UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff MMaassssaacchhuusseettttss AAmmhheerrsstt SScchhoollaarrWWoorrkkss@@UUMMaassss AAmmhheerrsstt Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 2010 UUnn ppiiee aaqquuíí yy oottrroo aalllláá:: TTrraannssllaattiioonn,, GGlloobbaalliizzaattiioonn,, aanndd HHyybbrriiddiizzaattiioonn iinn tthhee NNeeww WWoorrlldd ((BB))OOrrddeerr Jorge Jimenez-bellver University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses Part of the Chicana/o Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, and the Latin American Literature Commons Jimenez-bellver, Jorge, "Un pie aquí y otro allá: Translation, Globalization, and Hybridization in the New World (B)Order" (2010). Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014. 422. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/422 This thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. 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UN PIE AQUÍ Y OTRO ALLÁ: TRANSLATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND HYBRIDIZATION IN THE NEW WORLD (B)ORDER A Thesis presented by JORGE JIMÉNEZ-BELLVER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2010 Comparative Literature Translation Studies © Copyright by Jorge Jiménez-Bellver 2010 All Rights Reserved UN PIE AQUÍ Y OTRO ALLÁ: TRANSLATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND HYBRIDIZATION IN THE NEW WORLD (B)ORDER A Thesis Presented by by JORGE JIMÉNEZ-BELLVER Approved as to style and content by: ______________________________________ Edwin Gentzler, Chair ______________________________________ Maria Tymoczko, Member ______________________________________ Agustín Lao-Montes, Member __________________________________________ William Moebius, Director Comparative Literature Program Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures __________________________________________ Julie Candler Hayes, Chair Comparative Literature Program Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures DEDICATION To Antonia Carcelén-Estrada “¿Seremos capaces de pensar por nuestra cuenta? ¿Seremos capaces de pensar? ¡Basta ya de interrogar!” Café Tacvba, “El fin de la infancia” ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is the result of a process of translation―or, better said, translations―that began in late 2005 when, as a doctoral student of technical translation at the University of Alicante, I expressed my interest in pursuing a Master’s degree in the United States to my doctoral supervisor, Professor José Ramón Belda-Medina. After doing a bit of research on the (few) universities that offered postgraduate degrees in translation, I decided to apply at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose strong emphasis in translation theory was precisely what I felt I was lacking at the time. Professor Edwin Gentzler’s “Translation and Postcolonial Studies” was the first class that I took as a graduate student at UMass, where I developed the analytical and critical skills to begin to view translation as something more than the semantic and syntactic transfer from one language to another. The following semester I was lucky enough to take Professor Maria Tymoczko’s “Theory and Practice of Translation,” a class that not only intensified the taste of translation discourse I had acquired in the previous semester, but also elicited very insightful discussions that made our weekly meetings particularly inspiring. It was one of those evenings during my second semester that Professor Gentzler made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: he had been invited to give a talk in Lima (Peru), so he asked me to translate his presentation into Spanish, titled “Translation and Border Writing: Fiction, Performance Art, and Film.” Professor Gentzler’s presentation introduced me to border writing and, more specifically, to the work of Guillermo Gómez- Peña as a starting point to rethink translation―interestingly, it was the assignment of a v translation that inspired me to problematize translation further. Soon, the interest I was developing in translation as a, say, cultural condition was followed by the translation that I carried out of Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Spanglish novella Friendly Cannibals into Canarian Spanish for Professor Tymoczko’s class, which provided me with an invaluable opportunity to experiment with my own developing thoughts and ideas from a hands-on perspective. This thesis is a continuation of those thoughts and ideas. Yet, the arguments I articulate in this thesis are also informed by an array of other classes and talks that I was fortunate enough to attend. In particular, I wish to thank Professor Patricia Gubitosi, whose courses on “Bilingualism and Language Contact” and “Hispanic Dialectology” proved an excellent introduction to issues of language, power, difference, and identity in the field of Hispanic studies and the sociology of language. My gratitude also goes to Professor Julie C. Hayes for putting together a course on “The History of Translation” that not only provided an extensive overview of the main paradigms of Western translation theory but also