A discussion of the issues that arise from translating a text was addressed due to the class’s reading of Dany Laferriѐre’s The World is Moving Around Me. Laferriѐre is a Creole speaker, but wrote his text in French, and this text was then translated into the English version I read. In considering the problems of translating a work, I was greatly troubled by two questions: 1) What is “lost in translation?” 2) If this text, or any text, is interpreted and rewritten in another language by another individual, then is it authentic (I am terming the word authentic as a work interpreted and written by its author)?

Language is culturally created, and often there are words of a specific language that cannot be expressed in another. There are idioms and meanings encompassed in a word that simply do not exist in another, and this must be considered when reading a translated work. As a student who attempted to learn Italian and is currently studying Dante’s La Divina Commedia, I surely see a loss of depth to Dante’s original work in its translated form. The rhymes, the tenses, the pronouns, and the nouns are often completely loss or inaccurately translated. I was more aware of this loss in La Divina Commedia than Lafferriѐre’s work, but now I question whether the issues I recognized in the translation of Dante’s comedy is equivalent to the issues that can be found in the translation of The World is Moving Around Me. 

A translator needs to read the original text, interpret it, and rewrite it according to the new vocabulary of the new language and audience; on top of this, the content must be understandable, and sound natural to the reader. If all these elements must be considered, I wonder if I am receiving an authentic representation of Laferriѐre’s intentions or am I simply reading a secondary source? Just as Art Spiegelman received and interpreted Vladek’s story in Maus, is David Homel simply receiving and interpreting Laferriѐre’s story? If this is true, then I am not receiving the authentic story, but hearing it from a secondary source who chanced upon the authentic story.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus has been a successful graphic novel since its publication; it has been written about, talked about, and declared the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. The fascination with this text is largely due to the combination of comics and the serious matter of the Holocaust; the serious and the unserious come together. I took interest in the commingling of mediums which Spiegelman chose to incorporate in his telling of his father’s experience of the Holocaust.

Philip Pullman questions, “what is [Maus]? Is it a comic? Is it biography, or fiction? Is it a literary work, or a graphic one, or both?” These were the questions I faced when I read Maus. How should I define the genre of this multi-medium text? I want to call it a work of art, a historical piece, a literary text, and biography all at once, and in the confusion, I think this is the unique quality Maus offers. 

Spiegelman prefers the term “comix” over “comics,” as he believes comix captures the combining of text and art, and I believe this mixture can further include the addition of genres, and overlapping stories. Maus is the product of story telling, visual art, words, and history. This work is drawn out like a traditional comic with animals and sound-effects, but there is a sophistication to its creation and resulting impact on the reader.

As I read Maus, I kept comparing it to my reading of Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz. While I read Art’s personal telling of how he interviewed his father for the story and his reaction to the story, I could not help but recognize those feelings as my own towards Levi’s text. I understood the desire to understand, and inability to do so. I experience horror in reading both Levi’s and Spiegelman’s works, but Maus made the Holocaust more understandable for me. I tried to imagine Levi’s experience, but failed to really imagine what it felt and looked like, but the mixture of the words and visual art helped me visualize and connect with the story in a way I could not for Levi.

The Vancouver Sun claims 43% of Metro Vancouver share an Asian heritage. I am one of those in that 43%. I am a Chinese-Canadian. In reading Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill I was pushed to reconsider my identity and place in Canada as a claimed Chinese-Canadian, and to question why can I do not simply claim to be a Canadian, alone?

Fred Wah Jr. of Diamond Grill is one fourth Chinese and “white enough to get away with it” (Wah 36), but he still identifies himself as a Chinese-Canadian. There is an obsessive need to identify the self as Euro-Canadian, African-Canadian, Japanese-Canadian, or (Insert Country Name)-Canadian because one can never be simply Canadian in Canada. I have been asked and caught asking the question, “What are you?” I considered the question of why do Canadians feel inclined to dismiss “I am Canadian” as a reasonable response? Logically, I Googled Canadian identity. Many of the search results simply reiterated a statement of how Canadians do not have an identity or that it is still in question today. The obsession with this question is a response to the unidentifiable Canadian identity.

Fred Wah calls his experience with the hyphen as “riding the hyphen,” and although I have no Caucasian heritage, I can say I ride the hyphen just as he does. Wah is able to slip between the two ethnicities unnoticed. Mixed-ethnic Canadians is a growing norm in Canada – there is even a blog dedicated to mixed Canadians – but what I am interested in is the growing number of second-generation Chinese-Canadians here in Canada. I ride the hyphen just as Wah does, because I am what Vancouverites call whitewashed. I believe it’s a crime to not use chopsticks when eating noodles, only stepped into Asia once, cannot speak, read or write Chinese, studies English Literature, am educated in a Western culture, understand both Western and Eastern ideals, and can easily ride the hyphen between Canadian and Chinese cultural practices. The hyphen allows mixed-racial and second-generation Canadians a claimed identity, but as Diamond Grill notices, there is no clear Canadian identity to be claimed; there is merely a hyphen to consolidate an unidentifiable identity.

My recent exposure to Eli Pariser’s TED Talk on online “filter bubbles” led me to an awareness of my ignorance towards the inevitable personalization of online-media pages. Pariser spoke on the automatic process of filtering posts, articles, and search results to a user’s previous preferences online.

In recent months, I noticed that the same friends and acquaintances reappeared on my feed daily, while others did not, and till now, I did not have a reason for this occurrence. The reason photography articles, animal videos, and post on the LGBT movement appear on my newsfeed more than my boyfriend’s posts is because Facebook uses my answers to the “About Questions” and previous viewing of certain puppy videos and articles to filter out what I would not find interesting.

Beyond my disturbed curiosity of what Facebook removed from my viewing, I question the influence in which these filters have on the individual’s identity and online identity. Beth Anderson et al. states virtual media seems “to offer more scope for control or variation of identity than in the real world; they seem to provide an environment in which identity is malleable and the reality or fantasy boundary can be blurred” (Anderson et al. 28). The online persona is easily changed by the user, but if certain preferences are suggested due to one’s peers, I am curious of the filter bubbles’ influence on the user’s decisions on the socially acceptable answers to the “About Questions.” The second consideration is that with exposure to posts that reinforce personal views and ideas alone, the self is unable to experience challenging perspectives that encourage development and expansion of ideas. On media, the online and offline identity is closed off from alternative views and receive little motivation to seek other arguments.

Continue reading →

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!