the viewer that defines the object of observation. When Benjamin quotes Kraus’s aphorism (“The closer one looks at a word, the further away it looks back”), he too evokes the importance of perspective. How should we read a city, its translation zones, its palimpsests? I would like to close this paper with another quote from Calvino’s Invisible Cities: In due modi si raggiunge Despina: per nave o per cammello. La città si presenta differente a chi viene da terra e a chi dal mare. [. . .] Ogni città riceve la sua forma dal deserto a cui si oppone; e così il cammelliere e il marinaio vedono Despina, città di confine tra due deserti. (Calvino 1994, 370)18 16 “Versailles, for one who has taken hashish, is not too large, nor eternity too long” (Benjamin 1978,138). 17 “There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of ‘turning’ phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path. Like ordinary language, this art implies and combines styles and uses” (De Certeau 1984, 100). 18 “Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. [. . .] Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts” (Calvino 1997, 17). 28 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Whereas the city of Zaira is part of a section devoted to memory, De- spina is a city of desire that opens paths and opportunities for visitors. There are multiple ways of seeing the same city, depending on which face of the city they see. Those who arrive at Despina have to shift their perspective, as if they were in front of an anamorphic image. By building the Sanitary Station, Mar- seille has tried to give itself a “face” from which the immigrants could see it, but France’s oldest city has not resisted the univocal direction imposed by this passage point: the Station operated for a few years, quickly transformed by artists who made this structure a place of exile, of displacement, a metaphori- cal place that contains a plurality of meanings and errant trajectories, and that lends itself to multiple interpretations. The story of those anonymous people who arrived in Marseille and whose body/corpus underwent a transformation in order to be admitted to a new context intertwines with the story of another migrant who, some years before, in 1940, had been trying to escape France for the United States: Walter Benjamin. He went from Paris to Marseille, which at that time was full of refu- gees, especially those from countries occupied by the German army. The philos- opher who used to be an extraordinary city dweller and who loved to get lost in the meanders of a city, found himself obliged to follow the route taken by many refugees. In Marseille he obtained a passport issued by the American Foreign Service, but when he discovered that the port was virtually closed he tried to cross the Spanish border by walking up into the mountains. He never managed to traverse the most important boundary of his life, however, and in Portbou he was refused entry into Spain. He was held in Portbou overnight and sent back to occupied France the next morning. The morphine Benjamin had brought with him from Marseille was strong enough to kill him. Hannah Arendt wrote about her dear friend and the Kafkian situation in which he found his death: A few weeks later the embargo on visas was lifted again. One day earlier Benjamin would have got through without any trouble; one day later the people in Marseille would have known that for the time being it was impossible to pass through Spain. Only on that particular day was the catastrophe possible. (Arendt 1990, 24) Benjamin died in a liminal space, in a liminal time; a bitter twist of fate for the philosopher who has taught us the important difference between “boundary” and “threshold”: “The threshold must be carefully distinguished from the boundary. A Schwell <threshold> is a zone. Transformation, passage, wave action are in the word schwellen, swell, and etymology ought not to over- look these senses” (Benjamin 1999, 494). Following Benjamin’s fundamental distinction, we might suggest that the Sanitary Station was initially born as a “boundary area” because of its isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 29  function of containment and delimitation, and that it has eventually “swol- len,” with an extraordinary series of metamorphoses, into a threshold, a place caught up in a tension, an innovative space. The Regards de Provence muse- um is now a site of rewriting, a place that combines memory of its past and a gaze towards the future. It has not lost its “in-between position,” though, caught as it is between the ancient Cathedral and the new buildings (Mucem, Villa Mediterranée) designed by internationally renowned architects. A poten- tial space for hybridization. <References> Arendt, Hannah. 1999. “Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940.” In Walter Benjamin, Illumina- tions, edited by Hannah Arendt; translated by Harry Zorn. London: Pimlico. 7–60. Artaud, Antonin. 1964. “Le Théâtre et la peste.” In Le Théâtre et son double. Paris: Gallimard. 25–26. Barthes, Roland. 1973. Le Plaisir du texte. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. . 1973. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang. . 1980. La Chambre claire: note sur la photographie. Paris: Gallimard. . 1985. “Sémiologie et urbanisme.” In L’Aventure sémiologique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. . 1986. “Semiology and the Urban.” In The City and the Sign: An Introduction to Urban Semiotics. Edited by Mark Gottdiener and Alexandros Ph. Lagopou- los. New York: Columbia University Press. 87–98. Benjamin, Walter. 1978. “Hashish in Marseilles.” In Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Edited by Peter Demetz. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Harcourt Brace. 137–145. . 1999a. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin Mc- Laughlin. Cambridge (Mass.) and London (England): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. . 1999b. Selected Writings. Edited by Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. . 2006. The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire. Edited by Mi- chael W. Jennings. Cambridge (Mass.) and London (England): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Calvino, Italo. 1979. Le città invisibili. Turin, Einaudi. . 1997. Invisible cities. Translated by William Weaver. London: Vintage Books. De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Ren- dall. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. . 2005. “Rhétoriques combinatoires.” In L’invention du quotidien. Tome 1—Arts de faire [1980–1990]. Folio Essais. Paris: Gallimard. Derrida, Jacques. 1984. Feu la Cendre/Ciò che resta del fuoco. Translated by Stefa- no Agosti. Firenze: Sansoni. . 1986. “Survivre.” In Parages. Paris: Galilée. 109-203. . 1991. Cinders. Translated by Ned Lukacher. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 30 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Didi-Huberman, Georges. 2001. Génie du non-lieu. Air, poussière, empreinte, han- tise. Paris: Minuit. Eiland, Howard, and M. W. Jennings. 2014. Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1988. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Vintage Books. Genette, Gerard. 1987. Seuils. Paris: Seuil. . 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge (Mass.): Cambridge University Press. Translated by Jane E.Lewin. Heynen, Hilde. 1999. Architecture and Modernity. A Critique. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. Muntaner, Bernard, and Thierry Durousseau. 2013. Métamorphoses. Station Sani- taire en Musée Regards de Provence. Marseille: Fondations Regards de Provence. Sieburth , Richard. “Benjamin the Scrivener.” in Benjamin: Philosophy, History, Aes- thetics. Ed. Gary Smith. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989. 13-37. Simon, Sherry. 2000. “The Paris Arcades, the Ponte Vecchio, and the Comma of Translation.” Translators’ Journal, vol. 45 (1): 73–79. <Simona Elena Bonelli> She is a translator and lives in Marseille. She studied English and French Literature (University of Siena, Italy) and received her MA and PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory from Car- diff University, UK. She has taught English Language and Literature at the Universities of Siena and Perugia (Italy). Bonelli has published Tito Andronico. Il testo come simulacro del corpo, and has edited Seg- ni particolari: l’immagine del viso, l’immaginario del nome proprio, both with Quattroventi, Urbino. Her books and essays cover topics relating to Elizabethan literature, philosophy, aesthetics, gender studies, and trans- lation theory. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 31 

Unimi Open Journals

translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15749

Translation and Fragmented Cities: Focus on Itaewon, Seoul Hunam Yun [email protected] <Abstract> Cities are open texts. They are perpetually transformed by their dynamic relationship with history and with the people who live in them. They are “rearticulated, transformed from a singular structure into a multilateral palimpsest that can be ‘written’ up and over, again and again,” with time. Therefore, the boundaries of cities’ identities continuously expand with this dynamic movement. There can be no single, fixed, or com- plete description of a city, which is why cities require continuous translation. However, cities are commonly represented as a single, fixed, and complete image in the process of translation through selective appropriation, and people consume that image. This paper attempts to reveal the process and ideological bias in such selective appropriation with a focus on Itaewon, South Korea. Historically, Itaewon has always been a site of different cultural encounters reflecting the historical twists and turns of Korea. After the Japanese invasion of the country in 1592 and the Manchu war of 1636, Japanese and Chinese soldiers stayed in the area. Then, during the colonial period, the Japanese army was stationed there, and after liberation, the American army was quartered there. Now, Mus- lims are flocking to the area, and it is becoming a city of immigrants. Because of these dynamic historical moments, Itaewon has been the site of cultural amalgamation and conflict, always retaining traces of the past. However, the images of Itaewon created by tourist books are ahistorical and fixed; the city has been fragmented as a commodity to be consumed through selective appropriation, and its dynamic history has been erased. The most common of these images are those of shopping centers and the red light dis- trict, images that have been reinforced by reproduction throughout decades. This paper investigates the process of this fragmentation of Itaewon and its underlying ideology. introduction I was motivated to consider the aspects of a city’s translation (in terms of in- tersemiotic translation in which nonverbal text is transferred into verbal text) when I found the translation of Itaewon, an area located in the northern part of Seoul, South Korea. Shockingly, the words that caught my eye were “Red Light District.” Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia, in its entry on Itaewon, highlighted only the Red Light District as a local attraction, as follows:1 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaewon (last accessed December, 2014). 32 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Contents 1. Local attractions 1.1 Red Light District 2. See also 3. Notes 4. External links With a brief explanation of the geographical location of Itaewon, Wikipedia introduces local attractions, focusing on the international dishes, hotels, shops, and clubs that tourists can enjoy: Many restaurants serving international dishes are found in this area […]. Major ho- tels such as The Grand Hyatt and local landmark The Hamilton Hotel can be found here as well as dozens of shops and services aimed at tourists. High quality leather products in Korea can be found […] as well as various types of traditional Korean souvenirs. […] Itaewon is one of the popular club congested area in Korea, […] Most of foreign people go to the clubs for clubbing and hooking up while they are staying in Korea.2 Then separate space was allocated to the introduction of the Red Light District under the same title: There is a portion of Itaewon known as “Hooker Hill” among GI’s of different allied nations stationed in South Korea. Although the stereotype of only American ser- vicemen frequenting this area is well-known, men from all other countries, including Middle-Eastern and African, are known to frequent this area as well. Furthermore, because South Korea is not widely socially accepting of homosexuals, there is an underground gay area within this district as well. The prominent image of Itaewon represented by Wikipedia is of a “retail” city—selling goods and bodies. An explanation of this followed: “This article is written like a travel guide rather than an encyclopedic description of the subject. [. . .]” (July 2013). This explanation is very significant in that it suggests that a travel guide does not present full, complete, and thorough information, but rather is se- lective regarding the information it includes. This is quite appropriate since a travel guide should be light enough for travelers to carry. However, the problem with selective information—in other words selective translation—is the image the translation produces. This paper is concerned with this point. Translation has been frequently presented as an activity to create an image of others or of selves, in the case of Itaewon, for example, this includes “a nostalgic image of a lost past” about Japanese people (Fowler 1992), images of the East by the West in colonial contexts (Niranjana 1992), or a self-image 2 The article has since been altered, but there is no significant difference in its content. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 33  by a colonized people (Tymoczko 1999). The process involves “a deliberate and conscious act of selection, assemblage, structuration, and fabrication— and even, in some cases, of falsification, refusal of information, counterfeiting, and the creation of secret codes” (Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002, xxi). However, little notice has been taken of translation as an activity to cre- ate images of cities and of the process this involves. French theologian Jacques Ellul states that the evolution of cities represents man’s fall from natural grace and the subsequent attempt to create a new, workable order (Kotkin 2005, xv). This may mean that cities are constructed and shaped through the dynamic rela- tionship with human beings, and they are formed, and transformed, by such re- peated attempts throughout the city’s history, keeping traces of every historical moment. That is, they are “rearticulated, transformed from a singular structure into a multilateral palimpsest that can be ‘written’ up and over, again and again” (Chambers 2012, 104) with time. Therefore, the boundaries of cities’ identities continuously expand with this dynamic movement. However, cities are commonly represented as a single and fixed image in the process of translation through selective appropriation, and people ac- cept and consume that image. In the history of translation studies, little atten- tion has been paid to these aspects of cities, that is, cities as a translated text. Cities are translated through special forms of communication, such as the environmental landscape, symbolic artifacts, local events, or other landmarks, and through verbal communication, such as cities’ names, slogans or statements. This paper attempts to reveal how verbal translation, especially for tourists, constructs an image of a city, with a focus on Itaewon. Itaewon has been a very particular and special space in Korean history. Unlike other areas of Seoul, which have a single ethic identity, Itaewon has been the space of expatriates. It has been a foreign and exotic land within Korea, a zone of con- tact where native and foreign cultures encounter each other, and a mediating channel though which foreign cultures are introduced. This paper first inves- tigates Itaewon as a site of cultural encounters and cultural translation against the background of Korean history, then it examines its translation in tourist books and the subsequent effects. itaewon as a site of cultural encounters and cultural translation When French historian Fernand Braudel stated, “A town is always a town, wherever it is located, in time as well as space” (Rybczynski 1995, 49), he must have been referring to the universality of the urban experience. As Kot- kin notes, the urban experience is universal “despite vast differences in race, 34 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  climate, and location” because “there is the visceral ‘feel’ of the city almost everywhere—the same quickening of pace on a busy street, an informal mar- ketplace, or a freeway interchange, the need to create notable places, the shar- ing of a unique civic identity” (2005, xv–vxi). The omnipresent visceral feel he refers to is created by the so called “non-places” found in almost every city. Non-places, a term coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé, refers to an- thropological spaces of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as “places.” As Augé points out, supermodernity produces nonplaces, “meaning spaces which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike in Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate the earlier places” (1995, 63). Nonplaces are temporary, ephemeral, fleeting spaces for passage, commu- nication, and consumption. Augé puts it thus: If place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place. [. . .] the same things apply to the non-place as to the place. It never exists in pure form; places reconstitute themselves in it; relations are restored and resumed in it; the ‘millennial ruses’ of ‘the invention of the everyday’ and ‘the arts of doing,’ so subtly analysed by Michel de Certeau, can clear a path there and deploy their strategies. Places and non-place are rather like opposed polarities: the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed. (Augé 1995, 63–64) Examples of nonplaces are air, rail, and motorway routes, aircraft, trains and road vehicles, airports and railway stations, hotel chains, leisure parks, large retail outlets, and the complex skein of cable and wireless net- works that mobilize extraterrestrial space for the purposes of a communication (Augé 1995). These nonplaces make urban scenes familiar and uniform, creating an illusion of universality in urban experiences. In extreme cases, those nonplaces may make urban experiences homogeneous so that they give the impression that “only the name of the airport changes” as described in the novel Invisible Cities by Italian writer Italo Calvino: If on arriving at Trude I had not read the city’s name written in big letters, I would have thought I was landing at the same airport from which I had taken off. The suburbs they drove me through were no different from the others, […] The downtown streets displayed goods, packages, signs that had not changed at all. […] You can resume your flight whenever you like, but you will arrive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail. The world is covered by the sole Trude, which does not begin, nor end. Only the name of the airport changes. (Calvino 1972/1974, 128) However, despite “the universality of the urban experience,” each city has a unique and special “feel,” which gives city tourists a different experience. One of the factors that make each city unique and special is its ascent and decline throughout history, the process of which is “both rooted in history isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 35  and changed by it” (Kotkin 2005, 147), in other words, the characteristics of “places” in Augé’s term. Cities are not stagnant; they are reconfigured, re- shaped, and rearranged with political, economic, social, and cultural changes throughout history. Just as Lotman points out in his discussion on the symbolism of St. Petersburg, “The city is a mechanism, forever recreating its past” (Lotman 1990, 194–195): architectural ensembles, city rituals and ceremonies, the very plan of the city, the street names and thousands of other left-overs from past ages act as code programs constantly renewing the texts of the past. Lotman also says that “in this sense, the city, like culture, is a mechanism which with- stands time” (Lotman 1990, 195). So, as Simon’s Cities in Translation (2012) suggests, cities are “intersec- tions of memory,” and the streets of the cities keep those memories. Itaewon is such a city. Compared to other areas in Seoul, it is an area with a rapid pace of change, and it has various images: diversity, ambiguity, disorder, chaos, exoticism, foreign land within the country, and so on. Such dynamicity and images throughout the history of the place stem mainly from its geographical location, specifically, its location near Han River. As Lotman puts it, there are two ways in which a city as a demarcated space may relate to the earth which surrounds it—concentric and eccentric: Concentric structures tend towards enclosure, separation from their surroundings which are classed as hostile while eccentric structures tend towards openness and contacts with other cultures. [. . .] The concentric situation of the city in semiotic space is as a rule associated with the image of the city on the hill. [. . .] The eccentric city is situated “at the edge” of the cultural space: on the seashore, at the mouth of a river. (Lotman 1990, 191–192) The peculiar situation of Itaewon, due to its location near the Han River, imbued it with openness. Indeed, various meanings and different sto- ries about the origin of the name show such characteristics. Itaewon has three different names and meanings, using different Chinese characters—梨 泰 院, 李 泰 院, and 異 胎 院—which are embedded in its geographical position and Korean history. Firstly, Itaewon was initially a place for travelers and trading. During the Joseon Dynasty, one of four Hanyang (present Seoul) won (院)—a won was a kind of inn established for government officials and travelers by the govern- ment—was located there. So the place was named Itaewon. The won (院) in the name “Itaewon” meant “inn offering lodgings to travelers” (smg 1998, 83). As more people frequented the area, inns for foreign envoys and markets were formed (Jang 2000, 59). Another story claims that Itaewon (梨 泰 院), meaning “area for pear trees,” was so named because pear trees were grown there. 