filled a significant gap in the curriculum of the Master’s Program in Translation Studies. I specially want to thank Professor Agustín Lao-Montes, whose continuous involvement with the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies gave me the chance to become acquainted with issues of sociology and globalization. One of the most rewarding aspects of being a Master’s candidate has been to participate in conferences―both as a presenter and as an organizer. Special thanks are due to Professor Tymoczko for her support and assistance with the organization of the Fourth Amherst-Binghamton Translation Studies Conference. I also wish to express my vi gratitude to the organizers of the conferences, symposia, and summer schools where I presented parts of this thesis and, particularly, to those scholars that provided intellectual stimulation and encouragement: Catalina Iliescu and Jose Lambert at the Symposium “Univer-Cities. Translation, Languages and Internationalization,” held in November 2008 at the University of Alicante; Michael Cronin at the Fourth International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Textual Studies, held in June 2008 at Dublin City University; Carol Maier at the Fourth Amherst-Binghamton Translation Studies Conference, held in May 2008 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Theo Hermans, Dorothea Martens, and Phrae Chittiphalangsri at the Translation Research Summer School, held in June 2007 at University College London. The most enjoyable experience I’ve had at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been working at the Translation Center. My gratitude goes to Edwin Gentzler, Görkem Cilam, Adam LaMontagne, and Shawn Lindholm for assigning me some of the most inspiring and stimulating translation projects I have ever participated in and for creating such a pleasant, friendly, and efficient working environment. Particular thanks go to my translator colleagues Xuefei Bai, Elena Langdon, Cristiano Mazzei, Lucía Prada-González, Loc Pham, Carolyn Shread, Aaron Suko, Maura Talmadge, Germán Vargas, and Huda Yehia, with whom I’ve shared many projects and memorable meals, snacks, and coffee breaks. I also want to thank my colleagues at the departments of Comparative Literature and Spanish and Portuguese Nadia al-Ahmad, Carmen Cosme, estheR Cuesta, Kanchuka Dharmasiri, Matthew Goodwin, Nahir Otaño-Gracia, and especially Scott Salus. My deepest gratitude goes to Antonia Carcelén-Estrada, who not vii only has been a demanding reader of my work but also a continuous source of inspiration and insight. I am most grateful to my friends and family. Thanks to my parents, José Vicente and Ana, and my sisters, Silvia and Cristina, for their continued love and support. Thanks to Alfonso, Jorge, and Roberto, with whom I’ve participated in unforgettable intellectual exchanges for the last fifteen years. Thanks to Carolina for her enduring encouragement and friendship. And I wish to pay a special tribute to the memory of my late grandfather, Salvador―Te digo adiós para toda la vida, aunque toda la vida siga pensando en ti. Finally, I wish to express my sincere thanks to Professor José Ramón Belda- Medina at the University of Alicante for his assistance and support during the application process, to Professor William Moebius and Linda Papirio at the UMass Comparative Literature Department for their admirable administrative efficiency, and to the members of my committee―Professor Gentzler, Professor Tymoczko, and Professor Lao- Montes―for their active participation and inspiring engagement with the ideas presented in this thesis. viii ABSTRACT UN PIE AQUÍ Y OTRO ALLÁ: TRANSLATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND HYBRIDIZATION IN THE NEW WORLD (B)ORDER MAY 2010 JORGE JIMÉNEZ-BELLVER B.A., UNIVERSITY OF ALICANTE, SPAIN M.A., UNIVERSITY OF ALICANTE, SPAIN Directed by: Professor Edwin Gentzler Keywords: Translation; identity; coloniality; borders; language contact; multilingualism; translation as a cluster concept; Guillermo Gómez-Peña This thesis explores the role of translation in the production and manipulation of identities in the contemporary Americas as exemplified in the work of Guillermo Gómez- Peña. Underscoring the instrumentality of borders vis-à-vis dominant constructions of identity and in connection with questions of language, race, and citizenship, I argue that translation not only functions as an agent of hegemonic superiority and oppression, but also as a locus of plurivocity and hybridization. Drawing from the concepts “continuous variation” (Deleuze and Guattari [1987] 2004), “coloniality of power” (Mignolo 2000), and “hybridization” (García-Canclini 1995), I discuss the connection of translation with three main topics: monolingualism, globalization, and racial hybridity. First, I discuss the influence that the dominant ideology of the nation-state has exerted on the way translation has been conceptualized since translation studies emerged as a field. Then I turn to colonial legacies in the Americas and the role of translation in situations of language hegemony as shaped by forces of assimilation and diversification. Finally, I ix