Creolizing translation

Abstract

This article is a study of the proximity between the processes of creolization and translation, which share the opportunity of bringing our languages, our cultures and our literatures to a creative encounter. After a discussion of all the meanings these terms carry, the article will focus on two works by Derek Walcott: his rewriting of Tirso De Molina’sEl burlador de Sevilla, and his unpublished translation of Aimé Césaire’sCahier d’un retour au pays natal, to understand what directions these works have taken through Walcott’s intervention. Looking at these two different kinds of adaptation, I will try to reach a new understanding of creolized and creolizing translation. This kind of translations could in fact serve as maps to allow readers to orientate in the original text, and to bring it further, to unpredictable destinations, rather than simply reproducing a copy of the original in another language.