36 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Itaewon was also a space of trauma. It was the area for alienated wom- en, women who had to choose isolation from the society because, with the scar of foreign invasion on their body, they could not be accepted in Korean society. During the Seven-Year War (1592–1598) against the Korean dynasty of Joseon, a Japanese military supply base was established in the Unjongsa Buddhist nun temple near present-day Itaewon. It is said that the Japanese commander Katō Kiyomasa and his soldiers seized the temple, raped the nuns, and then stayed for some time. They subsequently burned the temple before they left. The Buddhist nuns, who had lost their home, moved to nearby Yunggyeong Mountain and lived there. Thus, the area was called Itaewon (異 胎 院), which means “village for being pregnant with a foreigner’s child” (No- mi Lee 2011, 242–243; Hoefer et al. 1981; Jun-gi Kim 2012). Itaewon was also the place where Korean women, who had been tak- en to China during the second Manchu invasion of Korea in 1636, returned and settled down (Chosun Daily 2011).3 In Joseon society, which had a tradi- tion of monogamy, those women were despised as hwanhyangnyeo (“women who returned”) and so they could not return to their home. Therefore, they went to live with the nuns (Heu-suk Han 2001, 59). According to another story, the name originated from Itain (異 他 人), which means foreigners, in reference to Japanese soldiers, who surren- dered and were naturalized during the Seven-Year War, forming a community there (Jun-gi Kim 2012). This link between Itaewon with marginalized people might have facilitated the formation of neighboring Haebangchon (literally, “liberation village”). Haebangchon was the area for displaced people after liberation from Japanese colonial rule, for north Korean refugees after the Korean War of 1950–1953, and then for farmers who had left their rural hometowns for cities during the process of industrialization. Geographically situated near Han River, Itaewon was considered strategically important in terms of transportation and military withdrawal. Thus, Itaewon has frequently been an area for foreign troops, having been a logistics base for the Mongolian Army during the late Goryeo Dynasty and a supply base for the Japanese Army during the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592 (Choi 2003, 23); it was also used by Chinese forces during the Im-O mili- 3 서울 속 외국 이태원 백서. 美軍거리서 다국적 거리로 (Itaewon White Paper: From the Street of the US Military Army to Multinational Street). Chosun Daily, Feb 21, 2011. http://boomup.chosun. com (accessed December, 2014). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 37  tary revolt of 1882–1884, was the location of the Japanese military headquarters during the colonial period of 1910–1945, and was used by the US forces after the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule (No-mi Lee 2011, 242–243; Shin 2008, 193; Seoul Development Institute 2001). The deployment of foreign troops transformed and rearranged the topography of Itaewon. During the 1920s, for instance, the public cemetery, which was located near the present-day Central Mosque, was transformed into the Japanese military headquarters. The cemetery was moved to the Miari district, and the body of Yu Gwan-sun, a patriotic martyr for independence from Japanese colonial rule, was lost in the process. However, the biggest changes to and deepest influence on Itaewon came with the deployment of the US forces. On September 9, 1945, the US forces came to be stationed in Itaewon when the US Army commanding of- ficer John Hodge received the surrender of all the Japanese forces in Korea south of the 38th parallel and took over the Japanese barracks and military facilities. The US Army Military Government was established and lasted from 1945 to 1948. However, with the Korean War in 1950, the US forces came back to be stationed in Itaewon, and the history of the US forces in Itaewon began. The English and Korean languages came to be used together; shops and bars emerged; and prostitutes, orphans, widows, and people from the provinces crowded around the US Army base hoping to scrape together a living from working on the base, selling goods to the soldiers, and so on. Military camp town clubs for American soldiers were opened, and Itaewon became a space where “American soldiers consumed Korean women sexually” (Hyeon-mee Kim 2005, 26). Thus, the so called “Hooker Hill” was formed. However, most of the women who worked at Hooker Hill were vic- tims of the Korean War. As the war had produced many orphans and widows, girls and women had to take responsibility for earning a living. They had to support not only themselves, but also their families. Some of them had to send money to their families in their hometown.4 Under the circumstances, given that they could not find proper jobs, they had to choose prostitution, becoming yang-gongju5 (a foreigner’s whore), as described in Yeong-su Oh’s novel of Anna’s Will (1963): 4 A girl risked her life to avoid the government’s control over prostitution and died because she could not make a living if she was caught. Hearing this news, sixty yang-gongju held a demon- stration against the control (Dong-A Ilbo Daily, October 27 1960, 3). 5 Yang in yang-gongju means Western, and gongju means a princess. Women who sold their bodies to Western men, especially American soldiers, were called yang-gongju. 38 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  She had no clothes to cover her body A brick looked like a chunk of meat to her. How could you expect a girl, who is starving, To be a lady, to be faithful? I was starved. A mature girl had no place to lay down her body. Is this sin? So I became a whore called Anna. (translation mine) (Oh 1963, 330) As foreign official residences were established in the 1960s, military accommodation was built in 1963, and when the 121st Evacuation Hospital of the US Army was moved to Itaewon from Bupyeong district, more than 10,000 people relocated there. During the 1970s, the area became a shopping district for cheap branded goods; there was a prosperous textile industry, and the area enjoyed the reputation of one of the most popular tourist attractions in Korea among foreign tourists in the 1980s when international events were held in Seoul. Thus, it was while the US forces were stationed there that Itaewon came to be known for its shopping area and for Hooker Hill. However, Itae- won cannot be reduced to only a shopping area and Hooker Hill. Itaewon was both a colonized space and a space of freedom and resistance. Politically, it was an Americanized colonial space (Lee and Jung 2010, 191), a colonized space (Choi 2003), or a deterritorialized space in that the authority of the nation–state was applied differently from how it was applied in other areas of the country (Eun-sil Kim 2004). Culturally, it was the space of freedom and resistance where Korean people could escape oppression under the Yushin regime in the 1970s and experience American culture (Eun-sil Kim 2004, 27; No-mi Lee 2011, 243). Indeed, Itaewon was the only route to American culture in Korean society: It was a place to experience Americanism as an object of desire for a generation familiar with afkn radio programs, with singers trained on the musical stages at US military bases, and with Hollywood movies (Choi 2003,102) because foreign travel remained restricted in Korea until 1989. These characteristics made the area a dynamic space where heteroge- neous cultural codes and different subjectivities (including colonized “others,” fragmented “youths,” and a decolonized “new generation”) were encountered, (re)constructed, (re)signified, and transformed at a specific historical stage (Lee and Jung 2010, 191). It was a place where subcultures, such as the culture of the US army in the 1950s–1960s, the Go-Go culture in the 1970s, disco cul- ture in the 1980s, and hip-hop culture around the 1990s, were circulated, and it took on a leading role in Korea’s popular music and subculture. The “clubs” which actively interacted with subcultures of different generations formed a site that led Korean popular music and subculture (see Lee and Jung 2010). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 39  Itaewon, where American soldiers were previously the most numer- ous of the foreign residents, has become more multinational since 1993, when the Korean government introduced an industrial trainee system for foreign- ers. Foreign workers from India, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Uzbekistan, and so on settled in Itaewon because the area was more open to foreigners and foreign cultures. Thus, foreigners could feel more comfortable and secure there. Many expatriates found solace in its accommodating nature and chose to set up their homes there. As various cultures, languages, and lifestyles mix together and various cultural activities commingle, the exterior landscape of the area is changing, and the space of the area is being rearranged, creating a unique and distinctive atmosphere. Through these dynamics, the area is becoming the cultural frontier zone where various cultures have become multinational and multilingual (Hy- eon-mee Kim 2005, 26). Itaewon is also a site of both conflict and solidarity as shown in the Muslim community in the area: “Though Arab Muslim traders have been known to make infrequent trading expeditions to Korea since the Silla dy- nasty, the teachings of Muhammad never made a real impact until 1950 when Turkish troops arrived to fight for UN forces” (Hoefer 1981). In 1960, the Korean Muslim Federation was founded with a Korean, Haji Sabri Suh, as its leader. However, the Islamic community was established due to the need to understand the Islamic world after the oil crisis of 1973 and 1974 (Lee and Jung 2011, 242). In February 1975, an Islamic Center was established in Itae- won, Seoul, and an adjoining Central Mosque—the largest such onion-domed structure in northeast Asia—was opened in 1976 (Hoefer 1981). The Seoul Central Mosque had been built with both Korean and Middle Eastern funds to serve the 3,000 followers of the Prophet in the nation (Hoefer 1981). The Central Mosque is therefore not only a place for religious belief but also a symbolic site which shows Koreans’ effort to understand the Islamic world (Lee and Jung 2011, 242–243). A larger Muslim community was formed in Itaewon in 2005 when an- ti-American sentiment spread after two Korean middle school girls were acciden- tally run over and killed by an American armored personnel carrier, and American soldiers assaulted some citizens. As American soldiers were subsequently banned from bars and clubs, the economic base of the area declined and workers in the entertainment business left the area for cheaper accommodation elsewhere. Thus, the Muslim community was formed around the Central Mosque. The Muslim community is bringing about changes to Itaewon. One of the most noticeable changes is the increased number of Halal food restau- rants and the reduced number of local butcher’s shops (Heu-su Yi et al. 2008, 40 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  1. Itaewon, street view 2. Itaewon, Muslim settlement area 68). Furthermore, because of the strong solidarity among Muslims, the com- munity is often regarded as a closed community by other Koreans (Lee and Jung 2011, 250). The Muslim settlement in Itaewon is a segmentation of urban space formed by the pluralism of race and Islamic culture. However, the space is isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 41  never homogeneous to the citizens and Muslims living in the Muslim settle- ment, and the place of residence is perceived according to different meanings. That is, the citizens living in Itaewon view the Muslims as those who threaten their lives and view foreigners as the cause of economic conflicts as well. How- ever, for those Muslims in the settlement, the citizens’ hostility toward them has given rise to a view of them as a strange and potential threat. The place of conflict and alienation is an inevitable part of the process of initiating a new cultural solidarity (see Lee and Jung 2011). Another feature of Itaewon is the coexistence of mutually exclusive activities in the same place: the Muslim community adjoins Gay Hill, which was formed in the late 1990s when gay bars moved there from Euljiro-Jongro (Jung-eun Kim et al. 2010). The position of Itaewon as a place of expatriates makes negotiation across different cultures with no shared history the very condition of civic coexistence. Now, Itaewon is producing a varied atmo- sphere and landscapes as multinational cultures are dynamically mixed to- gether. translation and representation of itaewon as a nonplace Tourist books have an important role to play in presenting an image of a city to the outside world because most tourists depend on the books for informa- tion about the city they will visit. They obtain information about the history, culture, shopping centers, or entertainment facilities in the city and they con- sume the city based on this information. Tourist books provide guidelines to give tourists information and instructions to help them know or understand the city. Itaewon has been one of the most popular tourist areas in Seoul among foreign tourists to the extent that it has been said that “[y]ou may not know Seoul, but you should know Itaewon” (Saccone 1994, 79). Indeed, for most foreigners the area has become synonymous with Seoul. This section investigates how Itaewon has been presented in tourist books during the past thirty years. For this purpose, tourist books in English from 1981 until 2010 were examined; however, as not many tourist books are available that discuss Itaewon, the sample was limited to seventeen books. Insight Guides: Korea (Hoefer et al.), which was published in Hong Kong in 1981, offers comparatively detailed information, focusing on the or- igin of the name and Muhammadanism in Korea. Regarding the name, it quotes Allen and Donard Clark, a father-and-son team of Seoul historians as saying, “Following the Japanese invasion of 1592–1598, the area now called 42 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Itaewon came to be called ‘Itaein’ or ‘Itaein dong’ meaning ‘Foreigners’ Vil- lage,’ because of the Japanese soldiers who were quartered on this site,” and “When the war was over, some of the soldiers settled down, married Korean girls, and spent the rest of their lives here.” Then “the tradition carries on, though most American soldiers take their Korean brides home, to ‘the world.’ as they call the U.S. of A.” (Hoefer et al. 1981). Regarding Muhammadanism, the book says the teachings of Mu- hammad never made a real impact until the arrival of Turkish troops in 1950, as mentioned previously, and it goes on to explain the foundation of the Ko- rean Muslim Federation in 1960 and the establishment of an Islamic Center in 1975 and, later, the adjoining Central Mosque (Hoefer et al. 1981). Visitors Guide: Seoul Korea, which was published by Seoul Metro- politan Government (smg) in 1998, introduces some of Itaewon’s histor- ical traces: [the] “won” of the name has meant an inn offering lodgings to travelers of the Cho- son Dynasty. In the middle of the 17th century, there was a concentrated village of naturalized Japanese. From 1906, a Japanese Military Post was stationed in the area until liberation from Japanese colonial rule, and now US Military Post including headquarters is located there. (SMG 1998, 83) However, Insight Guides: South Korea (Le Bas), which was published in London in 2007, introduces the history of Itaewon using a more poetic tone: but foreigners, not all of them Western, now occupy multi-story apartment buildings. [. . .] Imagine the astonished reactions of the Buddhist monks who, for some 500 years, kept a free hostel for travelers near here. What exists now, albeit breathtaking, may prove to be too developed for their tastes: the Grand Hyatt Hotel’s mirrored façade; and the twin minarets of the onion-domed mosque below, from which re- sounds the muezzin’s call to afternoon prayer. (Le Bas 2007, 135-139) The book then adds that centuries ago, Itaewon was used as a stop- over point for visitors to the capital, that Japanese troops were housed there during the Japanese Occupation, and that, after the Korean War, they were then replaced by American soldiers. Although the descriptions in the above three tourist books are not enough to show the dynamicity of Itaewon, they at least reveal the historicity of the area. However, other tourist books introduce Itaewon, focusing on it as place for con- sumerism and as a shopping area and entertainment district as follows: known as a part of the city that never sleeps. [. . .] a one-stop hub for foreign visitors, including shopping, tours, lodging and information services. It also offers many ven- ues in which to enjoy Korean and foreign cultures and cuisines. (kotra 2006, 249) now a growing mecca for bargain hunters. [. . .] It is lined on both sides with hundreds isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 43  of shops and arcades selling ready-made sports clothes [. . .] It is also an entertain- ment spot that boasts well over 200 restaurants, bars and clubs. (Suzanne Crowder Han 1989, 74) crowded with shops of all kinds from custom tailors to jewelers, from antiques deal- ers to clothiers. [. . .] In the evening Itaewon becomes a dynamic entertainment dis- trict packed with discos, nightclubs, bars, and karaokes of all sizes. (Saccone 1994, 79–80) the shopping paradise of diverse visitors from all parts of the world. (kowoc 2002, 63) Itaewon offers tailor-made