El Meta Secreto (Spanish Edition)

In what follows, we will analyze how heterolingualism Spanish-English code mixing or Spanglish functionally interacts with other phenomena, such as nerd talk or African-American English, and even with mechanisms of addressing the narratee. For this reason, we regularly resort to the notion of heteroglossia as coined by Mikhail Bakhtin.

BWLOW would be in the same league as any up-from-the-ghetto narrative if it were not for the adjective wondrous , which somehow suggests superhuman interference, an element that does not normally fit in well with the reality claims of ethnic literature. As we will argue, BWLOW is a book that ingeniously plays on the generic frame of ethnic fiction and the legitimacy of the ethnic insider perspective associated with it.

This has important formal implications. As a result, the reader gets the impression of being pulled into the bilingual dynamic of the immigrant community, without necessarily understanding everything that is going on between the interlocutors. I was aggressive about that because I had so many negative models, so many Latinos and black writers who are writing to white audiences, who are not writing to their own people.

You are only there to loot them of ideas, and words, and images so that you can coon them to the dominant group. That disturbs me tremendously. His remarks concern the kind of mechanisms of address encoded in mainstream fiction, which uses ethnic themes without necessarily exploring them in depth. There are, however, broader socio-cultural implications as well. Rather than focusing all attention on what inevitably gets lost in translating a text that itself defies translation, our aim is to highlight the cultural significance of a poetics of nontranslation, and what happens if such a poetics is transposed into another language.

Our approach builds on recent research on multilingual literature or, what we define more broadly as heteroglossic literature in translation. Furthermore, diverse methods or techniques for the translation of linguistic multiplicity have been discussed.

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In the latter two cases, interlingual variation in the ST is replaced by intralingual variation the insertion of different varieties or registers of the same language in the TT. On the other hand, authors like Berman or Koster have adopted a more normative perspective by rejecting the use of dialect in the TT to render the heteroglossia of the ST Grutman In our analysis we will use these insights and elaborate on them by applying them to narratological categories. First, we will focus on one function of ST heteroglossia in particular, which comes close to the first function of Horn , namely a way of characterizing a speaker.

Importantly, heteroglossia is here not only a way of characterizing the narrator as an individual, but also a way of characterizing the relation between the narrator and the narratee s. Concretely, we will describe heteroglossia as a solidarity-enhancing mechanism. As such, heteroglossia also fulfills a narratological function, as it affects the relation between the narrator and the narratee s.

Second, with respect to the translation techniques used in the Spanish-language versions of BWLOW, we will argue that the substitution of interlingual variation by intralingual variation specifically the use of Dominican Spanish constitutes a dominant strategy. Interestingly, this strategy also seems to imply a shift in the main function fulfilled by heteroglossia.

One salient difference is that the narrative voice becomes less ethnically or racially marked in translation. As we shall argue, the solidarizing functions are directed away from the relation between the narrator s and the narratee s and towards that between the author and the implied audience of the translation. BWLOW is a mosaic of linguistic varieties and registers. The book confronts the reader with all kinds of English: Spanglish, nerd talk, ghetto talk, African-American English, and colloquial English.

In a second step, we will discuss the broader significance of these types for the narrative as a whole. A first instance of heteroglossia is the use of Spanglish, or the insertion of Spanish expressions and idioms into the English text to convey ethnically marked discourse. The use of Spanish in example 1 is fairly conventional: In example 2 , an entire proverb is rendered in Spanish literally: Example 3 , finally, contains some regionally inflected words prieta , meaning swarthy, dark-skinned which are peculiar to the Dominican context, and which may not be directly intelligible even to readers who know some Spanish.

There is no glossary, nor are there explanatory English paraphrases in the text. Thus, the use of these non-English elements creates an in-group effect, which the actual reader can observe from a distance. Second-generation Dominican-Americans identify strongly with their African American peers because they are often in a similar socio-economic position and because outside observers often categorize them as African-Americans on the basis of their skin color.

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At the same time, many Dominican-Americans try to resist this binary black-white racial classification, which differs from racial taxonomies in the Dominican Republic, where dark skin is associated with a Haitian background, by insisting that they also speak Spanish Bailey Phrases like I got jumped or let me steal on her ass can be interpreted as typical instances of African-American English.

By switching to Dominican Spanish, Lola asserts her agency by blocking this code choice. Although this word has a generic meaning, it is clear that only a member of the ethnic in-group can safely employ such identifying labels in a non-derogatory fashion:. The frequency of generic nigger testifies to its effectiveness in circumscribing a specified community. As we will show, there is no Spanish equivalent for generic nigger , since this concept is intimately tied to the strict black-white dichotomy built into the U. Footnotes like glossaries, bibliographies, asides, and the like are a common feature of most ethnic fiction, as they function to explain to the non-initiated reader elements that are peculiar to the in-group.

As Sollors indicates, however, this enforced translational capacity on the part of the ethnic author can be turned into an instrument of willful deceit, whereby the reader is denied the usual explanatory gesture or is given the wrong or incomplete information.

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In this way, the ethnic writer can play with the conventions of a genre that may appear constrictive. This footnote is very different from an objective encyclopedic footnote.

