What is it about?
The article applies Deleuze and Guattari's notions of "majoritarian" and "minoritarian" literature to Chantal Wright's "experimental" English translation "The Portrait of a Tongue," asking whether Tawada wants to be a "major" writer or a "minor" writer, in Deleuze and Guattari's sense, and which way Wright's translation pushes her.
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Why is it important?
As a translingual writer, Yoko Tawada lives between languages: German and Japanese, mainly, but she wrote this story in the US, and English figures into the tale as well. What happens when that translinguality is translated into English? Chantal Wright attempts to manage that complexity by giving us a translation column (which often has Tawada's original German in it) and a commentary column; but perhaps her commentary column sometimes explains too much?
Perspectives
Thanks to Dennitza Gabrakova for introducing me to Yoko Tawada--first to her work, then to the writer herself, over coffee in Hong Kong! I was and am fascinated by Tawada's translinguality, and was looking for a way to engage it, even to participate in it, and this special issue offered the ideal opportunity to do so!
Professor Douglas J. Robinson
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Translating a Translingual Tongue, Journal of World Literature, January 2018, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/24056480-00302003.
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