Translation, selftranslation and migration in the Spanish exiles after the Civil War

What is it about?

This article analyses the emigration of Spanish Republican exiles to Mexico for political reasons and the role played by translation and self-translation in these circumstances. It demonstrates how the ‘common’ language, Spanish, soon proved to be a double-edged sword due to the strong differences between the Spanish spoken on the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish spoken in Mexico. This made it difficult for the exiles to integrate since they had to continuously negotiate between their plural identities from the position of exile. Besides, the “eccentric” view of their native country led some of them to reconsider the historical tradition in which they had been trained in Spain, growing awareness of the colonial relationship between Spain and Mexico and its cultural implications. Pere Bosch Gimpera provides a highly illustrative case of the issues that have been addressed in the present article in relation to cultural translation and (self-)translation in the Spanish Republican diaspora.

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Photo by Ruben Ramirez on Unsplash

Photo by Ruben Ramirez on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This article addresses the situation of migrants in relation to cultural translation, analysing their position as both agent and object of translation. This approach places the migrant in a place close to cultural mediation, and posits an idea of translation as a much broader practice than a linguistic activity.

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