The Translator's Intertextual Baggage
Dipartimento di studi letterari linguistici e filologici
University of Trento
Via S. Croce 65
38100 Trento
Italy
Eleonora.Federici{at}lett.unitn.it
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Abstract |
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Starting from the notion of a wide texture of intertextual references between translations outlined in recent theories, the aim of this article is to underline critically the role of the translator as a mediator/interpreter between different linguistic and cultural worlds. The title highlights how the translator possesses his/her own intertextual literary, linguistic and cultural "baggage" due to his/her "location" and identity politics, a "baggage" that permeates his/her act of translation and "rewriting" of the source text into the target text.
Referring to the many metaphors utilised through centuries in describing the translator and the act of translation from one culture to another, my essay takes as a "metaphorical" starting point the representation of the translator as a traveller in a new and unknown literary world; a curious traveller who follows many hints and finds new routes in an unexplored map which he/she necessarily reads through his/her own cultural lens. This reading, if carried on as a dialogue, as a bridge-building, inevitably enriches the translator's perspective on his/her own culture. Following the author's steps, the translator unveils the many linguistic, social, historical and cultural traces of his/her cultural world to be revealed to new readers embedded in different linguistic and cultural webs.
The translator between two worlds faces not only the question of displacement and untranslatability, but once again that of intertextuality. Dealing with a translation of a postcolonial text/context, the translating subject has to read between the lines the many and varied intertextual practices, the recognition of the author's intertextual references, the many traces from previous texts and former translations, the various signs of cultural and socio-political markers and possible linguistic adaptations. The text must be revealed as a complex web of intertextual references not always easy to reproduce in the target text/culture, but nonetheless a central element for the author's image in the target culture and the reception of the translated text. The translator becomes a cultural mediator who, dialoguing between cultures, carries on a transcultural interaction. In the passages between linguistic and cultural systems, the notion of intertextuality must be questioned and discussed in its many perspectives and complexities.
Key Words: translator • mediator • metaphor • intertextuality • intercultural communication