I was very excited to notice that this week’s reading was a novel written in both English and Spanish, or as we also know it “Spanglish”. It was a really comforting read as I sometimes find myself speaking in Spanglish, mainly with my Spanish-speaker friends and with my family ever since I moved to Vancouver. It was a really interesting aspect of the novel, since there are truly things that one can only express in a certain language.
With this I want to talk about the aspect I found really interesting about this novel: the language. As Jon talked in the lecture, Braschi’s novel portrays a good idea on what and cannot be translated and assimilated across borders. I have been an English speaker for a couple of years now, but it wasn’t until I came to live in Canada that I experience what Braschi portrays in this novel. One of the first weeks I was talking to two Canadian friends and we were both eating cake, when I began getting “empalagada”. This is a verb in spanish that means you have had too many sweets or enough sweetness from a dessert or food, and you are sick of the flavour, therefore you stop eating it because you got “empalagada”. I was trying to explain this to my friends, and was getting frustrated I could not find the literal translation in English. This is when they told me there is no actual literal translation of the word “emapalagar” in English, there is just an expression of saying you got a sweet tooth or you’ve had enough sweets. This was a great example of these instances of things that can and cannot be translated and the literal barriers in between borders because of language. Now my friends use the verb “empalagar” and it is really funny yet heartwarming hearing my Canadian friends say “Oh I got very empalagada!”.
Another thing I would like to note on the language is that in chapter II Blow Up when the discussion is taking place, the use of mainly Spanish made me actually feel scolded. I do not know why but in the past readings, whenever there was conflict and I was reading in English it was hard for me to actually feel scolded like the characters. It was as if it was harder for the emotions on the book to be fully transmitted in English. But in this novel, specially in this chapter, the emotions were more easy to be transmitted and I could actually feel as if I was the one being scolded in this chapter.
My question for this week is: How did you find the choice of languages (Spanish, English and Spanglish) for this novel? Do you think it has an impact like the one I talked about? Would you rather have it only in one language?
I think Braschi’s linguistic exercise is very interesting, and above all risky. I agree with you that between languages there are spaces between which the exact translation cannot be achieved. For me, the novel requires us to “displace” ourselves (I read it in Spanglish and I must confess that it was difficult for me to follow it). But after listening to the conversation with Dr. Beasley-Murray, some things became clearer to me: what is important is the transit between the three languages (Spanish, English and Spanglish) and the possibilities that open up from there.
I think the bilingual aspect of this book is very original and gives it its special, unique essence. I have never read a book that was written in two languages, and since I speak Spanish and English, I was able to enjoy it and at the same time reflect on why the author chose both languages. Actually, you could consider there is a third language involved, Spanglish, and a perfect example of it would be your expression of “empalagada”. When you are bilingual and you switch languages back and forth, you sometimes find it hard to find a specific word of expression, so you just go with the flow and use whatever comes to your mind first. The book would loose its essence if it was only written in one language, which is why translations of the novel can’t fully grasp its meaning.
I really like your story about the barriers of translation! I’ve experienced similar instances with my family and friends, whether from Spanish to English or English to Spanish. There are truly some things that are untranslatable. I agree that the bilingual oscillation of the book created a very authentic, touching effect. I loved that the text centered almost entirely on dialogue; it emphasized the linguistic acrobatics and made me feel like I was sitting along these characters, eavesdropping.