and ready-made clothes [. . .] There is a spirited night life, too. (Chunsung Kim 2004, 90) it was one of the only places in the country in which you could buy “Western” items [. . .] While it remains a great place to shop for cheap tailored suits and shoes, Itae- won’s popularity also made it a byword for transactions of a more sexual nature – hostess bars sprung up all over the place. (Paxton 2008, 109) It’s a bastardized district that’s neither Korean nor Western, but a skewed yet intrigu- ing combination of both. Clothing, gifts . . . (Nilsen 2009, 44 and 92) a lively expat entertainment zone with bars and clubs aplenty, both gay and straight. Market stalls line the main street and the district comes to life in the evening. (Rob- inson and Zahorchak 2009, 55) Once a shady red-light district, it’s been cleaned up [. . .] You can still find ladies of the night walking down certain streets at night, but during the day, it’s a shopper’s paradise. (Cecilia Hai-Jin Lee 2010, 63) Translation of Itaewon in the above tourist books is no different from that in Wikipedia, as was pointed out in the introduction. Rather than being presented as a dynamic space where memories are imprinted, heterogeneous cultures mix together, and new cultures emerge, Itaewon is represented in these books as a large retail outlet for the selling and buying of goods, just like nonplaces, to use Augé’s term (1995, 63), which have no urban relations, history, or identity. The way Itaewon is translated is similar to the process of reification in that it presents fragmented information about the city in the process of com- modification for tourism, and thereby stops us understanding the totality of the city. According to Lukács (1971), under capitalism everything is reified as the result of a unified structure of consciousness—that is, seeing everything in a completely discrete way, where everything is separated and fragmented and taken out of the process to which it belongs. Lukács claims this is caused by the fact that everything is turned into a commodity under capitalism, which thus prevents us from seeing the totality of the place and the deeper processes that are going on. In a capitalist society, a city is presented as a commodity for the tour- ist industry, and its images are created, manipulated, or distorted in the pro- 44 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  cess of translation in order to create a profit. A city’s function as a place for entertainment and shopping is frequently emphasized in presenting the city because “the criteria of the successful tourist industry mainly puts priority on spending on entertainment and shopping” (Yi and Oh 1994, 21). Itaewon’s image is presented as a place for selling and entertaining; removed from its historicity, the image is fragmented. fragmented image, fragmented experience What does this fragmented image have to do with the city? The most direct influence may be the way the city is consumed by tourists. For example, the following recent reviews of the city by tourists6 show that the way they con- sume the city is closely related to the image presented in tourist books: Itaewon: Lots of Shopping. There are shops and a district for almost every imaginable type of product and some are open until very late at night […]. (October 20, 2002) Itaewon: Capital of Kitsch. [. . .] filling up with good restaurants and chain stores. You can find Nike outlets selling all manner of shoes and sports gear, Body Shops filled with makeup and luxurious bath products, and dozens of clothing stores and tailors specializing in Chinese silk dresses. (October 19, 2003) Itaewon: Cheap shops and street fashion. You can find bargains of any kind and a lot of the big clothing chains [. . .]. (January 28, 2004) Itaewon: Near military base. Itaewon does have some shops [. . .] Itaewon is located near a US military base, so don’t mind the soldiers in camouflage wandering around town. At night time, Itaewon transforms itself [. . .] One of the native Koreans told me that most Korean girls do not hang around in that area, afraid to be mistaken as a prostitute. (February 22, 2005) Itaewon is perhaps the most famous shopping area for foreigners in Korea. (January 13, 2006) Itaewon: Buying a Custom-Made Suit in Itaewon. (May 6, 2007) Itaewon: Very Touristy and Expensive, not a Sample of Korea. The Itaewon shopping area covers a 1.4 km in length [. . .] The area has a vibrant night life scene with many bars and nightclubs. (July 24, 2008) Itaewon: Special Tourism Shopping Zone of Seoul (April 4, 2011) 6 All citations are taken from http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/South_Korea/Soul_ tukpyolsi/Seoul-1058426/Shopping-Seoul-Itaewon-BR-1.html (accessed December, 2014), which is an interactive site aimed at sharing travel knowledge, which includes chat, forums, travelogues, photos, and maps. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 45  Although one reviewer describes Itaewon as an unexpected treasure trove, most of the reviews show that tourists’ experience of Itaewon is superfi- cial and fragmented, alienated from its memories and ongoing history just like the images of the city in the tourist books. They just experience Itaewon as a non-place where things are sold and bought. Considering the general purpose of tourist books, it can be said that the translation of Itaewon that is circulated and reproduced has directed tourists’ pattern of consuming the city. The city is, of course, a place where things are traded, but it is not only a place where things are traded. As Calvino’s Invisible Cities suggests, a city is an assemblage of memory, desire, signs, names, and other features. So what is traded is not only things but also memories, desires, signs, names, and other things, as shown by Invisible Cities’ Euphemia: You do not come to Euphemia only to buy and sell, but also because at night, by the fires all around the market, seated on sacks or barrels or stretched out on pile of car- pets, at each word that one man says—such as “wolf,” “sister,” “hidden treasure,” “battle,” “scabies,” “lovers”—the others tell, each one, his tale of wolves, sisters, treasures, sca- bies, lovers, battles. And you know that in the long journey ahead of you, when to keep awake against the camel’s swaying or the junk’s rocking, you start summoning up your memories one by one, your wolf will have become another wolf, your sister a different sister, your battle other battles, on your return from Euphemia, the city where memory is traded at every solstice and at every equinox. (Calvino 1972/1974, 36–37) Itaewon is also a place that has its memories, desires, signs, and names, and is the place where those memories, desires, signs, and names are traded; thus it deserves to be known for various reasons, not just as a selling place. So the experience of the city could be more complex than simply trading things. The fragmented experience together with the reproduced image has produced a negative image about Itaewon, so that it loses its attraction as a tourist site. Furthermore, as neighboring commercial areas are created, Itae- won has also lost its merits as a shopping area. Realizing the risk, the gov- ernment designated the area a special tourism district in 1997 and decided to hold the Itaewon Global Village Festival twice a year in an attempt to revive Itaewon as a site of dynamic cultural exchanges. conclusion In the tourism industry, cities are rearranged according to the economic principles of commercialism in a capitalist society. Cities can be classified as a sacred city, a fashion city, a commercial city, and so on, and this clas- sification is translated spatially or verbally, creating a representative image of the city. 46 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  3. Different views of Itaewon Tourist books are one of the media where cities are verbally trans- lated. Itaewon has been verbally translated as a shopping and entertainment area in tourist books, and such a translated image has been consumed among tourists. However, this image has been fragmented, and so has been the expe- rience of tourists. The experience of cities may be more multiple and more multilateral than the one the tourist books can produce as shown in the description of the city of Irene in Invisible Cities: If you saw it, standing in its midst, it would be a different city; Irene is a name for a city in the distance, and if you approach, it changes. For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene. (Calvino 1972/1974, 125) isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 47  4. Itaewon, historical view Therefore, cities cannot be fixed to a single image or translation. The various translations of the name of Itaewon itself—foreigners’ village, village for being pregnant with a foreigner’s child, village for pear trees—show that the area cannot be translated into one fixed image. The inherent and unique properties of Itaewon have been formed by the totality of geographical and historical moments. Itaewon has been a place for travelers and trading, a space of trauma caused by the conflictive history of Korea, a foreigners’ village, a foreign land within the country, a colonized space, a space of freedom and resistance, a deterritorialized zone, a window onto Western culture, a space of conflicts and solidarity, a space for cultural translation, and so on. The area has accumulated its memories throughout history while being repeatedly rewrit- ten, functioning as “a culture-generator.” Indeed, regarding cities as “culture-generators,” Lotman says: The city is a complex semiotic mechanism, a culture-generator, but it carries out this function only because it is a melting-pot of texts and codes, belonging to all kinds of languages and levels. The essential semiotic polyglottism of every city is what makes it so productive of semiotic encounters. The city, being the place where different national, social, and stylistic codes and texts confront each other, is the place of hybridization, recodings, semiotic translations, all of which makes it into a powerful generator of new information. (Lotman 1990, 194) Itaewon has been, to use Lotman’s words “the place of hybridization, recodings, semiotic translations” (Lotman 1990, 194). However, a selective translation of such a city in the tourist books has focused on the fragmented image in the process of the commodification of the city as a tourist site. This fragmented image has been reproduced during past decades, fixing the image to Itaewon and obstructing cognition of the totality or the whole nature of the 48 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  city. This way, translation may be damaging to cities especially when a dis- torted image obtains authority through reproduction. As a culture-generator, a city deserves its proper translation. <References> Augé, Marc. 1995. Non-places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermoder- nity. Translated by John Howe. London: Verso. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bewes, Timothy. 2002. Reification or the Anxiety of Late Capitalism. London: Verso. Calvino, Italo. 1972. Invisible Cities. Translated by William Weaver (1974). Florida: Har- court Brace & Company. Chambers, Iain. 2012. “The Translated City.” Translation 1: 101–106. Choi, Jong-il. 2003. 이태원에 나타난 아메리카나이제이션에 관한 연구 (A Study on “Amer- icanization” expressed in Itaewon space). Unpublished thesis. Seoul Nation- al University. Fowler, Edward. 1992. “Rendering Words, Traversing Cultures: On the Art and Politics of Translating Modern Japanese Fiction.” Journal of Japanese Studies 18: 1–44. Han, Heu-suk. 2001. 용산 속의 전쟁사와 군사문화 (War history and military culture within Yongsan). Seoul: Yongsan Cultural Council. Han, Suzanne Crowder. 1989. Seoul: a Pictorial Guidebook. Host of the ’86 Asian Games and ’88 Olympics. Seoul: Hollym. Hoefer, Hans, and et al. 1981. Insight Guides: Korea. Hong Kong: Apa Productions. Im, Myung Soo. 1981. Tour in Seoul. Seoul: Saenggaksa. Jang, Hak-jin. 2000. 이태원 상업가로 매력요소 분석에 관한 연구 (Analysis of merits of Itae- won as a commercial district). Unpublished thesis. Seoul National University. Kim, Chunsung. 2004. A Guide for Foreign Tourists about Korea. Seoul: HyunHakSa. Kim, Eun-sil. 2004. “지구화 시대 근대의 탈영토화된 공간으로서 이태원에 대한 민족지적 연구.” (Eth- nographic study on Itaewon as a modern deterritorialized space in the glo- balized age. In 변화하는 여성문화 움직이는 지구촌 (Changing women culture, moving global village), 13–60. Seoul: Pureun Sasangsa. Kim,Hyeon-mee.2005.글로벌 시대의 문화번역: 젠더, 인종, 계층의 경계를 넘어(Culturaltrans- lation in the global age: beyond gender, race, and class). Seoul: Another Culture. Kim, Jung-eun, et al. 2010. “이태원 경관 읽기 (Reading Itaewon Landscape).” Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture Journal 2010 (0): 141–145. Kim, Jun-gi. 2012. 이태원’, 한국민속문학사전 (The encyclopedia of Korean folk litera- ture). National Folk Museum of Korea. http://folkency.nfm.go.kr/munhak/ index.jsp (accessed December, 2014). Kotkin, Joel. 2005. The City. New York: Modern Library. kotra. 2006. Guide to Living in Korea. Seoul: KOTRA. kowoc (Korean Organizing Committee for the 2002 FIFA World Cup). 2002. Spec- tator Guide10—Venue Cities in Korea. Seoul: KOWOC. Le Bas, Tom. 2007. Insight Guides: South Korea. 8th edition. London: Insight Guides. Lee, Cecilia Hae-Jin. 2010. Frommer’s South Korea. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Lee, Na-young, and Min-yoo Jung. 2010. “탈/식민성의 공간, 이태원과 한국의 대중음 악 – 이태원 ‘클럽’들의 형성과 변화과정을 중심으로 (1950–1991)” (History of popular music and (re)formation of ‘clubs’ at Post/Colonial Space, Itaewon in South Korea, 1950–1991).” Society and History 87: 191–229. Lee, No-mi. 2011. “국내 외국인 소수집단 거주지의 갈등과 연대 – 이태원 무슬림 거주지를 중 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 49  심으로” (A study on conflict and solidarity in foreign settlement—focused on Itaewon Muslim Settlement). Korean Culture Study 21(0): 237–263. Lotman, Yuri M. 1990. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Translated by Ann Shukman. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Lukács, Georg. 1971. History and Class Consciousness. Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nilsen, Robert. 2009. South Korea. Berkeley, CA: Avalon Travel. Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1992. Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press. Oh, Yeong-su. 1963. “Anna’s Will.” The Complete Works of Oh Yeong-su. Seoul: Hyundaeseogwan. 263–330. Paxton, Norbert. 2008. The Rough Guide to Korea. London: Rough Guides. Robinson, Martin, and Jason Zahorchak. 2009. Seoul. City Guide. London: Lonely Planet. Rybczynski, Witold. 1995. City Life: Urban Expectations in the New World. New York: Scribner’s. Saccone, Richard .1994. Travel Korea Your Way. New Jersey: Hollym. Seoul Development Institute. 2001. 이태원 장소 마케팅 전략연구 (Study on marketing strategies for Itaewon). Seoul: Seoul Development Institute. Shin, Ju-baek. 2007. “용산과 일본군 용산기지의 변화 (Changes of Yongsan and Japa- nese Military Base in Yongsan) (1884–1945).” Seoul Studies 29: 189–218. Simon, Sherry. 2012. Cities in Translation. London: Routledge. SMG (Seoul Metropolitan Government). 1998. Visitors Guide. Seoul Korea. Seoul: SMG. Tymoczko, Maria. 1999. Translation in a Postcolonial Context. Manchester: St. Je- rome. Tymoczko, Maria, and Edwin Gentzler, eds. 2002. Translation and Power. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Yi. Heu-su, et al. 2008. “서울 이태원동 일대의 이슬람 타운화 과정에 관한 연구 (Study on the Process of Islamic Town Formation in Itaewon).” Korean Association of Islamic Studies Journal 18(2): 47-86. Yi, Hyeok-jin, and Ho-tak Oh. 1994. “관광산업으로서의 쇼핑상품에 관한 이론적 고찰 (Theoretical Approaches to Shopping Items as Tourism Industry).” Regional Development Journal 19: 21-52. <Hunam Yun> She is a translation scholar and translator. She first obtained her BA in English literature at Korea University, Seoul. After studying translation studies at Warwick University, UK, she obtained her MA and PhD in Translation Studies in 2000 and 2011 respectively. She has taught translation theory and practice for over fifteen years at Hongik University in Seoul and translated Walter Scott, Andersen, George MacDonald, and Beatrix Potter into Korean. Her main topics in- clude globalization and translation, literary translation, drama translation, translational norms, and screen translation and she authored Introduc- tion to Translation Theory and Practice. She now focuses on writing and translating while living in New York. 50 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 

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https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15750

Of Translational Spaces and Multilingual Cities: Reading the Sounds of Lagos in Sefi Atta’s Swallows and Everything Good Will Come* Elena Rodríguez Murphy University of Salamanca, Spain [email protected] <Abstract> Over the last few years, there has been an increasing number of Nigerian au- thors who in their writing have centered on portraying the different sounds and accents of one of Nigeria’s most diverse and vibrant cities, Lagos. This article aims to analyze the way in which Sefi Atta, a leading voice in what has come to be known as “the third generation of Nigerian writers,” describes in her novels Swallow (2005) and Everything Good Will Come (2010) the manner in which some of Nigeria’s vernacular languages, such as Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, as well as Nigerian English and Nigerian Pidgin, permeate this incredibly plu- ral and multilingual city where varying ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups have been made to live together in the same translational space as a result of the colonial era. As Achille Mbembe (2010) has underlined, one of the main bequests of colonialism has been the unequal development of the different countries and regions of Africa. This situa- tion has led to an uneven distribution of people within multiple spaces. In this way, cities such as Lagos, Dakar, Accra, or Abidjan have actually become major metropolitan centers where interaction and negotiations among diverse peoples are commonplace and transcul- tural forms of different elements such as modes of dress, music, or language are constantly emerging. Without a doubt, translation is a main feature of coexistence in Lagos given its multilingual environment and the way in which various ethnic and linguistic communities share everyday life. “Language is part of the audible surface of the city.” (Cronin and Simon 2014, 120) in translation: reading the sounds of the city Over the last few years, there has been an increasing number of Nigerian au- thors who in their writing have centered on portraying the different sounds and accents of one of Nigeria’s most diverse and vibrant cities, Lagos. In this * This article is part of the research project entitled “Violencia simbólica y traducción: retos en la representación de identidades fragmentadas en la sociedad global” [Symbolic Violence and Translation: Challenges in the Representation of Fragmented Identities within the Global Soci- ety] (FFI2015-66516-P; MINECO/FEDER, UE), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 51  regard, as Toni Kan Onwordi has underlined in a brief description included on the cover of Sefi Atta’s second novel Swallow, “no contemporary Nigerian writer is better than Sefi Atta at evoking the smells, sounds and the sheer madness of this sprawling cosmopolitan city of Lagos.” Along with Chris Aba- ni, Helon Habila, Maik Nwosu, Jude Dibia, and Akin Adesokan, and other members of what has come to be known as “the third generation of Nigerian writers,” in her narrative Sefi Atta ably describes the way in which diverse peoples negotiate everyday life on the city’s populated streets. Although there are many ways in which one may try to understand the workings of urban reality, analyzing “the practice of everyday life” (see De Certeau 1984) in a postcolonial city such as Lagos through language and translation can offer new and interesting perspectives in various fields of study. Indeed, Atta’s novels Everything Good Will Come (2005) and Swallow (2010) provide the reader with a valuable linguistic experience of