Translating Bilinguality

Abstract

Translation is often defined as interlingual transfer, with correspondences sought between two languages. But what if the original text is written in more than one language? This paper addresses a number of situations where bilinguality impacts on the translation process and problematizes conventional concepts of translation. Several categories of examples are discussed. The first of these involves texts (by Tolstoy and Hemingway) into which isolated stretches of a second language are incorporated. Then there are fictional works where a second language is extensively deployed, but already translated for the reader. Examples are works by Buck, Clavell and Maugham, where Chinese characters are made to speak English and the novelists have to play the role of translators. Finally, there are ‘postmodern’ texts wherein the author inhabits, as it were, two linguistic realms: those of his or her mother tongue and the acquired tongue. The discussion here will revolve around two distinct groups of writers: those who are competent in more than one language and blend the features of two or more languages in their work (like James Joyce) and those who are proficient in one language but have ‘mother-tongue’ knowledge about another (like Maxine Hong Kingston). A close examination of works by the last category of writers in translation reveals the limits of existing translation theories which are based on a bilingual, one-to-one model and which do not take into consideration features of ‘interlinguality’ and ‘intralinguality’ within texts.

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