Plumb History Sound

• In Event: Pressing Borders, People, and Languages

Abstract

When you are bilingual, languages grow within you like the rhythms of distinct musical traditions that, on the one hand, we could say, happily coexist. But, on the other hand, in the name of Bach and Mozart’s god, Hatuey, the Taíno Cacique from the island of Ayití, was put to death. So when our bodies sound languages we can’t avoid history’s return; together languages represent a contradiction and a conflict that is ultimately irresolvable. This is why translation is the genre that most reflects an immigrant’s sorrow. When translation sounds it must represent as much the meaning of pain as the sound of it, which is the embodied presence, of that pain, and the contradiction of it. This paper will address how translation practices, including my own, have embodied this contradiction and thus opened up the signifying fields of the original work.

Author

• Anna C Deeny, Georgetown University