Lagos through the inclusion in her texts of the multilingual transactions that permeate the city. As Simon interestingly points out in her book Cities in Translation, Much of the abundant literature in recent decades has emphasized the visual aspects of urban life. And yet the audible surface of languages, each city’s signature blend of dialects and accents, is an equally crucial element of urban reality [. . .] “hearing” introduces the observer into layers of social, economic and cultural complexity. (Si- mon 2012, 1) Thus, reading in Atta’s fiction the sounds and diverse range of accents that characterize the city brings the reader closer to the complexity of its lin- guistic reality, in which translation appears as an indispensable tool which has gradually allowed for the emergence of what McLaughlin has termed “new urban language varieties”: The burgeoning growth of Africa’s cities that began during the latter part of the colo- nial period and continues with increasing momentum into the twenty-first century has given rise to a multiplicity of innovative and often transformative cultural practices that are associated primarily with urban life, not least of which is the emergence of new urban language varieties. (McLaughlin 2009, 1) Lagos is, without a doubt, a multilingual and multiethnic city that can actually be defined as “a translation space [where] the focus is not on mul- tiplicity but on interaction” (Simon 2012, 7). Therefore, given its multilingual environment and the way in which various ethnic and linguistic communities have come to share its everyday life, translation can clearly be considered one of the main features of activity in Lagos. In this way, beyond dichotomist un- derstandings, translation becomes an indispensable medium through which a common coexistence may, although not always successfully, be negotiated: 52 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Multilingual contexts put pressure on the traditional vocabulary of transfer and its concepts of source and destination. Communities which have had a longstanding re- lationship inhabit the same landscape and follow similar rhythms of daily life. Facing one another across the space of the city, they are not “foreign” and so translation can no longer be configured only as a link between a familiar and a foreign culture, be- tween a local original and a distant destination, between one monolingual community and another. [. . .] The Other remains within constant earshot. The shared understand- ings of this coexistence change the meaning of translation from a gesture of benev- olence to a process through which a common civility is negotiated. (Simon 2012, 7) lagos: a multilingual and multiethnic megacity In his book Sortir de la grande nuit (2010), Achille Mbembe recently under- lined the fact that one of the main bequests of colonialism has been the un- equal development of the different countries and regions of Africa. In fact, “[n]o major coastal cities existed in Western Africa before the colonial period. However, as a result of the mostly maritime-based logistics of colonialism, countries in the sub-region began an urbanization path strongly associated with the coast” (United Nations Human Settlements Programme [UN-Hab- itat] 2014, 99). This situation has gradually led to an uneven distribution of people within multiple spaces, hence cities like Lagos, Dakar, Accra, and Ab- idjan have actually become major metropolitan centers where interaction and negotiations are commonplace and transcultural forms of different elements such as modes of dress, music, or language are constantly emerging. It be- comes apparent, therefore, that in many African cities such as Lagos attaining even the minimum often requires complex styles of staying attuned to the shifting intersections of gestures, excitements, languages, anxieties, determinations and comportments enacted across markets, streets and other venues. The city is a field of affect where specific dispositions and attainments are contingent upon the ways actors’ bodies, histories and capacities are mobilized and enacted. (Simone 2007, 237) As Ato Quayson explains in regard to Oxford St., in the Ghanaian capital of Accra the streets in many African cities may be seen as archives, rather than just geographical locations, where it is possible to find “a rich and intricate relationship between tradition and modernity, religion and secularity as well as local and transnational circuits of images and ideas” (Quayson 2010, 72). Lagos is a burgeoning city, the largest in Nigeria (Falola and Genova 2009, 202), and, according to the figures published by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in its 2014 report The State of African Cities 2014. Re-imagining Sustainable Urban Transitions, it “has recent- ly joined the ranks of the world’s megacities” (2014, 17). Lagos has undoubt- edly been shaped by its history, not only as one of the most important ports isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 53  in West Africa from the eighteenth century onwards, but also as the federal capital of Nigeria (1914–1991). In this respect, although Abuja has been the federal capital of the country since 1991, Lagos, whose population is expected to rise to over eighteen million by 2025 (United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 23–25), is now the center of one of the largest urban areas in Western Africa and continues to be a main hub in the southwestern region of Nigeria for the circulation of peoples as well as goods. Growing urbaniza- tion and rural–urban migration are responsible for the cultural heterogeneity of this major Western African city, which was at one point described “as an ancient city inhabited by the Awori and Ijebu people, both subgroups of the Yoruba” (Falola and Genova 2009, 202). Nevertheless, as a result of Nigeria’s national history, Lagos is currently populated by varying and distinct ethnic groups. Although there is still a Yoruba majority, it can be said that “Nigeria’s myriad ethnic and religious identities are found throughout the city’s neigh- borhoods, usually managing to coexist, though periodically sparking tensions” (Lewis 2009, 115). The artificial boundaries which were drawn when Nigeria was created by British administrators in 1914,1 have given rise to an incredibly heteroge- neous space both in ethnical and linguistic terms. As can be seen in the map below, there is an extremely wide range of ethnic groups which, as a conse- quence of colonialism, have come to inhabit the same nation; this has often provoked ethnic and religious tensions, the Biafran War (1967–1970) being a case in point: The Nigeria of today [...] is a relatively new creation, dating back to the early 20th century. Boundaries prior to that time included numerous chieftaincies and empires that expanded and contracted geographically without regard to modern Nigeria’s boundaries. For the early peoples of Nigeria, only geographic boundaries, such as the Sahara Desert or Atlantic Ocean, might have kept them in place. Western European powers competing for territory and political control in Africa during the late-19th cen- tury determined Nigeria’s boundaries to suit their needs. Much of Nigeria’s western, eastern, and northern borders are the results of rivalry and compromise by Euro- pean powers. As a result, ethnic groups and former kingdoms straddle boundaries. [...] Modern-day Nigeria is a conglomeration of hundreds of ethnic groups, spanning across different geographical zones. [...] To identify a single Nigerian culture is diffi- cult. (Falola and Genova 2009, xxx-xxxi) 1 The name ‘Nigeria’ is credited to the colonial editor of the Times of London, Flora Shaw, who later married the new entity’s governor, Lord Frederick Lugard. The name stuck. But the new name was not accompanied by any sense of national unity. [. . .] The British yoking together of so many different peoples into a huge state [. . .] shaped the future of about a fifth of Africa’s sub-Saharan population” (Campbell 2013, 2). 54 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  From a demographic point of view, within Nigeria the Hausa-Fulani, the Igbo, and the Yoruba can be considered to be the largest of the ethnic groups. According to Iyoha (2010, 169), around 29% of the population is Hausa-Fulani who live mainly in the northern regions in cities such as Kano, Sokoto, and Kaduna. The Yoruba, more or less 21%, are based primarily in the southwest of the country, in cities such as Ife-Ife, Lagos, and Ibadan. On the other hand, the Igbo, approximately 18% of the population, inhabit the areas situated in the southeast of Nigeria, for example in Port Harcourt, Owerri, and Enugu. These aforementioned groups can, however, be said to live all around the country. Other, numerically smaller ethnic groups include the Tiv, the Nupe, the Igala, and the Jukun in the Middle Belt region and the Ijaw, the Itsekiri, the Urhobo, the Ogoni, and the Ibibio in the Niger Delta. They have long been demanding greater political and economic representation within the national space, as Saro-Wiwa has pointed out on many occasions in regard to the Ogoni people: Colonialism is not a matter only of British, French, or European dominance over Af- ricans. In African society, there is and has always been colonial oppression. In my case, the Ogoni had never been conquered by their Igbo neighbors. But the fact of British colonialism brought both peoples together under a single administration for the first time. And when the British colonialists left, the numerically inferior Ogoni were consigned to the rule of the more numerous Igbos, who always won elections in the Region since ethnic loyalties and cultural habits were and continue to be strong throughout Nigeria. (Saro-Wiwa 1992, 155) Not only is Nigeria diverse in terms of its ethnicity, but it also boasts an enormous variety of languages and dialects—more than four hundred ac- cording to Garuba (2001, 11) and more than five hundred according to the isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 55  Ethnologue database (Simons and Fennig 2017). As Adekunle (1997) and Adeg- bija (2000, 2004) highlight, multilingualism is a common feature of many West African regions, and Nigeria can be said to be the country where the largest number of different languages is spoken. Together with English, which is used as an official language and is employed in diverse forms, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba have become the three major national languages.2 Moreover, a wide range of languages and dialects spoken by the different Nigerian ethnic groups is to be found: Apart from the indigenous languages, which are the mother tongues of Nigerians, there also exist non-indigenous languages. They include English, which has become a second language; Nigerian Pidgin (the language in Nigeria with probably the larg- est number of speakers), which derives from the contact between English and the indigenous languages; Classical Arabic, which is learnt by Muslims; and other for- eign languages such as French, German, and Russian, which are taken as academic subjects at the secondary and tertiary levels of education. (Igboanusi 2002, 13–14) Faced with this highly complex web of languages, many Nigerians have resorted to both English and Nigerian Pidgin (NP)3 as a way of favoring communication with each other: Originally mainly restricted to trade, Pidgin has spread to become the language of market places, sports, the army and police force, taxi drivers, playgrounds, university campuses, and generally of interethnic discourse in lower-class and informal con- texts. In recent decades it has therefore been utilized for mass communication—in advertising, political campaigning, government propaganda, announcements, and mass media, e.g. news broadcasts on the radio [. . .] It is labeled “the most widely spoken language in Nigeria” [. . .] Though the language still carries a strong stigma in the eyes of many educated Nigerians, many others have come to use it in informal conversations, also in banks, offices, and businesses, utilizing its ethnographic role as a code of friendliness and proximity. (Schneider 2007, 205–206) Nonetheless, it is interesting to take into consideration that whilst NP and the vernacular languages are normally used in informal and familiar conversations, administrative and educational matters are mainly dealt with in English: “For a great many speakers from different groups, English is [...] valued as a language of prestige, a sign of education, and a mark of modernity” 2 “The dominance of English in the Nigerian Constitution continued until 1979, when the Con- stitution that emerged under a military regime specifically provided for the use of the three major languages (Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba) in addition to English for proceedings in the Na- tional Assembly: ‘The business of the National Assembly shall be conducted in English, and in Hausa, Ibo, and Yoruba when adequate arrangements have been made therefore (Section 51)’” (Bamgbose 1996, 358). 3 It is important to bear in mind that, as Igboanusi points out, “Nigerian English” (NE) and “Ni- gerian Pidgin” (NP) are considered to be different languages: “Nigerian Pidgin is different from Nigerian English (the variety of English used in Nigeria). However, the line between them is sometimes difficult to draw, particularly at the lexical level” (Igboanusi 2008, 78). 56 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  (Simpson 2008,194). According to different critics (Bamgbose 1971; Bamgbose 1996, 366; Igboanusi 2002; Gut 2004, 813), only a small percentage of the Ni- gerian population may understand or speak English, but, despite the fact that in recent years there have been repeated attempts to increase the importance of the vernacular languages, it continues to be used on a regular basis, espe- cially by the local elites: As ex-colonial people, Nigerians hold English in great awe. They so overrate English that literacy in English is considered the only mark of being an educated person. For example, for them science and technology are not within the reach of any person who cannot master the English language. Not surprisingly, therefore, the language, unlike any of the Nigerian mother tongues, is regarded as being politically neutral for adoption by the people. [. . .] Consequently, political expediency makes the English lan- guage the ready language for adoption for national literacy today. (Afolayan 2001, 83) Just as in other African countries, the increasing use of new technologies such as the Internet and cable TV among specific sectors of Nigerian society has resulted in a growing interest on the part of the younger generation in learning the English language. This situation has been skillfully described by the widely acclaimed Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who, on many occasions, has stated that English is no longer considered by some as a “foreign” language, but rather as a Nigerian language adapted to the Nigerian cultural context: I’d like to say something about English [...] which is simply that English is mine. Some- times we talk about English in Africa as if Africans have no agency, as if there is not a distinct form of English spoken in Anglophone African countries. I was educated in it; I spoke it at the same time as I spoke Igbo. My English-speaking is rooted in a Nigerian experience and not in a British or American or Australian one. I have taken ownership of English. (Adichie, quoted in Uzoamaka 2008, 2) The general trend encountered in multilingual communities consists in usage gradually determining the role each language has in particular domains, and Nigeria is no exception. Although English remains the most important language in education and matters pertaining to government and administration, the vernacu- lar languages—such as Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo as well as NP—are used primarily in informal contexts. Taking these matters into consideration, it is important to underline the “diglossic,” or rather “poliglossic,” relations that, as Zabus (2007) and Bandia (2008) point out, have been established between the different languages that are employed in many of the countries in West Africa, including Nigeria:4 4 It is interesting to mention here that, according to Warren-Rothlin, in Nigeria digraphia is also a social reality which can result in social divisions (Warren-Rothlin 2012, 6–7). There also exist multiple orthographies and writing scripts within the country (ibid. 7). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 57  For our purposes, the sociolinguistic concept of diglossia needs to be expanded to include not only Ferguson’s genetically linked “high” and “low” varieties (to which he erroneously attributed scripturality and orality, respectively) but unrelated languages as well. Indeed, in a country like Ghana, Ewe is not a dialect of English and has a written literature of its own but, functionally, Ewe is to English what a dominated or subordinate language is to a dominant or superordinate language. [. . .] Also, the West African auxiliary languages resulting from languages in contact such as pidgins have a diglossic relation to the dominant European language that is similar to the more conventional relation between a prestige or power language and its regional dialect. Conversely, a statistically dominant language like Wolof in Senegal can be consid- ered as being hegemonic like French and would thus be in diglossia with a minor language like Ndût. (Zabus 2007, 14) In the case of the Nigerian linguistic landscape, English has gradually come to be accepted as the dominant language in some domains while specific forms of some of the vernacular languages such as Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba have been gaining ground in others. In many instances, however, these vernac- ular languages are in a diglossic situation in relation to the English language. Likewise, although it is now defined as “the most widely spoken language in Nigeria,” NP appears to be in a diglossic situation with respect to English. It is also important to bear in mind that the three major vernacular languages can be categorized as hegemonic vis-à-vis those considered as minor. Thus, faced with the linguistic variation characteristic of a territory like Nigeria, it may be said that, in Zabus’s own words, “[w]e can therefore advance the notions of ‘triglossia’ or even ‘polyglossia,’ and ‘intertwined diglossias’” (Zabus 2007, 14). The Nigerian cultural and linguistic situation that we have been describing, although very succinctly, is reflected in the city of Lagos where, as illustrated by the different examples that follow, diverse languages, and therefore translation, are used on a daily basis, not only in the ever-chang- ing “discourse ecologies” (Quayson 2010) that exist on its streets, but also in the conversational exchanges that take place in its crowded markets, “motor parks,” taxis or buses. In this regard, in their work both Adedun and Shodipe have underlined the fact that, although most people in Lagos use Yoruba and Nigerian Pidgin in their daily interactions, Hausa, Igbo, and other vernacular languages together with English are also a common feature in this cosmopol- itan African city: The nature of Lagos, which accommodates various ethnic, and religious groups, ac- counts for the present state of its language repertoire. [. . .] Without any doubt, Lagos is a potpourri of different peoples and tribes and these have had a noticeable impact on the linguistic repertoire, language choice, and language shift in the area. (Adedun and Shodipe 2011, 131) 58 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  the sounds of lagos in swallow and everything good will come One of the main characteristics of Atta’s work, as mentioned previously, is the accuracy with which she manages to portray the city of Lagos and the wide range of sounds that fill its streets and buildings. Both in her first novel, Every- thing Good Will Come (EG in the citations, below), and in her second novel, Swallow (SW in the citations, below), in addition to