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Linton Kwesi Johnson: Dub, Language and Riots
No full textLinton Kwesi Johnson is the pioneer of the literary genre known as dub poetry, a sub genre evolved out of reggae music, consisting of spoken word over reggae rhythms. In the dub panorama, LKJ covers an outstanding position, also thanks to the millions of records sold worldwide.
In my article I will pause on the part of his production linked to the Brixton riots, occurring in the 80s. The personal involvement of the author in the facts and the use of both Standard English and Jamaican Patois, give the poems a rare authenticity and strength, endorsed when performed live by a spiritual connection with the audience. The article is divided into two main sections, the first aiming at introducing the dub poetry and the Jamaican language, and the second in which the analysis will focus on the writing strategies the author uses to deal with the current socio-political issues depicted in some of his poems over three decades
Edgar Allan Poe's Metzengerstein: Machine vs.Human Translation
No full textThe beauty of translation lies in its imperfection, its multi-perspective approaches and its (almost) infinite outcomes. The development of cross- disciplinary studies, supported by the daily strengthening of highly technological tools, has enhanced and diversified the way in which students, scholars and professional translators deal with texts of all natures. Moving from the birth and evolution of machine translation (henceforth MT) systems, this paper aims to provide an empirical investigation into and an analytical reflection on the ways in which automatic translation tools diverge from human cognitive processes when producing a target text.
The basic units of translation chosen are excerpts from Edgar Allan Poe’s Metzengerstein, which will be paired with different machine and human translations into Italian. Accordingly, the ways in which machines (mis)read and translate texts will be analysed, as will the ways in which human translators interpret and transform the source text, respecting the style and communicative intentions of the author as they do so
Marlene NourbeSe Philip's Zong!: There is no telling this story, it must be translated
Full text linkInspired by the text of the legal decision Gregson vs Gilbert, known as “the Zong case”, Marlene NourbeSe Philip develops in Zong! a chain of poems which tell the murder of 150 African slaves in order to collect insurance money. The unconventional layout of the book, the staggering structure and the whimsical writing strategies adopted by the author constitute a very challenging task for the translator.
In an attempt to translate this book into Italian, or into any language other than English, the translator becomes soon aware of the few chances to preserve the sound, form and linguistic coherence of the st, losing the “postcolonial clash” between Standard English and African languages and the evocative attitude determined by wordplays and polyvocality throughout the book. The aim of this work is to show how a (not the, because it is only one among the many possibilities) translation/transformation of this challenging textus, can lead or not to a text which successfully combines visual writing and creativity with historical facts, in order to broaden the geography of postcolonial experiences to whom postcolonial is not
Scrittura e Traduzione in ‘The Middleman and Other Stories’ di Bharati Mukherjee
No full textLa letteratura è da sempre un nobile strumento di descrizione e critica della società, fonte di diletto o riflessione. È proprio per il bisogno di elogiare o redarguire la condotta delle istituzioni, di un regime o di una qualsiasi autorità che molte letterature impegnate hanno preso vita. Questa definizione certamente limitativa di letteratura, è però funzionale all’introduzione di una produzione letteraria che nasce dalla ribellione, dalla voglia di emancipazione politica, sociale e culturale di popoli assoggettati per lunghissimi periodi ai dettami di altri popoli conquistatori, ai ca- noni imposti dai loro usi: la letteratura post-coloniale.
Innanzitutto, è fondamentale capire il ruolo che la letteratura ha avuto nelle dinamiche di colonizzazione da parte dell’Impero Britannico, soprattutto sul versante indiano: sarà questo il tema centrale del lavoro, che porterà allo studio più approfondito di un’autrice contemporanea di origini indiane, Bharati Mukherjee. Ciò che questo lavoro si prefigge, è descrivere e analizzare le caratteristiche del- la lingua e le strategie di traduzione delle opere che for- mano l’ampia letteratura postcoloniale, partendo dalle teorie di traduzione dei più illustri esponenti del settore, come Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, Paul Ricoeur, Bill Ashcroft, Homi Bhabha, André Lefevere.
Imprescindibile, in tale contesto, è l’esposizione della concezione che Salman Rushdie ha di postcoloniale, di come la scrittura diventi metafora di migrazione, ibridismo, identità. La traduzione, così, è utilizzata per riformulare interi percorsi di ideologia sociale, culturale, politica, divenendo essa stessa la metafora della condizione umana nelle colonie, in cui ogni tentativo di omologazione, assorbimento culturale da parte dell’Impero, è combattuto attraverso una silenziosa ribellione linguistica. La disseminazione delle ideologie occidentali nelle varie parti del mondo incontra così un ostacolo insormontabile: la fierezza di un popolo la cui storia millenaria, e la lingua con cui questa storia si è tramandata nel tempo, non potranno mai essere cancellate. Se l’Impero vuole perpetrare il suo dominio, è necessario un compromesso: la scrittura, dunque, avrà la forma concreta dell’inglese, ma conserverà tra le righe l’elegante spiritualità delle origini
Marlene NourbeSe Philip, Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Dismantling of the English Norm.
No full textUnited by the will of giving to the Caribbean legacy and language the prestige they deserve, Marlene NourbeSe Philip and Linton Kwesi Johnson constitute a fascinating task for any scholar who approaches their work. This work moves among Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis and, in particular, Critical Discourse Analysis, taking into analysis some of the most representative works by Philip and Johnson
Language appropriation and cultural elements: the limits of translation in Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, Rao's Kanthapura and Mukherjee's The Middleman And Other Stories
No full textAlways poised between making losses and gains, translation does not say something exactly in a different language; the act of translating also implies creation, enhancement, transformation, movement. The faithful re-production of a text is the main aim of any translator whose real challenge, however, is the effective transmission of thoughts, cultures, identities. This goal becomes even harder to attain when translators try to measure themselves against the translation of postcolonial literature which is, in some cases, a translation itself.
Starting from the theories by scholars such as Benjamin, Nida, and Derrida among others, this work aims to analyse the source language and the degree of translation problems resulting from the translation into Italian of Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh, Raja Rao’s Kanthapura and some short stories from Bharati Mukherjee's The Middleman And Other Stories
Resignifying Standard English: Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s She tries her tongue her silence softly breaks
Full text linkThere is no other field such as that of postcolonial literature in which creative writing acts as a fundamental device to dismantle the central Imperialnorm. Among the huge post-colonial production, Caribbean literature can be considered an outstanding example of how language contact can result in highly imaginative changes in language structure. The new english resulting from such a contact, widely shifting from the acrolect to the basilect, unfolds the starring role of linguistic transformation – by means of neologisms, innovations, semantic distortions etc. – in the constant process of re-affirming identity, a process that shows ‘the ironic inability of the English language to ward off [the linguistic]invasion by those whom they invaded (Ashcroft, 2009:9)’.
English is my father tongue. A father tongue is a foreign language, therefore English is a foreign language not a mother tongue. What is my mother tongue my mummy tongue my mammy tongue my momsy tongue my modder tongue my ma tongue? (Philip, 1988:30)
The extract is taken from Discourse on the Logic of Language, an emblematic chapter of the book chosen for analysis, which perfectly suits the purpose of this work, that is to show how the linguistic changes in the writer’s Mother tongue, Tobagonian Creole English, code-switched with and embedded in the Father tongue, the colonizer’s standard English, are used to shape the search for identity, rebellion, the deafening silence of black people forced to slavery, the inhuman treatments and the sexual violence to which black women were subjected
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