The Politics and Poetics of Translation in the Global Hispanophone
Multilingualism within the Global Hispanophone signals the past colonial routes and present migratory flows that complicate the social cohesion national literatures purport to consolidate. Issues of translation, therefore, are steeped in both national and regional tensions, reflecting language policies and diglossic practices that uphold the official status of some languages while relegating others to low-prestige peripheral or private spheres, or raising questions about the inappropriateness of their use in written discourse or in other public spheres. This panel invites papers that address questions of linguistic and cultural hegemony through the lens of translation. What kinds of texts are translated; from and to which languages; how and by whom? How does translation make racial stories legible in—or erase them from—the Spanish-speaking world? How can multilingualism exist within the cultural production of the Global Hispanophone? What is considered ‘untranslatable’ and what are the stakes involved in the choice to withhold translation?
