Role of the Postcolonial Translator

Isabel Alonso-Breto

doi:10.21992/tc29533

Abstract

This essay consists of a meditation upon the emotions, affects and ethical compromises which surround the translation of texts as complex and delicate as Bharati Mukherjee’s short story “The Management of Grief”. This well-known piece of fiction offers a very painful account of how the families of the victims of the Air India Flight 182 attack in 1985 managed to survive the enormous grief of losing their loved ones in such abrupt, violent and unjust manner. The essay author, who decided to translate this story into Spanish so that it could be enjoyed by a wider readership, shares her thoughts regarding the demands of such painful yet necessary task. The whole area of Postcolonial Studies, where she develops her scholarly career, is unfortunately rife with such testing moments, and she wonders about the convenience or even the pertinence of such scholarly/textual interventions.

Highlights

I cried when translating into Spanish “The Management of Grief”, the story by Bharati Mukherjee which narrates the tragedy of the families destroyed by the Air India 182 attack occurred in 1985 (Mukherjee 1988, 177-197)
In the paper, which later turned into an article (AlonsoBreto 2017), I compared Shaila Bhave’s tragedy and that of “the relatives” to the way diasporas usually crystallize in their new locations
I found a clear parallelism between the neglect that Shaila and the relatives perceived in the Canadian society at the time of the attack, and the multiple forms of disaffection, from open hostility to meek indifference, that host societies often show to immigrant or refugee communities

Summary

Introduction

I cried when translating into Spanish “The Management of Grief”, the story by Bharati Mukherjee which narrates the tragedy of the families destroyed by the Air India 182 attack occurred in 1985 (Mukherjee 1988, 177-197). In this case it was sadness, that quiet grief which assaulted me every time I sat at my computer to work on the translation of that particular short story, and which suddenly had become immense.

Results

Conclusion