This article explores the ways in which translation can be engaged at the service of the ’feminine’ through an examination of feminist-identified translation and an attempt to redefine the term ‘fe...

Scents of Wood and Silence: Short Stories by Latin American Women Writers@@@When New Flowers Bloomed: Short Stories by Women Writers from Costa Rica and Panama

Towards a Redefinition of Feminist Translation Practice

Where rationality is measured by the ability to distance oneself from one's cul tural and religious traditions, the preemptive commitments of ethnicity seem counter to the ideal of a rational life. Arthur Schlesinger's The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society gives a typical account of this view. Schlesinger paints a picture of a past "America" happily moving toward the melting pot that Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, author of the widely read Letters from an American Farmer, thought he could perceive in the 1700s, a United States where individuals were losing their old identities and forming what he called a "new race of men." This marked progress, not simply because a homogeneous nation would be a stronger nation, but because what these indi viduals left behind included "ancient prejudices and manners," or backward ways of life, clearing the way for them to adopt a more advanced way of life based on democratic ideals (Schlesinger 1991, 1). Schlesinger suggests that the "cult of ethnicity" that derailed this move toward a post-ethnic future by the 1960s actually began to emerge in the early 1900s, not as a product of the grassroots but of intellectual elites who presumed a right of cultural and political leadership as "ethnic spokesmen" (34). Schlesinger claims that these intellectuals were "moved by real concern for distinctive eth nic values [but] also by real if unconscious vested interest in the preservation of ethnic constituencies" (34). Thus, according to Schlesinger, the opposition to ethnic assimilation was not an expression of the spontaneous will of the masses but was promoted by leaders motivated by their own desire for power, a charge that he continues to maintain against the political leadership of ethnic commu nities today. Here, then, is the picture: authoritarian elites ramming ethnicity down the throats of gullible citizens for their own narrow purposes. And here is the effect:

Against "Post-Ethnic" Futures

Lydia Cabrera's career spans much of the twentieth century and her many books provide a unique insight into Afro-Cuban religions, customs, and folktales. Her work crosses the boundaries between ethnography, linguistics and fiction and her texts are inscribed with the dual strands of the African and Iberian cultures that fuse together to form the Cuban. Nonetheless, Cabrera's oeuvre remains relatively unknown outside Spanish-speaking academic circles and to date very little of it has been translated. This research project aims to address Cabrera's unwarranted obscurity by presenting English translations of twelve of her Afro-Cuban tales alongside hitherto unpublished archival material. Polyvocality is identified as a key feature of her work and ways in which 'voice' operates in her four collections of short stories are analysed. It is considered important that all the participants in the story-telling chain be 'heard' in any new presentation of Cabrera's work. This means paying attention to Cabrera as author of the published texts, but also to the informants who were her oral sources, to the translator, and to the reader of the new English versions. The fact that Cabrera's tales often encompass both the scientific (ethnographic) and the artistic (literary), makes the process of translating them a rich and complex endeavour. In formulating a creative response to this complexity, insights are drawn from visual art, concrete poetry, and ethnography. The notion of 'thick translation' (Appiah 1993/2000) provides the theoretical underpinning for the multimodal artefact which is developed. This PhD therefore also crosses disciplines - translation studies and interactive media - and comprises two parts; a written thesis and a DVD-Rom. Ultimately, it is suggested that one future direction for 
translation is to take a 'visual turn' towards a practice which does more than offer one written text in the place of another.

Picturing voices, writing thickness : a multimodal approach to translating the Afro-Cuban tales of Lydia Cabrera

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La Mujer Guerrillera en Recuerdo y Texto: Nicaragua y El Salvador

: Black Panamanian identity in Panama is both complex and problematic becauseof the coexistence of two groups of blacks in the country: afro-colonials and black West Indians. While afro-colonials are the product of race mixing and identify by their Panamanian nationality, West Indians are immigrants and follow the racial model of their native countries-Jamaica and Barbados- which are racially constructed around blackness. Therefore, they identify as black. As a result, in Panama it is difficult to talk about Afro-Panamanian identity because it is marked by fluidity and racial, cultural and linguistic hybridity. The afro-Panamanian writers, Juan Urriola, Gaspar Octavio Hernandez, Carlos Cubena Guillermo Wilson, and Melva Lowe de Goodin represent these two ethnic groups. As a result, their works manifest the problematic of identity which is a reflection of the African diaspora. Keywords : Afro-Panamanian, West Indian, afro-colonial, Panama Canal, national identity. Sonja Stephenson Watson, doctora en Literatura Hispanica por la Universidad de Tennessee-Knoxville, Estados Unidos. Profesora de espanol asociada y directora del Women’s and Gender Studies Program, de la Universidad de Texas en Arlington, Estados Unidos. Temas de especializacion: literatura afropanamena, literatura en espanol del Caribe y reggae en espanol. Correo electronico: swatson1@uta.edu.

/pdf/afro-panamanian-identity-in-the-literature-from-the-21wulpr37p.pdf

Scents of Wood and Silence: Short Stories by Latin American Women Writers@@@When New Flowers Bloomed: Short Stories by Women Writers from Costa Rica and Panama

Citations

Towards a Redefinition of Feminist Translation Practice

Against "Post-Ethnic" Futures

Picturing voices, writing thickness : a multimodal approach to translating the Afro-Cuban tales of Lydia Cabrera

La Mujer Guerrillera en Recuerdo y Texto: Nicaragua y El Salvador

Afro-Panamanian Identity in the Literature from the Twentieth to the New Millennium