Translation Studies

Being that I am going into a translation course this all seemed very interesting. The concept of source language and target language brings up some complex issues. Which theory of translation I conform to is obviously up in the air, for I feel that a survey of concepts does not signify the whole, and I am sure that there are many more dimensions to the debate. Berman, returning to the German translation practices caught my attention and I enjoyed Venuti's inclusion of Schleiermacher's argument that "'[e]ither the translator leaves the author in peace as much as possible and moves the reader toward him; or he leaves the reader in peace and moves the author toward him'" (Nicholls 305). I wonder though if leaving a translation in its foreign form and not converting it to read smoothly may cause some problems in readership, I would like to think this would produce a more organic representation. 

I would have liked to read more concerning Venuti's last statement, that "because translation also plays a powerful role in the current geopolitical economy, we must go even further to study popular cultural forms" (Nicholls 309). Schleiermacher's static two sides to translation would not be adequate to cover cultural media. Translations of these texts would require a reading also of social time and place because they would encompass ideology and popular culture, which would call for some attention to intention alongside the letter. 

What was great about this piece, the meandering blogs of one blogofile

What was great about this piece was that it had a lot of names that I recognized, much of which became recognizable because of my work with Critical Inquiry. Other sites of interest are:

 - any time Friedman spoke on diaspora or borderlands

 - another mention of "transculturation"

 - the bit on memory

Diasporas

This is either the first time I have ever heard this word, or the first time I ever understood what it meant (assuming I now, in fact, understand what it means). The displacement with a sense of loss adds a different tension to the lives and narratives of those who enter cultures as the "other." Have any of you read The Tortilla Curtain. I wish this concept would have been explained to me then. Also, I know I have dealt with diaspora in other literary discussions before, but somehow naming it makes it so much more meaningful.

Borderlands

I just keep thinking that the English department has a course about Anzaldua next quarter, and how convenient this little piece is to market the class to us. Also, the term does not mean only the actual physical places where conflicts of border occur, but also the theoretical, political, and psychological conflicts: gender, race, religion, etc. 

Transculturation

This made me think of a conversation that Isabel and I had during class today, about the punishment of school children for speaking a language other than English during class time. Is it a problem to allow cultures to blend? I am baffled by the big mystery of whether or not a melting pot is good, or if resting in a salad like pose is better. Or, whether or not assimilation denies one their culture. Or, is it how Friedman put it, "[i]mages of diversity - the mosaic, stir-fry, salad, stew, callaloo, rainbow, quilt, and so on - have developed as a rhetoric of resistance to mainstream groups determined to exclude the foreign, racial, or otherwise subordinate groups who do not want to lose their distinctive cultures" (276); is it possible to belong to one culture with many different lenses with which to view it?

Memory

The interesting spin on this was the positive part. Nostalgia being sad, and desire signifying something that is not currently had, I find it hard to locate a niche within which one can be positive. Friedman discusses this optimism in that of borderlands, when "the longing for mixing with others in creative interplay, stimulating fusions, and the hope for understanding across difference, for reconciliation, coexistence, or peace" occurs (276). These are indeed utopic notions, and the only example Friedman offers comes from a playwright and actor. It is in the poetic and the creative that peace is found. I suppose our hope, then, lay in the belief that these pieces of literary work and art form can persuade the hearts and minds of a nation and a globe.

 

he's like/ she goes

I'm enjoying TS/IS more and more the more and more I read it. :) This week "'Ain't So/ Is Not': Academic Writing Doesn't Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice" brought up a few interesting points. Graff and Birkenstein discuss the idea of academic language compared to colloquial language. So many times i have encountered people, and this in regular conversation, that apologize to me because they use slang or colloquial speech. They are apologizing because they know that I am majoring in English and they equate that with the need to use proper "standard" English. At first this causes a furrowed brow appearance on my face, but I am quick to smirk and explain that if all of my studies have taught me one thing, it is that my love of language does not rest in the high academic language I have learned to interpret, but rather the twists, turns, and various creations that language has to offer. So, when Graff and Berkenstein suggests to mix up our writing, I find it charming. I also find it a good reminder. Like so many of the excerpts we've looked at in this book, this chapter gives me a renewed beginners mind. I feel fortunate that I am taking this class now in my fifth quarter, as I begin to work on my Thesis, as I hope to bring a bit of passion and fun into my writing again. 

When I first started my Masters program, a friend of mine said that he hoped it wouldn't take my love of writing away. I didn't understand what he meant. But lately I have felt that I was pushing out text that didn't come from reflection or meaning. I have always said that writing is very personal for me, but I have feared that I may have lost that connection. Somehow this silly little book, selling us great ideas, has caused some movement inside of my brain. That, combined with the process of this blog, makes me mighty thankful.