other works, Atta de- scribes different parts of the city along with its diverse languages and accents: Our continent was a tower of Babel, Africans speaking colonial languages: French, English, Portuguese, and their own indigenous languages. Most house help in Lagos came from outside Lagos; from the provinces and from neighboring African coun- tries. If we didn’t share a language, we communicated in Pidgin English. (EG, 212) Sheri’s younger siblings greeted me as I walked across the cement square. “Hello, Sister Enitan.” “Long time no see.” “Barka de Sallah, Sister Enitan.” (EG, 247) Street hawkers sat behind wooden stalls in a small market . . . They were Fulani peo- ple from the North. The men wore white skull caps and the women wrapped chiffon scarves around their heads. [. . .] They talked loud in their language, and together they sounded like mourners ululating. (EG, 198) Baba came to collect his monthly salary [. . .] “Compliments of the season,” I said. “How are you?” I spoke to him in Yoruba, addressing him by the formal you, because he was an elder. He responded with the same formality because I was his employer. Yoruba is a lan- guage that doesn’t recognize gender—he the same as she, him the same as her—but respect is always important. (EG, 312). In her fiction, Atta includes many instances in which translation ap- pears as an indispensable tool and a necessary medium through which ev- eryday life may be negotiated in Lagos, a place where diverse peoples and languages have come to share a common space. For instance, when Enitan, the main character in Everything Good Will Come, is sent to Royal College in La- gos and encounters girls from varying ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, cul- tural and linguistic translation becomes indispensable on a day-to-day basis: I met Moslem girls [. . .] Catholic girls [. . .] Anglican girls, Methodist girls. One girl, San- gita, was Hindu [. . .] I learned also about women in my country, from Zaria, Katsina, Kaduna who decorated their skin with henna dye and lived in purdah [. . .] Uncle Alex had always said our country was not meant to be one. The British had drawn a circle on the map of West Africa and called it a country. Now I understood what he meant. The girls I met at Royal College [in Lagos] were so different. I could tell a girl’s ethnic- ity even before she opened her mouth. Hausa girls had softer hair because of their Arab heritage. Yoruba girls like me usually had heart-shaped faces and many Igbo girls were fair-skinned; we called them Igbo Yellow. We spoke English, but our native tongues were as different as French and Chinese. So, we mispronounced names and spoke English with different accents. Some Hausa girls could not “fronounce” the isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 59  letter P. Some Yoruba girls might call these girls “Ausas,” and eggs might be “heggs.” Then there was that business with the middle-belters who mixed up their L’s and R’s. (EG, 44–45) Moreover, when Enitan meets one of her neighbors, a Muslim girl named Sheri, they are each faced with both cultural and linguistic translation. Since they come from different ethnic communities and religious backgrounds, Enitan, who is Yoruba, and Sheri, a “half-caste” with Hausa roots, need to understand one another’s cultural and linguistic circumstances before they can become friends: [Sheri] was funny, and she was also rude, but that was probably because she had no home training. She yelled from our gates. “I’ll call you aburo, little sister, from now on. And I’ll beat you at ten-ten, wait and see.” (EG, 16) The woman in the photograph by [Sheri’s] bedside table was her grandmother. “Alha- ja,” Sheri said. “She’s beautiful.” [...] There were many Alhajas in Lagos. This one wasn’t the first woman to go on hajj to Mec- ca, but for women like her, who were powerful within their families and communities, the title became their name. [...] She pressed the picture to her chest and told me of her life in downtown Lagos. She lived in a house opposite her Alhaja’s fabric store. She went to a school where children didn’t care to speak English. After school, she helped Alhaja in her store and knew how to measure cloth. I listened, mindful that my life didn’t extend beyond Ikoyi Park. What would it be like to know downtown as Sheri did, haggle with customers, buy fried yams and roasted plantains from street hawkers, curse Area Boys and taxi cabs who drove too close to the curb. [...] Sheri was a Moslem and she didn’t know much about Christianity. [...] I asked why Moslems didn’t eat pork. “It’s a filthy beast,” she said, scratch- ing her hair. I told her about my own life. (EG, 33–34) As Enitan mentions in several parts of the novel, although Hausa resonates in the streets and markets of Lagos, without translation into other languages it is not always understood by the Yoruba majority or by people from other ethnic communities. That is why, in many cases, people from di- verse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds who live in the city translate their vernacular languages into Pidgin English or English: Our gate man unlocked the gates. His prayer beads hung from his wrist. I realized I must have disturbed his prayer. Soon it would be the Moslem fasting period, Rama- dan. “Sanu, madam,” he said. “Sanu, mallam,” I replied in the only Hausa I knew. (EG, 201) In my first year of marriage, there was a hawker who sat by the vigilante gates of our state. She was one of those Fulani people from the north. We never said a word to each other: I could understand her language no more than she could mine. (EG, 243) This situation is also underlined by another Nigerian writer, Buchi Emecheta, in her well-known novel The Joys of Motherhood: The early market sellers were making their way to the stalls in single file. [Nnu Ego] 60 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  in her haste almost knocked the poor man down [. . .] There followed a loud curse, and an unintelligible outpouring from the mouth of the beggar in his native Hausa language, which few people in Lagos understood. (Emecheta 1994, 9) In the colorful markets of Lagos and other African cities, peoples from varied ethnic and linguistic environments constantly mingle and in- teract. Markets, as Simone puts it, are “the site for incessant performance, for feigned connections and insider deals, for dissimulation of all kinds, for launching impressions and information, rumors and advice” (Simone 2008, 81). Hence, given the mélange of languages and cultures, “[t]he resulting con- fusion about what is really going on breeds its own makeshift interpreters, who pretend to have real skills of discernment and can steer customers to the best price, quality, or hidden deal” (Simone 2008, 81). In the extract below, taken from Everything Good Will Come, Enitan, who was brought up in Ikoyi, one of Lagos’s affluent neighborhoods,5 high- lights the fact that class differences are extremely important in the city and can greatly influence the way in which people talk to one another: Pierre, my present house boy, began to wash the vegetables [. . .] I needed Pierre to place the okras on the chopping board. “Ici,” I said pointing. “Over there, please.” Pierre raised a brow. “Là bas, madame?” “My friend,” I said. “You know exactly what I mean.” It was my fault for attempting to speak French to him. [. . .] “I beg, put am for there,” I said [in Nigerian Pidgin]. [. . .] The general help we called house boys or house girls. [. . .] They helped with daily chores in exchange for food, lodgings, and a stipend. Most were of working age, barely educated. [. . .] (EG, 212) In this particular situation, because Pierre, the house boy, comes from the neighboring Republic of Benin, Enitan tries to translate her orders into French. Nevertheless, in the end, she resorts to a translation into Pidgin En- glish, which, as stated earlier in the article, is the language normally used as the medium of communication among peoples who belong to different ethnic and linguistic groups in Lagos. On other occasions, however, depending on the educational level of the speakers and the specific context in which interaction takes place, when 5 According to Fourchard (2012a, 68), this comes as a direct result of the colonial era, when the city of Lagos was divided into a residential area reserved for Europeans (Ikoyi) and a commer- cial area in which Europeans lived, worked, traded, and interacted with Africans (Lagos Island). In this regard, Lagos, like other contemporary African cities, may be described as what Triulzi (2002, 81) refers to as “the ‘site of memory’ of colonisation, with its divisions (the colonial city was conceived and grew opposite to and separate from the native town), its visible remains (buildings, town plans, statues) and its obligatory ‘synthesis’ of tradition and modernity.” isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 61  people whose ethnicities differ speak with one another, they translate their vernacular languages into English, instead of Pidgin English: We [Rose and Tolani] always spoke in English because she couldn’t speak Yoruba and I couldn’t understand her own language, Ijaw. (SW, 8) Enitan and Tolani, the main protagonists of Everything Good and Swallow respectively, recount their stories in English yet, as Atta herself has pointed out (quoted in Rodríguez Murphy 2012, 107–108), it actually consists of a transcultural form of English (Rodríguez Murphy 2015b, 72), which is inscribed with Nigerian vernacular languages and expressions as well as with Nigerian cultural markers: “[Nigerian readers] tell me they enjoy seeing those kinds of Englishes in my work. They come up to me and say: ‘Oh, you really do know Nigeria, you really do know Lagos very well.’ They enjoy it” (Atta quoted in Rodríguez Murphy 2012, 108). In her work, Atta manages to reflect the different varieties of English used in Lagos. These varieties have come to be defined as NE, and now form part of the wide range of “World Englishes” (see Kachru 1992 and Kachru, Kachru, and Nelson 2006) or “New Englishes” (see Crystal 2003), in reference to local adaptations of the English language which suit specific cultural contexts. This can be seen in the following examples: Yellow Sheri’s afro was so fluffy, it moved as she talked [. . .] She had a spray of rashes and was so fair-skinned. People her color got called “Yellow Pawpaw” or “Yellow Banana” in school. (EG, 18) Peter Mukoro tapped my arm. “I was calling that lady, that yellow lady in the kitchen, but she ignored me. Tell her we need more rice. Please.” (EG, 125–126) I’d heard men say that women like Sheri didn’t age well: they wrinkled early like white women. It was the end of a narration that began when they first called her yellow banana, and not more sensible, I thought. (EG, 206) In diverse passages of Atta’s novels, we may observe that the word “yellow” has come to acquire a specific meaning in NE: “a NE way of describ- ing a fellow Black who is fairly light-skinned” (Igboanusi 2002, 303). Area boys “You won’t believe. We were having a peaceful protest, calling on the government to reconsider our demands, when we noticed a group in the crowd who did not belong to our union. [. . .] They were shouting insults and acting rowdy [. . .]” The people she was talking about had to be area boys. They waited for any protest so they could misbehave. (SW, 133) In this extract taken from Swallow, Atta uses the term “area boy,” a phrase now commonly heard in urban settings, which, in NE, makes reference to a job- 62 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  less young man who participates in criminal acts and is often involved in criminal activities. Such a term is one of many linguistic reflections of what, according to some critics (Fourchard 2012b, Lewis 2009), is now happening in the streets of the city where, for several decades, criminal activity has been on the increase. High-life music As he spoke, I fell asleep dreaming of him, an eleven-year-old boy with khaki shorts holding a rifle made of sticks, dancing to high-life music with his mother and learning how to drink palm-wine from his father’s calabash. (EG, 116-117) “High-life music,” sometimes referred to just as “highlife,” is a very well-known musical genre in the Western regions of Africa,6 “a brand of music style combining jazz and West African elements, popular in Nigeria and other West African countries. In BE, ‘high life’ denotes a style of life that involves spending a lot of money on entertainment, good food, expensive clothes, etc.” (Igboanusi 2002, 138). As Igboanusi remarks, it is important to take into con- sideration that there is a difference between the way the term is used in British English and the meaning it has come to acquire in Nigerian English. Not only “Highlife,” but also other types of transcultural Nigerian mu- sic such as apala or juju music are often mentioned in Atta’s novels. Along with language, another element that permeates daily life in Lagos and many Nigerian cities is music that, as in other countries on the African continent, has been adapted and translated to suit diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds: Through the fence we heard Akanni’s juju music. Sheri stuck her bottom out and began to wriggle. She dived lower and wormed up. (EG, 15) The street was narrow and juju music blared from a battered cassette player perched on a wooden stool. Street hawkers sat around selling boxes of sugar, bathing spong- es, tinned sardines, chewing sticks, cigarettes, and Bazooka Joe gum. (EG, 89) Lagos. The street on which we lived was named after a military governor. Our neigh- borhood smelled of burned beans and rotten egusi leaves. Juju and apala music, disco and reggae music jumped from the windows, and fluorescent blue cylinders lit up the entire place past midnight. (SW, 21) In her writing, Atta includes both NE and NP, and also the vernacu- lar languages with which she was brought up, Yoruba and Hausa. This helps situate the reader in Lagos’s translational spaces, where the sounds of different accents and languages share a common linguistic environment: 6 Although “highlife music” is a popular genre in West Africa, it is necessary to emphasize that each region has managed to maintain its own specificity: “Generally, as the music and its ac- companying highlife dance spread across West Africa, each region maintained its ethnic spec- ificity by composing songs in the local language, and some bands, especially the multinational ones, created compositions in English or pidgin English” (Ajayi-Soyinka 2008, 526). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 63  He pronounced his visions between chants that sounded like the Yoruba words for butterfly, dung beetle, and turkey: labalaba, yimiyimi, tolotolo. (EG, 10) Yoruba people believed in reincarnation. The Yoruba religion had a world for the living and another for spirits. There was a circle of life and other complex concepts regarding deity, royalty, and fate that I couldn’t fully understand. For anyone to understand the Yoruba cosmos was a challenge without the wisdom and guidance of a babalawo [. . .] (SW, 88) On the day of the Moslem festival, Id-el-fitr, I left home for the first time that month to break fast with the Bakares. [. . .] As I drove through their gates, I heard a ram bleat- ing in the back yard of the Bakare’s house. It had been tied to a mango tree for two weeks and would be slain for the Sallah feast. (EG, 245) “How’s your husband?” Mama Gani asked. Her gold tooth flashed. “He’s fine,” I said [. . .] “Still nothing about your father?” “Still nothing,” I said. She clapped her hands. “Insha Allah, nothing will happen to him, after the kindness he’s shown us.” (EG, 245) The multilingualism which is typical in Lagos makes communication based on translation and transculturation inevitable. The following dialogues from Everything Good Will Come and Swallow clearly illustrate this point: We heard a cry from the road. “Pupa! Yellow!” A taxi driver was leaning out of his window. [. . .] “Yes, you with the big yansh,” he shouted. Sheri spread her fingers at him. “Nothing good will come to you!” [. . .] “And you, Dudu,” the taxi driver said. Startled, I looked up. “Yes you with the black face. Where is your own yansh hiding?” I glared at him. “Nothing good will come to you.” He laughed with his tongue hanging out. “What, you’re turning up your nose at me? You’re not that pretty, either of you. Sharrap. Oh, sharrap both of you. You should feel happy that a man noticed you. If you’re not careful, I’ll sex you both.” Sheri and I turned our backs on him. (EG, 135-136) There was a strong smell of simmering palm oil in the flat. Rose was in the kitchen. [. . .] She laughed at my expression. “My sister,” she said. “You think say I no know how to cook or what?” “I’ve just seen Mrs. Durojaiye,” I said, shutting the door. “I saw her too.” “She says you visited her?” She clucked. “The woman done craze [. . .]” (SW, 135) On my way to the bus stop, I passed a group of women selling roasted corn under a breadfruit tree. [. . .] I heard two men discussing women. “Statuesque,” one of them said. “The first one is black and skinny, the second is yellow and fat. I can’t decide. I love them both. You think say I fit marry both of them?” (SW, 236) At the bus stop, an army officer with his stomach protruding over his belt parted the crowd to board a bus. “Single-file line,” he repeated and lifted his horsewhip to warn those who protested. [. . .] “Those who give orders,” I said in a voice loud enough for the others to hear. “Question them. You can’t just obey without thinking.” [. . .] “Oh, I hate people like this,” [a] woman said. “What is wrong with her? Move your 64 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  skinny self, sister.” [. . .] “Sister [. . .]. Move before I move you to one side, oh!” “Abi she’s deaf?” “Maybe she done craze.” “Sister, ‘dress oh!” “Yes, address yourself to the corner and continue to tanda for dat side with your body like bonga fish.” “Tss, keep shut. Don’t start another fight.” (SW, 188–189) Enitan’s and Tolani’s stories take place in a particular context which Atta succeeds in describing in great detail through a specific use of language that evokes, in the mind of the reader, the smells, images and languages which define the city of Lagos, where it is possible to come across interesting con- trasts and a wide range of lifestyles as well as “cultural inscriptions [. . .] seen in mottos and slogans on lorries, cars, pushcarts and other mobile surfaces that may be encountered on the street” (Quayson 2010, 73): Millions lived in Lagos [. . .] Most days it felt like a billion people walking down the labyrinth of petty and main streets: beggar men, secretaries, government contractors (thieves, some would say), Area Boys, street children [. . .] There was a constant din of cars, popping exhaust pipes, and engines, commuters scrambling for canary-yellow buses and private transport vans we called kabukabu and danfo. They bore bible epi- taphs: Lion of Judah, God Saves [. . .] There were countless billboards: Pepsi, Benson and Hedges, Daewoo, Indomie Instant Noodles, Drive Carefully, Fight Child Abuse [. . .] a taxi driver making lurid remarks; people cursing themselves well and good; All right-Sirs, our urban praise singers or borderline beggars, who hailed any person for money. Chief! Professor! Excellency! [. . .] My favourite time was early morning, before people encroached, when the air was cool and all I could hear was the call from Cen- tral Mosque: Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar. (EG, 98–99) In the different examples cited above, one can appreciate to what extent Atta accomplishes a very creative and engaging use of language in her novels. She skillfully manages to transmit the specific characteristics of the cultures that have come to constitute her identity;7 similarly she also succeeds in representing the diverse range of accents that define the city of Lagos as a translational space, where “[a]ccents, code-switching and translation are to be valued for the ways in which they draw attention to the complexities of difference, for the ways in which they interrupt the self-sufficiencies of ‘mono’ cultures” (Simon 2012, 1). 