The narrator addresses the narratee directly and uses rhetorical questions and colloquial language. These characters, who live on the blue side of the moon, compile information about the universe and in doing so help to defend the earth against such supervillains as Galactus. Both the narrator and the narratee remain somewhat mysterious throughout. Although he clearly sympathizes with Oscar, Yunior makes sure not to lose credibility among his macho college friends.

As the rhetorical question between brackets indicates, the you addressed in this quote is clearly a person for whom knowledge of Elvish is a sign of social weakness. This results in a conflict of codes: Sometimes, Yunior addresses his peers quite explicitly, as in the following example:.

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The word players and the slang phrases fuck , bitch , ass suggest a very strong emotional bond between the narrator and his addressees. This bond is created mostly through a shared interest in sex. Oscar also shares this interest, but because of his shyness he is unable to get a girl. This makes him an outsider among Dominican-Americans a watcher among players. This sense of responsibility is emphasized by the fact that Yunior consistently refers to himself as your Watcher, thus suggesting that he feels responsibility towards the narratee:.

The use of the capitalized Negro here evokes an addressee who is presented as being out of touch with his own community. As we will indicate, these solidarity effects will undergo significant changes in translation. To conclude our section on the ST, we would like to emphasize that textual heteroglossia and the narratological I-you relation which can be said to be two of the most salient phenomena in the text, given their unconventional and comical effects are closely interlinked.

Both the narrator and the narratees are difficult to grasp: But on the other hand, in a more indirect way, the text is also very informative. With respect to the narratee, we find various textual hints Negro , players , future generation , us niggers … which suggest that the textual you cannot be constructed as a generic audience.

Heteroglossia interacts with this narratological structure by reinforcing the solidarity between the narrator and the narratee: Spanglish, African-American English, nerd talk, as well as the footnotes suggest an in-group or several in-groups, which are defined through the exclusive knowledge of certain codes and forms of address.

Having sketched how BWLOW creates solidarity by mixing various registers and vernaculars, we now turn to what happens to these solidarity effects in translation. There can be no doubt that anybody who takes it upon herself to translate BLWOW faces an enormous challenge. Eventually, the task was entrusted to Achy Obejas, a Cuban author whose artistic sensibilities guaranteed a bold usage of the idiomatic turns of the Spanish language. One reviewer goes so far as to suggest that the translation of BWLOW can provide a spur for contemporary Spanish authors to break free from the traditional strictures of their language and to integrate more slang or street language into their writings:.

Despite being a translation from English, it sounds unusually free in Spanish: What concerns us, rather, is how this — perhaps inevitable — normalization process affects the narrative structure of the ST, and in particular the effectiveness of certain solidarity mechanisms. The two versions are not identical, however. A first difference concerns the title. Third, there are a number of textual differences between the two versions, which however are few and far between. To give an idea, the first words of the ST yield no more than five divergences between the two Spanish editions.

There are no systematic textual discrepancies to hint at fundamentally opposed translation strategies. Fourth, the Vintage volume contains an inserted paratext, which is absent from the Mondadori edition, and which we here cite in full:. Finally, probably the most important difference between the Vintage and Mondadori editions concerns the footnote apparatus.

We will discuss the function of the Vintage footnotes below. Let us now turn to a discussion of the various translation techniques used in the Spanish editions of BWLOW to convey the various forms of heteroglossia present in the ST. One strategy has been the reintroduction of English elements in the TT.

However, the arsenal of English elements, some of them phonetically transcribed to convey the Hispanic background of the speaker, remains fairly limited: These words have to be approached as conventionalized keys, which serve to indicate variations in register and tone. Interestingly, when the English from the ST is left untranslated, it is normalized, as in the following example, where the ungrammatical negative imperative is turned into a correct English clause:.

A dominant strategy for conveying the interlingual variation is its substitution by intralingual variation, i. This use of regional forms offsets on a lexical level what gets lost on a syntactic level, where the disruptive grammar of the original is to a certain degree flattened out through the use of idiomatic Spanish sentences. The following example illustrates the frequent lexical innovations of the TT:.

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On the one hand, we can observe how lexical elements from the ST are rendered by locally marked variants. Note that, in this way, the alliterating structure of the ST bravos on the bus falls away, but this is compensated for by the rhythmic stress pattern and colorful word choice of the TT. On the other hand, we should note that buenmosos is corrected as buenmozos in order to conform to standard spelling.

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In general, the Spanish syntax of the translation is much closer to the norm than the English syntax of the ST. The vernacular dimension is restored by lexical means, through the insertion of local words and phrases. Both of these have only been recently released in Singapore. He is arguably well-known as well for his role as the 'cynic' in the extremely popular TV series 'Incredible Tales' and provides a similar 'analysis' in the in-print book 'Incredible Tales of Ghosts'.

Currently well under way to completing his 'Pocket Therapist' series of books over 64 in all and carrying out many seminars and promotional activities on European TV stations, Radio and Newspaper interviews and magazine articles Dubbed "The Man With A Billion-Dollar Voice", Dr Gill is a presence to be reckoned with and a great inspiration to millions of his participants and listeners worldwide. Are you an author? Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography.

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