Franco - Compare/contrast

This text answers the question: What is cultural studies? Or at least it tries to. I found the answer to be perfect for a student of English studies; the answer is ambiguous. Cultural studies differ depending on which culture you are looking at. It is flexible, overlapping, and intangible. In Britain, the study of culture was born out of resistance. In the U.S., birthed from a critique of popular and mass culture. In Latin America, a sibling of Postmodernism, debated by social scientists.

A few interesting points of difference:

While Britain’s students of culture began in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, which separated itself from the elite academy, cultural studies in the United States are an strictly academic endeavor. Franco notes the two extremes for study in the United States school system: commodity and theory. He notes that at one end we have the ‘sales pitch,’ when “teachers try to slant their courses in ways that will attract students, so that under the rubric of cultural studies something like entertainment creeps into the curriculum” (217). The other extreme is to disconnect from it altogether and theorize about it without recognizing the power struggles involved. The latter of these optioins is especially disheartening, since, as Franco notes, the United States has a special way of taking on “a local aspect in an environment in which the media are proactive in the constitution of identities so that assumptions about generalized Latinos, Hispanos, blacks, women, Native Americans, and queers must be challenged constantly” (217).

Another interesting note is that of the three particular cultures Franco discusses, each one has a link to technology and mass media. In Britain the CCCS “examined lifestyles – clothing, rituals, and behavior that created maps of meaning or social texts and bonded their members. ‘Not only did they negotiate with or oppose the dominant culture, but in many ways they actively appropriated and transformed (and thus subverted) dominant meanings” (212). In the United States, Walter Benjamin “underscored the increasing domination of images through advertisement, signs, photography, and cinema” (215). In Latin America modernization and mass culture transformed the public: “under the influence of new technologies and the media, literacy was no longer the one path to culture and responsible citizenship” (218). To top all of that off, the idea of “worlding,” or “an international popular culture” (219), highlights the reality that “technology allows for distant consumption of serially produced goods” (220). It is common to hear that technology has made the world a much smaller place, connecting countries in ways impossible by geography, but what is at stake in that connection? Nelly Richard questions how describing “social change ‘without ever questioning the disruptive effect of such change on the very language itself’” is a downfall of critical studies in the academy (221).

Franco’s text leaves me with more quandaries that I started with. The salad bowl or the melting pot? Consumerism as negative or opportunistic? Do cultural studies enlighten us to the different cultures, or are we slanted in our studies thereof?

Sommer: Whole/Parts

Reading Doris Sommer's "Language, Culture, and Society" brought up a couple of thoughts. First, I am reminded that, being that that I am going to write a thesis and have never looked into what elements the exam would contain, I was recently informed by another student that the exam had a focus on race, gender, sexuality, and class as well as text, author, and reader. Sommer's work seems to have some insight into a connection between all of these.

Second: I love, absolutely love how Sommer associates democracy and language use to art when she says

Democracy, like art, thrives on strangeness, surprise, on risk and the dangerous rub of conflict (6).

She also touches on diversity, commenting on the many various histories the global world is made of. This diversity results in the proliferation of many bi- or multi-lingual peoples. The words we use and the ways we use them are signifiers of our culture and society, they mark us as insiders or outsiders, and sometimes as both. Language can be a tool to link two (or more) very different ways of living, it can also be a small slip between life and death, it can liberate, communicate, and tell sometimes too much about the person speaking, and can also be an art form. 

Language and the use of more than one language allows a speaker to play with the different meanings, lifestyles, and mores that accompany those languages. This play is the art that Sommer's touches on, the possibility that a second language may not be mastered allows for a roughness in speech, even mistakes. She notes that "all languages are equally equipped to describe human experience" (6), but that the addition of a second or third language has its advantages in that it gives the speaker "greater problem-solving capacity, a talent close to artistic creativity" (10).

I enjoyed her argument for the addition of more than one language, as opposed to English-Only moves toward single language usage, and appreciated her look into the duality of double-consciousness over assimilation, as well as her look into the disadvantaged language learners in a society that looks down upon them. Sommer's piece signals to me the many parts of the whole. The parts are varied and diverse and though seemingly very distinct, Sommer's points to many of the advantages of overlap, specifically considering language in any tongue as the whole. Language in any tongue can examine human experience and relate it to anyone willing and open to listen. 

Language is dangerous and fun, it is risky, but as Sommer's points out, "creative risk is a condition of democracy" (6).