THE SPACE ‘IN BETWEEN': WHAT IS A HYBRID TEXT?

Abstract

The contribution discusses the concept of the hybrid text familiar in postcolonial literature as a text written by the ex-colonised in the language of the excoloniser, hence creating a ‘new language' and occupying a space ‘in between'. It is therefore not identical with the concept of the hybrid text discussed in Schäffner and Adab (1997) as the result of an interlingual translation process, although there are many similarities, from the ‘strange, unusual' features to the phenomenon of ‘contact as con-flict'. For the translator, the postcolonial hybrid text – due to its ‘new language' in-volving elements ranging from lexical and grammatical innovation to culture-bound items – presents many problems. These emerge clearly from the examples discussed here, which are taken from India (Rushdie and Roy) and from the Philippines (the tradi-tional form of the short story known as the sugilanon). It is seen that the hybrid, innovative nature of the language is often actually reduced by the interlingual translation process, and – in contrast to the foreignising process of artificially ‘bending back' the lan-guage – a case is made for a holistic, ‘scenes-and-frames' approach and for strategies that maximise the creative potential of the text for the target culture.