Voice-Overs: Translation and Latin American Literature

Abstract

Voice-Overs: and Latin American Literature. Ed. Daniel Balderston and Marcy E. Schwartz. Albany: SUNY P, 2002. 266 pages.Despite the increase in critical writings on translation in the last twenty-some years, there is still much uncertainty in the profession over what, exactly, translation studies can encompass. Voice-Overs, edited by Daniel Balderston and Marcy Schwartz, goes a long way towards illustrating the potential of studying translation, especially with respect to Latin American literature. As Balderston and Schwartz state in their excellent introduction: has become both a mechanism and a metaphor for contemporary transnational in the Americas... continues to be one of the main tools, and defining images, of Latin American culture in its relation to world cultures (1).Voice-Overs is divided into three sections: the first contains essays and reflections by Latin American and U.S. Latino writers; the second by translators; the third by critics. first section, Writers on Translation, begins with Borges's The Homeric Versions (as translated by Eliot Weinberger). This essay is an especially apt place to start, as nearly every discussion of translation and Latin American literature begins-or ought to begin-with Borges. This section continues with light-toned commentaries by Cortazar and Garcia Marquez on the difficulties and under-appreciation of translation, and continues with the provocative interventions of the Argentine poets Diana Bellessi and Luisa Futoransky, who link translation with considerations of exile, language, and identity. connections that Bellessi draws between translation and otherness are key here; Bellessi states: is above all an attempt at alterity (26). Of related relevance is Rosario Ferre's essay, which focuses on the (un)translatability of cultures. Writers on Translation section also includes texts by the Brazilian Nelida Pinon and by four additional Southern Cone writers: Ariel Dorfman, Cristina Peri Rossi, Tomas Eloy Martinez, and Ricardo Piglia. Here the contributions of Peri Rossi and Piglia stand out.The only major voice probably missing from the first part of Voice-Overs is that of Octavio Paz (sections from Traduccion: Literatura y literalidad would have been useful here). On the other hand, the inclusion of texts by U.S. Latino writers Junot Diaz, Cristina Garcia, and Rolando Hinojosa-Smith is a definite strength. An important breakthrough of the anthology, in fact, is the dialogue it establishes between Latin American and U.S. Latino literatures through discussions of translation.The second section of the anthology, Translating Latin America, contains essays and reflections by some of the leading translators of Latin American literature into English: Margaret Sayers Peden, Gregory Rabassa, Suzanne Jill Levine, James Hoggard, Eliot Weinberger, and John Felstiner. …