SECTION:
Translation and Culture
David Thompson (Decatur/Illinois)
Patriot Games: Translation, Censorship and the Representation of Modern-Day SpainThe subject of this presentation is the cultural representation of modern-day Spain as enacted through the translation of popular literature, namely a spy thriller by the American author Tom Clancy. Clancy's novel Balance of Power is a controversial representation of the political conflicts among Spain's autonomous communities.
In Equilibrio de poder, the equally controversial Spanish translation of Balance of Power, the publisher negotiates the demand for a translation of Clancy's novel with perceived notions about the appropriate representation of present-day Spanish culture and politics. The translation of a controversial American novel for the Spanish public illustrates how translation itself is much more than a transparent medium through which readers gain insight into other cultures. Translation is an effective means of re-writing and transforming cultural representation, especially those representations arising from nations, such as the United States, that dominate the global marketplace.
In her book Siting Translation, Tejaswini Niranjana describes translation in the post-colonial world as a strategy for challenging domination and providing less discriminatory images and identities. The Spanish editors of Equilibrio de poder identify themselves (and their culture) implicitly with a colonial nation seeking to free itself from the cultural homogenization induced by the global economy and the imperial nations that control it. Their translation of Balance of Power is a contemporary example of how Spain and other nations deal with the increasingly intertwined, yet quarrelsome, relationship between cultural conservatism and open-market trade. Spanish cultural authorities, such as editors at large publishing houses, employ translation to mitigate the potentially corrosive influence of globalism even as they profit from American popular literature freely traded, promoted and distributed in the new global marketplace.
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