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Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Corazon D. Villareal It is no longer paradigmatic to look at identity as a
static and retrievable quality. Identity is now viewed as a process, an
ideal to be negotiated in the spaces between cultures. Thus, terms such as
hybridity, transnationalist, the third space, have gained currency,
and translation should be viewed in these contexts.
Panel 5: Translation and the (De-)construction of National/Cultural Identities
Translating Cultural Identity: The Philippine Experience
University of the Philippines
It appears that translation in the Philippines is an ideal site for
negotiating a hybrid identity among Filipinos. Translation in the country
dates back to about 1598 with the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries
and continues up to the present. There was a steady translation of Spanish
works originating from Spain and Mexico into Tagalog and eight other major
languages of the country. Most of these were religious works such as
novenas, manuals of conduct, and the passion chants; by the 19th century,
some semi-secular works such as the corrido and the zarzuela managed to be
translated through the religious gauntlet. When the Americans occupied the
country from 1898 up to 1946, the rate of translation diminished because of
their English Only policy; even so, translations of some English
authors such as Shakespeare, Daniel Defoe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and
Edgar Allan Poe found their way into the various Philippine languages. It is
thus no longer possible to speak of Philippine literature as disconnected
from the West.
But how far must this anti-essentialist argument be taken by translators?
With the need to develop Filipino as the national language, there has been a
marked shift over the past thirty years in the direction of translation.
Works in more than 100 languages of the country are being translated into
Filipino through the initiatives of various institutions in the Philippines.
This paper reviews translations from English to Filipino, exploring the
underlying assumptions about hybridity. The concept of hybridity will
have to be expanded to include the Southeast Asian matrix of Filipino
culture, due to the fact that Southeast Asian as well as Japanese authors
are also being translated into Filipino (via English)
© IATIS 2003