Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

who becomes not only “childless” but also
“husbandless,” trying to represent a more
contemporary chicana than in M.Q.R. Hinojosa
has taken into account those aspects of the
portrayal of women that were less likely to
function effectively in the target setting and has
exploited several translation strategies to
transfer them, producing a functional translated
text for the broader readership, with a less
traditional and chauvinist ideology about
women than in M.Q.R.
Two conclusions can be drawn regarding
several aspects of Hinojosa’s translation. First,
the self-translator assumes the responsibility of
establishing a new equilibrium with a distinct
cultural transfer of content based on gains and
transformations, so that the translated text is
able to function in the new setting despite the
lost elements, such as bilingual expressions,
various key Chicano words, and the issue of
politics and the portrayal of women. Despite his
use of domesticating strategies, the essence of
the story that is maintained is foreignizing
content for mainstream American, a satirical
criticism of how the Chicano has been perceived
in U.S. society.
Second, Mi querido Rafa (M.Q.R.) and My
Dear Rafe (D.R.) make clear the power of
language/s to articulate identities and ideologies.
The writer did not indulge in his first lineal
version of time. Unlike other Chicano writings,
My Dear Rafe is much more than a literal
translation and represents Hinojosa’s attempt at
retracing his steps, his hybrid culture, his
heritage and his self. Both the Spanish and the
English versions are part of the same
heterogeneous identity, one of multiple cultural
and linguistic crossings.
Notes
1 Esmeralda Santiago in her autobiography,
Cuando era puertorriqueña, also comments that
her translation from English into Spanish
entailed far more than a mere linguistic
equivalence, it made her think over her current
condition as a speaker of Spanglish:
El proceso de traducir del inglés al español
me forzó a aprender de nuevo el idioma de mi
niñez. Pero también me ha demostrado que
hablo, el cual yo pensaba que era el español,
es realmente espanglés, ese dialecto forjado
del español y del inglés que toma palabras de
los dos idiomas, les añade las expresiones
familiares puertorriqueñas y cambia la
manera en que se escriben hasta crear otras
nuevas. En mi casa, por ejemplo, lavamos el
piso con un mapo, compramos tique pa’l cine,
leemos panfletos, damos el OK, y llamamos
pa’ atrás cuando estamos muy bisi pa’ hablar
por teléfono (16) [The process of translating
from English into Spanish involved learning
again my childhood language but it has also
shown me I speak Spanglish instead of
Spanish as I thought. This Spanglish is a
dialect made up of Spanish and English which
uses words from both languages, adding
Puerto-Rican idioms and changing their
spelling thus coining new words, i.e. we clean
the floor with a mapo (mop), we buy tique
(tickets) for going to the cinema, we read
panfletos (instead of folletos) and we call pa’
atrás (back) when we are too busy to speak
by phone].
2 Notice that this term seems to be artificially
constructed. It is commonly assumed that only
“ethnics” become bicultural when coming into
contact with what is considered mainstream U.S.
culture. Biculturalism is only then supposed to
work one way, the implication being that the
ethnic groups in contact with the Anglos do not
have a culture for the cultural exchange.
3 We mean power in Foucault’s sense, power
related to knowledge and articulated in
discourse where control is exerted through
certain discursive practices that model the way
subjectivities (as Chicano, Anglo, etc.) are
created, as well as the way the subjects think
and speak Foucault’s Discipline and
Punishment.
4 The election is now two weeks off and Ira
thinks he’s losing ground. He’s not, but he
thinks he is. Ira no me preguntó por Noddy ni
por el número de su private line; Ira was in a
bad way, but it promised to get worse. For your
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