7 “I had an unusual upbringing [. . .] and was surrounded by people from other ethnic groups and religions. Many Nigerian writers I meet feel that they are Yoruba, Igbo or something else, but I actually feel Nigerian and it comes out in my writing. I write about people who don’t have any strong ethnic allegiance or people who are in mixed marriages. [. . .] What I have picked up is language from different parts of the world and it comes out in my writing. I have to be very careful when I am writing in the voices of people who have not had my experiences. My second novel, Swallow, is written in the voice of a Yoruba woman, for instance. I couldn’t use language I had picked up here or in England” (Atta as cited in Collins 2007, 7). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 65  conclusion As several critics (Bandia 2008, Bandia as cited in Rodríguez Murphy 2015a, Gyasi 1999, Mehrez 1992, Inggs and Meintjes 2009) have rightly emphasized, the high rate of multilingualism or “polilingualism” (Bandia 2008, 136–137, Bandia as cited in Rodríguez Murphy 2015a, 149) which characterizes many of the African postcolonies,8 including Nigeria, is of great importance for translation studies in this day and age. Without a doubt, taking into account the ever-growing transculturation and transnationalization of cultures in our present-day global world, multilingualism can be considered an increasingly relevant feature both in literature and society: As a corollary of colonization, the displacement and migration of peoples brought about changes that would challenge the notion of a national language and a homo- geneous culture paving the way for understanding language and culture from the point of view of a transnational experience. According to Bhabha, hybridity, a main characteristic of the postcolonial condition, disrupts the relation between national language and culture, and points to a culture of difference, of displacement of signifi- cation, of translation. (Bandia 2008, 139). In this regard, in many African cities new transcultural and hybrid forms of diverse elements are being created every day. Ranging from trans- cultural types of music (Osumare 2012), such as afrobeat or highlife music, to other transcultural phenomena, including the Azonto dance in Ghana (Jaka- na, 2012) and the Nollywood film industry, which is now a major influence in Lagos’s streets and markets (Haynes 2007, Fuentes-Luque 2017). In the specific case of language, and as we have seen in the examples quoted from Atta’s novels, the prominence of the multilingualism that permeates African cities in general, and the continuous emergence of new hybrid linguistic forms and new semantic associations, which are typical features of the discourse em- ployed in situations involving interaction in urban areas, are, and will contin- ue to be, compelling topics when analyzing issues related to translation and translatability in the twenty-first century. 8 Here “postcolony” (Mbembe 2010) refers to the postcolonial context which, according to Bandia, is part of the colonial space: “Colonial space is ‘the postcolony’ itself, but it is also that space where people with postcolonial experiences, people with postcolonial backgrounds, exist” (Bandia as cited in Rodríguez Murphy 2015a, 149). This “colonial space” should not be understood as a static entity, but rather as characterized by ongoing translation, translocation and transculturation. 66 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  <References> Adedun, Emmanuel and Mojisola Shodipe. 2011. “Yoruba-English bilingualism in cen- tral Lagos—Nigeria.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 23 (2): 121–132. Adegbija, Efurosibina E. 2000. “Language Attitudes in West Africa.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 141 (1): 75–100. . 2004. Multilingualism: A Nigerian Case Study. Trenton/Asmara: Africa World Press. Adekunle, Mobolaji. 1997. “English in Nigeria: Attitudes, Policy and Communicative Realities.” In New Englishes: A West African Perspective, edited by Ayo Bamgbose, Ayo Banjo, and Andrew Thomas, 57–86. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press. 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Triulzi, Alessandro. 2002 “African Cities, Historical Memory and Street Buzz.” In The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, edited by Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, 78–91. London and New York: Routledge. United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). 2014. The State of African Cities 2014. Re-imagining sustainable urban transitions. Nairobi: UN-Habitat. Uzoamaka, Ada. 2008. “Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Creative Writing and Literary Activism.” http://www.iun.edu/~minaua/interviews/interview_ chimamanda_ngozi_adichie.pdf Warren-Rothlin, Andy. 2012. “Arabic script in modern Nigeria.” In Advances in Minority Language Research in Nigeria (vol. I), edited by Roger M. Blench and Stuart McGill, 105–121. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Zabus, Chantal. 2001. “Oil Boom, Oil Doom. Interview by Chantal Zabus.” Interview with Ken Saro-Wiwa, in No Condition is Permanent: Nigerian Writing and the Struggle for Democracy, edited by Holger G. Ehling and Claus-Peter Holste-von Mutius, 1–12. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. First pub- lished 1993 by Rodopi (Amsterdam and New York). . 2007. The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. <Elena Rodríguez Murphy> holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Salamanca (Spain), where she works in the Depart- ment of Translation and Interpreting. Her research interests include Af- rican literatures, translation studies, and linguistics. She has published several articles and book chapters on these areas of study, including “An Interview with Sefi Atta” (published Research in African Literatures, 2012) and “An Interview with Professor Paul Bandia” (Perspectives, 2015). She is the author of Traducción y literatura africana: multilingüis- mo y transculturación en la narrativa nigeriana de expresión inglesa (Granada, 2015). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 69 

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translation

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/translation/article/view/15751

Translation and Asymmetrical Spaces, the Strait of Gibraltar as a Case in Point África Vidal and Juan Jesús Zaro University of Salamanca, Spain [email protected] University of Malaga, Spain [email protected] <Abstract> As a geographical location, defined by Paul Bowles as “the center of the uni- verse,” which separates continents—Europe in the North and Africa in the South—but also world views, cultures, religions, and languages, the Strait of Gibraltar was and remains an authentic translation space. At present, the metaphor of the separation that the Strait evokes incessantly continues to be valid every day, taking into account, for example, events such as the succesive waves of African immigrants who have been arriving on the European coasts for several years “illegally.” In addition to these tensions, there are cities located in the Strait, such as Tangier and Gibraltar, that are by themselves multilingual and multicul- tural places and therefore spaces of translation and conflict that deserve specific sections in this paper. While Tangier, during the second half of the twentieth century was a unique “interzone” characterized by cosmopolitanism and the coexistence of spaces and multiple and confronted texts, Gibraltar is now a territory reinvented as a result of its past, in which hybridity would be a fundamental part of its complex and young identity. introduction Spaces can be real and imagined. Spaces can tell stories and unfold histories. Spaces can be interrupted, appropriated, and transformed through artistic and literary practice. (hooks 1991, 152) Human beings access reality by means of translations, of provisional, rele- vant, interesting or interested versions of realities which are continually being contextualized, rectified, and translated. With the hermeneutic and ethical journeys of each individual, we come to realize that translating is an inevitable means of encountering the other. Not only of encountering the other, but also of coming face to face with immigration and national identities, the global and the local, the problem of marginal groups, difference, or encountering what we sometimes agree with and sometimes detest. And we come across all of these things because when we translate we invade spaces, we occupy alien, far-away spaces which overlap and clash. When we translate, we shape these spaces and walk over the tracks we find on the way; but, on occasion, when we move around in others’ spaces, our aim is also to rewrite them and translate them. Translating is shifting smells, flavors, or passions from places that are 70 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  not ours. Translation is movement, flow, and passage between spaces that are not, and should never be, unidirectional or closed. Our starting-point in this paper is that all cultural experience arises at the crossroads between language, topos, and identity, and that precisely the ex- perience of what is different is produced by the destabilization of these cross- roads (Robinson 1998, 24). Our point of departure, therefore, is that translat- ing, and more specifically translating spaces, is a very political activity which is certainly not neutral—it is the locus where the coexistence of heterogeneity becomes possible, and as a result space must always be under construction (Massey 2011, 9). As an example of this way of understanding translation, we aim to focus on the Strait of Gibraltar, with the cities of Tangier and Gibraltar at opposite sides of its coast. It is a fascinating area because it is the space that joins Africa and Europe, a space of cultural encounter that espouses the concept of hybridity, a hybridity distinct from syncretism, creolization, and métissage, which would suggest that the dynamics of cultural encounters give rise to new, long-lasting identities. On the contrary, these are spaces in which the hybrid is that space in construction just mentioned that problematizes binary oppositions since each is part of the construction of the other. Within this context, translating in these spaces means offering a culturally constructed version away from dualisms. The analysis of this space, which includes the Strait, Tangier, and Gi- braltar, will lead us to reflect on the fact that translating is today the condition of living of many cities with a double or triple history behind them. The study of these spaces will make clear that translation, far from being a benevolent act of hospitality toward a guest from another space, is a relentless transaction (Si- mon 2003, 77), a hybrid act which does not mean a new synthesis but a zone of negotiation, dissent, and exchange, a locus that short-circuits patterns of alterity in order to express the drift of contemporary identities (Simon 1999, 39–40). The Strait of Gibraltar, which is in turn a clash space between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, is the starting point of this essay; it is here that all stories—those that go to the North and those that remain in the South—begin and it is also the narrative constructions on the Strait that make this space such a complicated, multicultural space, because “places without stories are unthinkable” (Price 2004, xxi). In fact, the Strait of Gibraltar and the stories shaping it throughout the centuries make it a space of conflicts, silences, discontinuities, and exclu- sions that turn it into a place which is unstable and multilayered, never fin- ished, never determined, processual, porous (Price 2004, 5). Because although the Strait of Gibraltar is currently a natural border between two continents (Africa and Europe) and two countries (Morocco and Spain), and it is unique isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 71  in that it also has Gibraltar (an overseas territory of the United Kingdom), and Ceuta (a Spanish city with its own statute of autonomous government) on opposite sides of its shores, the truth is that, throughout history, both sides have been united longer than they have been separated. They were governed as one territory by the Romans and also during the eight centuries of Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. In 1492, after the fall of the Kingdom of Granada, the two shores separated forever, a separation that was only occa- sionally interrupted during the time of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco (1913–1956). Since 1956, when the kingdom of Morocco became independent, the two shores have once again become administratively, politically, and cul- turally independent. The waters of the Strait are, therefore, a palimpsest accumulating well-known stories and also, unfortunately, other stories we will never hear about because they were lost forever with the bodies that have sunk to the depths. The waters of the Strait are “a layered text of narratives of belonging and exclusion, always negotiated, always struggled over, never finished” (Price 2004, 7); they are the intermediate, imaginary zone between Africa and the West that every culture needs: “Somewhere every culture has an imaginary zone for what it excludes, and it is that zone we must try to remember today” (Cixous and Clément 1986, 6). And that imaginary zone is the line that joins the two “dual cities” (Simon 2012, 3 and following pages) we shall go on to examine in detail, Tangier and Gibraltar. Currently, communication between both sides of the Strait is in the form of fast or traditional ferries between Tarifa, Algeciras, and Gibraltar on the European side and Ceuta and Tangier in Africa. Crossings take between thirty and ninety minutes. Sometimes crossings cannot be made due to storms or strong winds, especially in winter. One of these ferries is called “the whale,” a carrier of unknown treasures which, with a curious symbolism reminding us of Captain Ahab’s quest to hunt down Moby Dick, is pursued by an old fish- erman from Tangier in the film Moroccan Chronicles (1999) by the Moroccan director Moumen Smihi. The journey between the two shores is made legally by almost three million people a year and illegally by more than ten thousand, who use their own means to get across in “pateras.” The Strait of Gibraltar is the only gateway into and out of the Mediterranean for all marine traffic. It is estimated that more than 82,000 ships cross it every year. As Alfred Chester points out in his short story “Glory Hole”: “The hills of Spain are there like civilized laughter across the narrow water; two ferries a day, or six, or ten— who can remember anymore? Spain is on the other, the inaccessible side of Styx” (Chester 1990, 221). The possibility of building a bridge or a tunnel between both shores 72 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  has often been discussed. From the technical viewpoint, the tunnel option would appear to be the most feasible, even though the depth of the water of the Strait would make it the deepest (and most expensive) tunnel in Europe. However, the existence of a tunnel or bridge across the Strait would be a huge improvement in traffic and mobility between both sides, something which, from a symbolic and political point of view, would not seem to be totally acceptable at this moment in time: the idea of a tunnel or bridge, ultimately a metaphor of union and communication between the two shores, clashes with other well-known metaphorical narratives about the Strait which focus more on the idea of battle and separation. One is the familiar mythological tale of the “columns,” identified fairly vaguely as the Rock of Gibraltar and Mount Hacho in Ceuta, which Hercules separated to open up a passage for the Atlantic Ocean. Another is the myth surrounding Julian, Count of Ceu- ta, a Visigoth governor of the city who is alleged to have facilitated entry of Muslim troops into the Spanish mainland in 711, enabling them to put an end to the Visigothic rule established after the fall of the Roman Empire. This act changed the history of Spain forever. It is said that Julian did this out of revenge after his daughter was raped in Toledo by Rodrigo, the last Visigothic king of Spain who would finally be defeated and killed by the invading army in the Battle of Guadalete. In this sense, the fact that it was a question of honor that caused the Muslim invasion of Spain has led to numerous interpre- tations. In his novel Reivindicación del conde don Julián (1970), Juan Goytisolo identifies with the main character more than one thousand years later in his desire to put an end to the essential, homogeneous, and nationalist–Catholic Spain of the Franco regime, in the same way that the Visigothic count had indirectly helped to put an end to Christian Spain and, ultimately, promote miscegenation and the fusion of races. We must not forget that the last sig- nificant act of war in the Strait took place in August 1936, when around eight thousand troops from the rebel Spanish army in Morocco were transported by sea to the Spanish mainland to join the rebel troops once the Civil War started. The history of the Strait, therefore, has been, and continues to be, a history of conflict involving the clash of two different civilizations, established on the two continents located on either side of this stretch of water, which also economically represent two very different zones—Europe on the north side and Africa on the south, which are profoundly asymmetrical in economic terms. It is, in this sense, perhaps the most unequal border in the whole world, and crossing the Strait was, and perhaps still is, travelling to another reality. This is how it was described by the Spanish traveller and spy Ali Bey when he said in 1814, on crossing from Tarifa to Tangier, that whoever crosses the isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 73  Strait goes “en tan breve espacio de tiempo a un mundo absolutamente nuevo, y sin la más remota semejanza con el que se acaba de dejar, se halla realmente como transportado a otro planeta” (Bey 2009, 147). Nowadays, the most vis- ible aspect of this conflict is that of illegal migrants, who, as we have pointed out above, use the Strait to enter Europe, and who in recent years consist mainly of people from sub-Saharan countries. This is why this intermediate space that is the sea is the space in movement that, although in the middle, is the space of the beginning and the end, the space of the in-between which necessarily has to be crossed by these fragmented lives. It is the only space in which, unfortunately, they will be full citizens. However, there are other conflicts in the area, including claims from other countries for territories they consider to have been illegally occupied for centuries. This is the case, above all, of Spain and Gibraltar, but also of Morocco and Ceuta. Exile, or immigration for political or ideological reasons, is also linked to the history of the Strait of Gibraltar. Many historical diasporas have traversed it, including, for example, the Jews (around 80,000) or the Moriscos (around 300,000) when they were expelled from Spain in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively, who abandoned Spain and crossed over to Africa. Some Spanish Jews settled in towns in the north of Morocco, where they lived for centuries with a largely Muslim population. Many migrated to Israel shortly after the new state was founded and now form part of the Sephardic community, one of the most visible and well-known communities of that country. The Spanish Moriscos who took refuge in Morocco, on the other hand, contributed their andalusí character to Moroccan culture and it is now one of its signs of identity. And not only that, but the space we will examine below is, as well as being a multicultural space, or perhaps precisely for that reason, a multilingual space. Four languages live side by side on both shores: Spanish on the Spanish side in Ceuta, in Gibraltar, and to a much lesser degree throughout North Morocco; English in Gibraltar; and French and Arabic in Morocco. The two most used languages, Spanish and Arabic, correspond to diatopical dialect forms, Andalusian Spanish in Spain and colloquial Moroccan Arabic or dāriŷa on the Moroccan coast of the Strait. The Andalusian variant is also used by the citizens of Gibraltar, which immediately makes them Andalusians for the rest of Spain when they speak Spanish, although they do in fact speak a hybrid variety called “llanito,” a kind of small-scale European Spanglish. Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand, has a strong Berber substrate and influences from French and Spanish and is an identitarian dialect, far removed from modern standard Arabic and unintelligible to many Moroccans. Due to their own particular history, a number of coastal towns on the Strait, such as Tangier 74 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  for example, can be considered to be multilingual spaces where it is possible to be understood in three or four languages. Others, like Gibraltar, are clearly bilingual. Ceuta is similarly an interesting example, as it is also becoming a bilingual city due to the increasing Muslim population, to which we must likewise add a significant Hindu community which is completely bilingual in Spanish and Hindi. These multicultural and multilingual spaces will allow us to better understand the Strait’s coastal “dual cities”—to use Sherry Simon’s terminol- ogy—which we will examine below. tangier, a dual city The place [Tangier] was counterfeit, a waiting room between connections, a transition from one way of being to another… (Bowles 2006, 382). Tangier is not part of Morocco. It’s international. Paul Bowles interviewed by Abdelhak Elghandor (Elghandor 1994, 16) From the end of the 1940s until Moroccan independence in 1956, the city of Tangier, located to the extreme west of the African coast of the Strait of Gi- braltar, had a unique political status, that of being an “international zone.” But it was, at the same time, a multilayered space where many languages existed, and still do exist, at the same time, a space where translation was never a mere language transfer but a practice of writing that took place at the crossroads (Simon 2012, 8). Perched on the northern tip of Morocco with its eyes trained across the Strait of Gibraltar toward Spain, “Tangier certainly has long been at the crossroads, a point of intersection of various civilizations, notably African/ Islamic and European Christian” (Hibbard 2009, 1). This is why Tangier is a space that has always generated multiple discourses; it is a city that has always “spoken,” because it is a site of representation. However, the discourses it has generated have been different translations of reality, rewritings of a space that some, Westerners, exoticized, and others, Moroccans, understood differently, as a way of “writing back to the West” (Elkouche 2008, 1). Tangier was, on the one hand, a space of rich British expatriates and, on the other, the receiving space of many expatriates from Paris during the years between the World wars, artists and writers who sought in the “interna- tionalized” Tangier what the Lost Generation had searched for in the French capital a few years earlier, a space open to less conventional ways of life. The era during which both artists and writers lived in Tangier was especially rele- isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 75  1. View of Tangier vant with regard to political and social change, because during these years the Maghreb moved on from being an area under European colonial control to one of postcolonial independence Halfway between nations, cultures, and languages, Tangier became an “interzone,” to use Burroughs’s word—that is, “a place of intermediacy and ambiguity, a place that remains outside standard narratives of nationhood and identity. It proved to be an expedient location for [writers] to sort out the multiple crises of identity, desire, and loss that motivated their writing” (Mul- lins 2002, 3). In this sense, we must not forget that, as Tangier’s legal situation allowed moral permissiveness with regard, for example, to sexuality and drugs 76 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain and was considered to be a mental illness in the United States, it was logical that this unorthodox space should attract many gay artists of the time, from Jean Genet to Robert Rauschenberg, William Burroughs and Paul Bowles (who lived in Tangier for over fifty years, from 1947 until his death in 1999). To these names we could add a long list of intellectuals who spent time in Tangier, such as Gertrude Stein, Francis Bacon, Djuna Barnes, Brion Gysin, Samuel Beckett, Alfred Chester, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Aaron Copeland, Juan Goytisolo, Ian Fleming, and many others. Because Tangier was the promised land of the bohemian Diaspora and refuge of many rich, eccentric Westerners (see Pulsifer 1992 and Walonen 2011) who sought ways of life that constituted an alternative to the orthodoxy of their countries of origin. This is something that, in spite of everything, the city is still proud of and still attracts a lot of tourists. A recent tourist brochure, Tangier in Morocco, published by the Mo- roccan National Tourist Office, states: “The streets of Tangier are teeming with artistic and literary memories. Countless painters, novelists, playwrights, poets, photographers, actors, filmmakers and couturiers from every nation under the sun have stayed here a while or made their home here, inspired and bewitched by the city’s magic” (Moroccan National Tourist Office n.d., 12). Truman Capote, in a 1950 article entitled “Tangier” (Capote 2013), reminds us of the radical heterogeneity and idiosyncrasies arising from this huge amount of freedom. Tangier was the space on the border between Eu- rope and Africa, between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity; a place where nationalities, cultures, and languages mixed to the point of promiscuity. In fact, in Morocco translation is still a means of survival today. Although the official language is Arabic, the economic and cultural life of the country has always been carried out in several languages. The educated classes speak and write standard Arabic and French, while the majority of people use varieties of Moroccan Arabic or Berber variants. In the north many people speak Span- ish and also English, particularly those involved in tourism and commerce. Therefore, “no single Moroccan language can universally speak to and for all Moroccans; rather, Moroccans must daily translate among themselves, or in the formation of literary narratives, both written and oral” (Sabil 2005, 176). It is no surprise, then, that this open locus, especially that of Tangier when it was an International Zone, should have been so attractive a place for writers whose lives and works were considered unorthodox in Western circles. Tangier was a space where for many years national structures and rigid codes of ethics were deconstructed and where confusion of all binary logic was favored. However, the spaces inhabited by Westerners in Tangier were gen- isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 77  erally separate from those inhabited by Moroccans. We see this in the case of Bowles, whose descriptions of the spaces his characters are situated in speak of class, race, or cultural differences. Moreover, Bowles describes in many of his translations the horror of not having a place in space, in For Bread Alone by Choukri (2010), for example. The above-mentioned rich British expats created a series of separate places that reflected English ways of life, places of worship like St. Andrew’s Church, tea parties and lavish parties with film stars (Finlayson 1992, 271 and following pages), although it is also true that the density of the population and the physical and social distribution of the city led to inevitable contact between the communities. The center of Tangier had been designed initially for around 12,000 people and it remained un- changed when population numbers increased. So, the streets were always full of people, cultures, and religions as reflected in the pages of Burroughs’s The Naked Lunch or Bowles’s Let it Come Down. The narrow streets in the center showed multiplicity and the two main axes of the town, the Boulevard Pas- teur running from east to west, and the Rue du Statut running from north to south, crossed at Place de France, “a bustling roundabout ringed by popular cafés frequented by the diplomatic community and Moroccan nationalists” (Edwards 2005, 130). In Tangier, the European powers were initially the producers of spac- es, the power groups who designed, distributed, named, and built spaces and who also established the rules for the use of these spaces. This divided spatial- ity is typical, as Fanon reminds us in The Wretched of the Earth, of colonizing processes: “The first thing which the native learns is to stay in his place, and not to go beyond certain limits” (Fanon 1968, 52). The space of colonial order is always one of luxury, cleanliness, and entertainment; the other formed of wretched places, as we see, for example, in Choukri’s For Bread Alone. Without a doubt, for Bowles and many other writers and artists, Tang- ier was a “third space,” in Edward Soja’s sense of the term—that is, “the space where all places are capable of being seen from every angle, each standing clear; but also a secret and conjectured object, filled with illusions and allu- sions, a space that is common to all of us yet never able to be completely seen and understood” (Soja 1996, 56). Perhaps this is why Bowles never considered himself to be Tangierian but, rather, a vocational stateless person. In March 1992 he said in an interview, “I am not American and I am not Moroccan. I’m a visitor on earth. You have to be Muslim to really be accepted in Morocco, to be a part of it” (Choukri 2008, 304). Bowles was also against the Westernization of Moroccan spaces after independence—for him geography was a way of reading identity. Spaces were texts and the scenery was the reflection of his characters’ inner self, some- 78 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  thing the critics have discussed in detail (Pounds 1985; Olson 1986; Hassan 1995; Caponi 1998; Patteson 2003; Walonen 2011) and that he himself recognized in some of his travel writings such as Their Heads are Green and their Hands are Blue (1963), and in his novels and several interviews. Characters like Thami in Let it Come Down identify with the place and the space, but when they are taken somewhere else like New York many of his characters feel out of place. It was in his translations of oral texts by Moroccan narrators (Ahmed Yacoubi, Layachi Larbi, Abdeslam Boulaich, and Mohammed Mrabet, among others), howev- er, that he rewrites in that contact zone that is no good to imperialism, like many other postcolonial translations, but comes from within the Other(‘s) space, “involves a much looser notion of the text, interacts intensely with local forms of narrative and is a revigorating and positive global influence [. . .] a con- tinuous life-giving and creative process” (Simon and St-Pierre 2000, 10). After October 1956, when Tangier was no longer an International Zone (in 1961 it became part of Morocco), people came to suspect that “the good times, the high-living years for foreign residents with substantial assets in Tangi- er, might be ending” (Finlayson 1992, 75). In 1957 the British Post Office closed its offices; the Spanish Post Office did the same in 1958. In addition, many banks and companies closed and transferred their branches to other countries. The lux- ury goods shops on Boulevard Pascal were replaced by shops selling local crafts and clothing. But one of the most revealing details of the change was “a new edict banning the sale of liquor within a certain distance from a mosque” and another determining the places that stayed and those that did not: “There were a great many mosques, and a great many Spanish, Jewish and other foreign-owned bars. The mosques stayed open, the bars closed” (Finlayson 1992, 75). That is, the places that Lefebvre calls “representations of space” (1991, 33) closed, that experience of space referring to hegemonic ideological representations, to space constructed by professionals and technocrats (engineers, architects, urban plan- ners, geographers, etc.), a space where ideology, power, and knowledge are in- variably linked to representation. Besides, when it was no longer an International Zone, many Moroccans living in the country moved to Tangier, which changed the city space. The clean, luxurious Tangier of today is Muslim, the best areas be- long to citizens of countries in the Persian Gulf and to Moroccans who have made their fortune from drug-trafficking between Africa and Europe, traffick- ing in which the city is a crucial point (Walonen 2011, 127). The city and its population have evolved and so has their interaction with the first world, to such an extent that the essentialist vision of the Muslim population, which to- day reproaches the former foreign residents of the Tangier of the International Zone, might have changed. The foreign residents and tourists currently in isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 79  Tangier (many attracted by the literary past of the city) still mix with the local people, but probably in a different way to that of the foreign community of the Tangier of the 1940s and ‘50s. Despite this, it is curious that in the tourist brochure mentioned above, Tangier in Morocco, Tangier’s special character, compared to that of other Moroccan cities, is highlighted in the following words: “Today, the city still has its cosmopolitan side, with a wide variety of outside influences contributing to its cultural diversity and unique personali- ty” (Moroccan National Tourist Office n.d., 7). Or with these other puzzling words: “There is something altogether unique about the town, something impalpable, indefinable –a sense of freedom that hangs in the air like the scent of orange blossom” (Moroccan National Tourist Office n.d., 5). Tangier, with its linguistic and cultural contrasts and the social and classist inequalities reflected in its spaces, is therefore the living example that spaces are socially created entities, political constructions that reveal prejudices, asymmetries, and inequalities. But, in addition, the places are “practiced” spaces (De Certeau 1988, 117). De Certeau compares spatiality, place and narrative, and, for him, the narrative ends up “transforming places into spaces or spaces into places” (De Certeau 1988, 130). The writer and the translator take the reader by the hand when they describe an apartment, a street, a country, or a border. gibraltar, a translational city [...] dual cities have their origins in conquest, when a stronger language group comes to occupy or impinge upon a pre-existent language which may itself have displaced another before it. (Simon 2012, 3) The city of Gibraltar (Jebel-al-Tariq, or “the mountain of Tarik,” an Arab leader who led the Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 ce), resting on its Rock, has been, as we all know, a British colony since the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1704 Gibraltar was occupied by an English fleet involved in the War of the Spanish Succession and included in the Spanish territories ruled by the Archduke Charles of Austria, one of the pretenders to the throne (the other was Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis xvi of France and legitimate heir according to the last will and testament of the last king of Spain, Charles II, who had died in 1700). However, the detachment that expelled the citizens from the city—they founded the town of San Roque, whence an irate stone lion stills looks threateningly over at the Rock—never left, not even when the war ended and Philip V was proclaimed King. One of the conditions of the famous Treaty of Utrecht (1713) was that Spain should recognize British sovereignty over the Rock of Gibraltar, the city, and the 80 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  port. The Treaty, which has never been revoked and is, therefore, still in force today, continues to be invoked by Spain today on the grounds that, among other things, the land occupied by Gibraltar Airport is in a neutral area that had never been signed over to the British and, therefore, was occupied illegally during the First World War. More than three hundred years of British sovereignty have made Gi- braltar a unique enclave. It is located on the southern tip of Andalusia and its only land border is with Spain. This Lilliputian territory is 5.8 square kilo- meters in size and has a population of almost 30,000 inhabitants, making it one of the most densely populated places in the world (4,290 inhabitants per square kilometer). As the original Spanish population of the city abandoned the Rock after the British occupation, it soon filled with immigrants from several places—Genoa, Portugal, India, Malta, Morocco, and Spain, among others—and also had a significant Jewish community, who had migrated to Gibraltar to “serve” the British troops and their families. As we have men- tioned above, the city is also practically bilingual, English is spoken, as well as “llanito” or a kind of Spanglish spoken on the Rock which the locals call “suichito” or “switch,” a hybrid language where code switching is constantly used. Many Gibraltarians also speak fluent Spanish with a marked Andalusian accent. Relations with Spain have never been easy. In Spain, whatever the ideology of the ruling party, Gibraltar is always considered to be a colonized territory which should be returned to Spain as it was taken by force in an act of war. Today most Gibraltarians think that the Treaty of Utrecht is obsolete, that history has shown that Gibraltar is a territory demographically, linguis- tically, and culturally different from Spain, and that the current autonomous status of the territory, approved by all its inhabitants, is proof of its democrat- ic nature. Although the United Nations declared in 1964 that Gibraltar should be “decolonized,” under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht it could never be an independent country—it could only be British or, should the latter abandon the territory, Spanish. At that time, the United Kingdom refused to enter into any kind of negotiation with Franco’s Spain, and the Spanish gov- ernment, in retaliation, closed the land border between Gibraltar and Spain, leaving Gibraltar isolated via land from 1969 to 1985. Recent attempts to set up negotiations to try to reach an agreement of British and Spanish cosovereignty of the territory have met the refusal of almost all the Gibraltarians. In any case, there is still a problem between Gibraltar and Spain which is visible, especially at the moment, in the “queues” of cars and people that have been forming at the Spanish border crossing every summer since 2013, when the Spanish government decided to periodically tighten the con- isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 81  trol of vehicles and persons, which only adds to the active conflicts in the area of the Strait. In this case, however, it is a political conflict more than a social or cultural one, but it affects the daily life of people who live in the area and have become hostages, in a way, of decisions taken very far away for reasons they often do not understand. This “distance” from the centers of power can be seen in the references to the population of Gibraltar in the media. Therefore, while the Spanish government said these queues were “necessary” to stop smuggling, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, Fabián Picardo, denounced the “passivity” of the British government in this affair for fear of worsening relations with Spain (Ayllón 2014), and the Spanish workers on the Rock expressed their disagreement with the measures put into place by their own government (Romaguera 2013). This is, therefore, a deep-rooted problem with no easy solution. Gi- braltar is a prosperous place with a high standard of living—it is, in fact, the second most prosperous territory in the European Union, which is in stark contrast with the Spanish region surrounding it. The Campo de Gibraltar is a depressed area with a high level of unemployment and is still far behind other areas of Spain. But, this prosperity is due, above all, to the fact that it is a tax haven where companies and financial institutions pay hardly any taxes, which would explain the huge amount of investment and increasing number of com- panies registered on the Rock. From Spain it is argued that this prosperity is largely due to fiscal rules and regulations, which are very different to those in Spain and prevent investment, for example, reaching Campo de Gibraltar, the area around the Rock. The Gibraltarian stereotype as seen from Spain is that of a smuggler on a motorbike who takes advantage of his situation as an islander with respect to Spain to obtain economic benefits, but who, deep down, is just an Andalusian in denial. From the Gibraltarian point of view, Spaniards are considered to be provincial individuals anchored in the past who have never been able to understand that Gibraltar is not a part of Spain, that its population is more heterogeneous in comparison to that of Spain, and that it is so prosperous. Whatever the case, we cannot forget that currently more than seven thousand Spaniards work in Gibraltar and that many Gibral- tarians have invested large amounts of money in properties in Spain. This “insularity” or impermeability of Gibraltar, even though it is not an island as such, has led to it being a place of stability and freedom in contrast with the turbulent history of its neighbor. During the nineteenth century, the Rock was a refuge for Spanish exiles who had to abandon their country for political reasons and were making their way to the United Kingdom or other European countries. During the twentieth century the Rock, as a British terri- tory, maintained standards of religious freedom and tolerance which were un- 82 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  2. Views of Gibraltar known in Spain, especially during the Franco regime, and this would make it a more advanced society in all aspects. We cannot forget the famous wedding of John Lennon and Yoko Ono which took place in Gibraltar in 1969, a media event highlighting the “modernity” of the Rock, which was much closer to the “swinging London” of the 1960s than backward, conservative Spain. In any case, the closure of the border crossing in 1969 made communication between Gibraltar and Spain almost nonexistent. Today, Gibraltar (or “Gib” as it is known in Britain) could be any town on the southern coast of England, or perhaps the Channel Islands. There are typical references found in British territories, red telephone box- es, “bobbies” and the Union Jack, which continues to fly in many places. The supermarkets and shops belong to British groups—Marks and Spencer, BHS, Boots, Morrisons, and so on—and the pubs are authentic. However, this translation of a southern space to a northern one does not include all the codes or elements: in Gibraltar people drive on the right, as they do in Spain; the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the most “British” space in the whole area, is built in an oriental style with horseshoe arches over doors and windows; at the entrance to the city the Muslim fort, which could never be seen in an English town, is still standing strong; and the Andalusian accent of the inhabitants when they speak Spanish or “llanito” assimilates them to their neighbors in Campo de Gibraltar. There are two theories regarding the origin of the term “llanito,” both related to the clash between languages. Ac- cording to one theory, “llanito” was coined in Gibraltar in the early twentieth century by Andalusian workers who would hear Gibraltar mothers call their “yanitos” (the Spanish diminutive for Johnny—Johnnito) and began to call all Gibraltarians “yanis” (Johnnys), which led in turn to the current “llanitos” isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 83  or “yanitos.” The other theory is that the word derives from the large num- ber of “Giovannis,” or “Giannis” as they are familiarly called, in the large Genoese colony which settled on the Rock. The simultaneous use of Spanish and English can often be very amusing. Main Street, the commercial artery of the city, is also called the “Calle Reá,” and Gibraltar is “Gibrartá,” both in “llanito” and Andalusian Spanish. Manuel Leguineche (2002, 2) mentions his surprise when a Gibraltarian bobby replied “Zí, zeñó” to the question “Do you speak English?” This way of speaking is only the reflection of the coexistence of asym- metrical spaces where at least two cultures live side by side or occasionally clash. It is a way of speaking that, as Susan Bassnett states (in Simon 2012, n.p.), shows the fundamental importance of languages shaping cultural, geo- graphical, and historical space. In effect, the particular language used in Gi- braltar demonstrates the power of language to mark the urban landscape, to understand it, and how important it is to listen to cities (Simon 2012, xix and 1), especially these types of cities which are contact zones (see Pratt 1992), noisy streets of polyglot neighborhoods. These are very clear examples that language is an area of negotiation, a space where connections are created through rewritings and where ideas circulate, converge, and clash in the translational city, which imposes its own patterns of interaction and these emerge out of their spaces and their own narrative pasts (Simon 2012, 2). But in Gibraltar, as in Tangier or the Strait, languages share the same terrain but rarely participate in a peaceful and egali- tarian conversation. And there is some, albeit not a great deal of, Gibraltarian literature, written mostly in Spanish by authors like Héctor Licudi, Alberto Pizzarello, or Elio Cruz (see Yborra Aznar 2005). More recent writers, how- ever, write in both languages (Mario Arroyo, for example) or only in English. One of the most interesting current Gibraltarian authors is Trino Cruz, a poet who writes in Spanish, translates Moroccan poetry from Arabic, and defends the multiethnic and multilinguistic character of the territory. These and many other authors allow us to see that translation (or self-translation, depending on your point of view) “can no longer be configured only as a link between a familiar and a foreign culture, between a local original and a distant destination, between one monolingual community and another. [. . .] The Other remains within a constant earshot. The shared understandings of this coexistence change the meaning of translation from a gesture of benevolence to a process through which a common civility is negotiated” (Simon 2012, 7). As we have seen, given its history and the composition of its popu- lation, Gibraltar is now also a hybrid or “dual” city whose complex, young identity is based, above all, on the wishes of its population to maintain their 84 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  status as a British overseas territory and not be absorbed in any way by Spain in the long term. It is clear that the friendly relations between the two parties at the beginning of the twentieth century collapsed, probably permanently, when the border crossing was closed from 1969 until 1985, isolating the two peoples and provoking in Gibraltar both anti-Spanish feelings and a lack of proficiency in the Spanish language. Even so, certain data (Grocott and Stock- ey 2012, 125) show that the inhabitants of the Rock consider themselves to be more and more Gibraltarian and less British, although it is not clear what this feeling, whose signs of identity are still fairly vague yet real, consists of, the city now celebrates a “National Day” on September 10 to commemorate the date of the first referendum, held in 1967, to reject annexation to Spain; the red and white flag of Gibraltar can be seen more and more often flying over the territory, “llanito” is sometimes used in the local press instead of English, and the project to publish the first local paper Calpe Press is already under way. This nationalist feeling would only assimilate Gibraltar to tiny European nations such as Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and San Marino, which are historically much older. If this “national” sentiment were to become consol- idated, which does not appear to have happened yet, Gibraltar would be an example of a relatively new “heterogeneous,” hybrid, multilingual communi- ty, seeking to define its own identity, composed in turn of hybrid elements from different cultures. concluding remarks Living in different places means growing separate selves, learning other languages and ways of being, and looking at the world from different vantage points, without ever quite belonging to any of them. The state of being of a foreigner wherever I am has become second nature to me. It is a condition that sharpens the eye and the ear, that keeps awareness on its toes, and that takes nothing for granted. It means also that whatever I am, the ghosts of other places and other lives are hovering close. (Reid 1994, 3) The linguistic forms used in a space like Gibraltar cause us to reflect on how diffi- cult it can become to find or create equivalent idioms for local, nonstandard lan- guages, but in general everything mentioned above in relation to other spaces such as Tangier and the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar confirms that “the translator’s dilemmas are not to be found in dictionaries, but rather in an understanding of the way language is tied to local realities [. . .] and to changing identities” (Simon 1995, 10). This is why nowadays, in a global and transcultural society, translation is a transversal and interdisciplinary activity that has much to do with geography, while only a few years ago they were both considered to be fields of research far removed from each other (Bassnett 2011; Vidal 2012). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 85  By examining in this essay spaces such as Tangier and Gibraltar, cit- ies of ethnicities with shifting centers and peripheries, sites of transitory events, movements, memories, open spirals of heterogeneous collaborations and con- taminations, heterotopic, multiform and diasporic realities, spaces which un- dermine the presumed purity of thought (Chambers 1994, 93 and 95), we hope to have shown the need to access both space and translation in a different way, to have questioned what we understand today by space and why translation has forced us to very seriously analyze how ideology and power interfere in the creation of a space and a translation, what cultural contact points we have seen between peoples whose spaces become joined or clash in translations of those texts that define them in this way; what role is played by cartography of the plac- es understood as texts; and how this concept of knowledge is instrumentalized in asymmetrical and multidirectional contexts. From this point of view, translating in the hybrid spaces studied here, spaces like the Strait, Tangier, or Gibraltar that are sites of displacement, in- terference, and constructed and disputed historicities (Clifford 1997, 25), has shown itself to be a border experience able to produce powerful political vi- sion, the subversion of binarism which makes us wonder how translatable these places/metaphors of crossing are, how like and unlike diasporas. What does it take to define and defend a homeland? What are the political stakes in claiming a “home” in hooks’s (1991) sense? How are ethnic communities’ “insides” and “outsides” sustained, policed, subverted, crossed by historical subjects with different degrees of power (Clifford 1997, 36)? Considered from this state of things, translation is a foundational activity, an activity of cultural creation that takes into account the unstable and liminal identities it trans- forms and that partakes of the incompleteness of cultural belonging in spaces informed by estrangement, diversity, plurality, and already saturated with a logic of translation (Simon 1996, 152, 165, and 166) and dual cities may not serve only to impose an alien and oppressive presence but also to be part of a process of exchange which involves “an active chain of response, a vivifying interaction” (Simon and St-Pierre 2000, 10). This article is part of the research projects entitled “Violencia simbólica y traducción: retos en la representación de identidades fragmentadas en la sociedad global” (Symbolic violence and translation: challenges in the representation of fragmented identities within the global society) and “La traducción de clásicos en su aspecto editorial: una visión transatlántica” (Publishing strategies in the translation of classics: a transatlantic approach) (respectively FFI2015-66516-P and FFI2013-41743-P; MINECO/FEDER, UE) financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. 86 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  <References> Ayllón, Luis. 2014. “Picardo enfurece contra Cameron.” http://abcblogs.abc. es/luis-ayllon/public/post/picardo-enfurece-contra-cameron-16073. asp/ Bassnett, Susan. 2011. “From Cultural Turn to Transnational Turn, A Transnational Journey.” In Literature, Geography, Translation. Studies in World Writing, edited by Cecilia Alvstad, Stefan Helgesson, and David Watson, 67–80. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bey, Ali. 2009. Viajes por Marruecos. Edited by Salvador Barberá Fraguas. Barcelona: Zeta. First published 1814. First English translation, revised and completed by Mrs. Helen Maria Williams, published 1816 under the title Travels of Ali Bey in Morocco, Tripoli, Cyprus, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Turkey between the Years 1803 and 1807 in Two Volumes for Longman, Rees, Orme, and Brown (Paternoster-Row, London). Bowles, Paul. 2006. Let It Come Down. New York: Harper. First published 1952 by Random House (New York). Caponi, Gena Dagel. 1998. Paul Bowles. New York: Twayne Publishers. Capote, Truman. 2013. “Tangier.” In Portraits and Observations, 63–72. New York: Random House. Chambers, Ian. 1994. Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London and New York: Routledge. Chester, Alfred. 1990. “Glory Hole: Nickel Views of the Infidel in Tangiers.” In Head of a Sad Angel. Stories 1953–1966, edited by Edward Field, 217–231. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press. Choukri, Mohamed. 2008. Paul Bowles, Jean Genet, Tennessee Williams in Tangier. London: Telegram. . 2010. For Bread Alone. Translated and introduced by Paul Bowles. London: Telegram. First published 1973 by Peter Owen (London). Clifford, James. 1997. Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Cixous, Hélène, and Catherine Clément. 1986. The Newly Born Woman. Trans- lated by Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. First published 1975 under title La Jeune née by Union Générale d’Éditions (Paris). De Certeau, Michel. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven F. Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press. Edwards, Brian T. 2005. Morocco Bound. Disorienting America’s Maghreb, from Casablanca to the Marrakech Express. Durham and London: Duke Univer- sity Press. Elghandor, Abdelhak. 1994. “Atavism and Civilization, An Interview with Paul Bowles.” Ariel. A Review of International English Literature 25 (2): 7–30. Elkouche, Mohamed. 2008. “Space and Place, Tangier Speaks.” http://interac- tive-worlds.blogspot.com.es/2008/03/tangier-speaks.html. Fanon, Frantz. 1968. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press. Finlayson, Iain. 1992. Tangier. City of Dream. London: Harper Collins. Goytisolo, Juan. 1970. Reivindicación del conde don Julián. Barcelona: Seix Barral. Grocott, Chris, and Gareth Stockey. 2012. Gibraltar. A Modern Story. Cardiff: Univer- sity of Wales Press. Hassan, Ihab. 1995. “Paul Bowles, The Pilgrim as Prey.” In Rumors of Change, Essays of Five Decades, 3–16. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 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Romaguera, Cándido. 2013. “Los trabajadores españoles en Gibraltar, en contra del dictamen sobre los controles.” http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2013/11/15/ andalucia/1384519777_182467.html. Sabil, Abdelkader. 2005. Translating/Rewriting the Other. A Study of Paul Bowles’ Translation of Moroccan Texts by Choukri, Mrabet and Charhadi. Saarbrück- en: Lambert Academic Publishing. Simon, Sherry ed. 1995. Culture in Transit. Translating the Literature of Quebec. Mon- tréal: Véhicule Press. . 1996. Gender in Translation. Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission. London and New York: Routledge. . 2003. “Crossing Town, Montreal in Translation.” In Bilingual Games. Some Lit- erary Investigations, edited by Doris Sommer, 77–86. New York: Palgrave. . 2012. Cities in Translation. Intersections of Language and Memory. London and New York: Routledge. Simon, Sherry, and Paul St-Pierre, eds. 2000. Changing the Terms. Translating in the Postcolonial Era. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Smihi, Moumen, dir. 1999. Moroccan Chronicles/Chroniques Marocaines/Waqa’i maghribia. 35mm, 70 minutes. Distributed by POM films (Montreuil). Soja, Edward W. 1996. Thirdspace. Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell. Vidal, M. Carmen África. 2012. La traducción y los espacios: viajes, mapas, fronteras. Granada: Comares. Walonen, Michael K. 2011. Writing Tangier in the Postcolonial Transition. Space and Power in Expatriate and North African Literature. Surrey: Ashgate. 88 / translation / issue 7 / 2018 isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451  Yborra Aznar, José Juan. 2005. “La frontera estéril. La literatura en español en Gi- braltar.” In El español en el mundo. Anuario del Instituto Cervantes. Madrid: Instituto Cervantes. <M. Carmen África Claramonte> is Professor of Translation at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Her research interests include trans- lation theory, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, contemporary art, and gender studies. She has published a number of books, anthologies, and essays on these issues, including Traducción, manipulación, des- construcción (Salamanca, 1995), El futuro de la traducción (Valencia, 1998), Translation/Power/Subversion (coedited with Román Álvarez, Clevedon, 1996), En los límites de la traducción (Granada, 2006), Tra- ducir entre culturas: diferencias, poderes, identidades (Frankfurt, 2007), Traducción y asimetría (Frankfurt, 2010), La traducción y los espacios: viajes, mapas, fronteras (Granada, 2013), ”Dile que le he escrito un blues.” Del texto como partitura a la partitura como traducción (Frank- furt, 2017), and La traducción y la(s) historia(s) (Comares, 2017). She is a practicing translator specializing in the fields of philosophy, literature, and contemporary art. <Juan Jesús Zaro> has been professor of translation studies at the University of Málaga since 2008. His research interests include trans- lation theory, history of translation, and literary translation. He obtained an MA from New York University, as a Fulbright student, and a PhD in English Literature from the University de Granada (1983). He has pub- lished a number of books, anthologies, and articles, including Manual de Traducción/A Manual of Translation (Madrid, 1998), Shakespeare y sus traductores (Bern, 2008), Traductores y traductores de literatura y ensayo (Granada, 2007), and Diez estudios sobre la traducción en la España del siglo xix (Granada, 2009). He is also a practicing translator and has translated, among other books, Charles Dickens’ Historia de dos ciudades (Cátedra, 2000); Samuel Butler’s El destino de la carne (Alba Editorial, 2001), Edith Wharton’s El arrecife (Alba Editorial, 2003), and Jane Austen’s Persuasión (Cátedra, 2004). isbn 978-88-85622-47-0 issn 2240-0451 translation / issue 7 / 2018 / 89 

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