Translation and
Prostitution: Rosario Ferre’s
Maldito Amor and Sweet
Diamond Dust
Summary of an article by
Janice A. Jaffe
“El pasaje entre ambos”
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Ferre says that her “verdadera morada” is “ni
Washington ni San Juan, ni el pasado ni el presente,
sino el pasaje entre ambos.”
Gloria in Sweet Diamond Dust combines English and
Spanish, Black and White into one wordweed of love.
According to Ferre, it is the ability to pass back and
forth between cultures that is at the core of Puerto
Rican identity.
These are the similarities that Jaffe ties together in her
article.
On Destiny, Language and Translation:
or, Ophelia Adrift in the C. & O Canal
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Ferre makes a connection, in this essay on
translating Maldito Amor, between the
translator and the prostitute.
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One is an emblem of linguistic marginalization.
The other an emblem of sexual marginalization.
Translators vanish as they translate
Women’s individuality vanishes when they become
prostitutes – they are only body, only “woman.”
Translation as Gendered
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Composing is often thought of as a masculine
activity. A writer is generative, in control,
active.
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Translation as a feminine one. A translator is
secondary, s/he has a “reproductive” status,
s/he is dependent and lacking authority.
Pasaje entre ambos –
Moving back and forth
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Both the prostitute and the translator act to
disseminate knowledge, whether sexually or
linguistically, that has potential transformative power
for society.
The translator is an agent entrusted to linguistically
uncover and “carry across” into his or her homeland
the secrets of a foreign culture.
The prostitute has been ascribed a parallel knowledge
of the soul of a culture or the secrets of sexuality.
Pasaje entre ambos –
A space in which to pass between
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The translator is also seen as someone who violates
frontiers, who pollutes by mixing.
And, the prostitute can destroy, at least according to
some sources, the moral and political order of a
society.
In the US, laws forbid entry, residency, or citizenship
to anyone who has been a prostitute. Similar laws
apply to Communists or others who might be
considered political subversives.
Translator and Prostitute
and Cultural Identity
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Rates of prostitution rise in societies undergoing flux,
social disorder, or change.
Translation occupies a more prominent role in
“marginal, new, insecure, or weakened cultures.”
For example, in colonial societies, the translator is
essential for communication, but is also viewed as a
potential rebel.
Societies try to limit or control the translator and the
prostitute’s access to power by marginalizing them or
denying them entry.
Transitoriness
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Both the prostitute and the translator move – from
client to client, from voice to voice – and are thus
perceived to have more freedom than most people,
thereby creating an idea of power.
But, without a clear, authorized place from which to
speak, both also remain unheard. The translator
speaks through and for many other voices, but her
voice is seldom heard directly. Prostitutes are
silenced, move in and out of prostitution and from
client to client. They seldom are granted authority to
speak.
Prostitutes, Translators
and Puerto Ricans
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All three are transitory, according to Ferre,
who defines Puerto Ricans, with respect to
their Commonwealth status using terms like
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Cambio
Transformacion, and
Transitar entre dos extremos o polos
Ambiguity of Identity
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Like prostitutes and translators, Puerto Ricans
are caught between traditional notions of
fidelity and license, of powerlessness and
power, of assimilation and independence.
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This transitory or liminal state can be destructive,
limiting, inhibiting.
Or, it can be powerful. The fluidity of their state
can lead to unimagined possibilities.
The “Verdadera Morada” or the
spiritual/emotional home
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Through translation, because of the transitiveness of
her work in the passage from Spanish to English,
however, Ferre says that she has discovered her
verdadera morada or her spiritual home. In the
movement between the two worlds/languages is
where she really feels at home.
Somehow, moving between the two worlds/two
languages doesn’t destroy the Puerto Rican, but
instead it preserves the tensions between both cultures
which is integral to Puerto Rican identity.
Ferre and Translation
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She claims that as a translator of her own work she
prostitutes herself by rewriting into English and by
“adulterating” her work with omissions and additions.
But, this process breaks down the dichotomy of
production/reproduction implied in the male/female
division of writing translating.
She says that in tampering with the original as a
translator she participates in the work’s perpetual
process of becoming.
What’s Added?
What’s Missing?
Some critics think that Ferre adopts one cultural
identity in Spanish and another in English.
In Spanish she recognizes and critiques the
discrimination that Puerto Rican’s face in the
U.S. and she views English as a threat.
In English she seems to become an
assimilationist, silencing her native language
and the non-technical vision of the world that
Spanish represents to her.
Gloria, for example
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In Sweet Diamond Dust Laura describes Gloria as the
New Puerto Rican because, “In her body, or if you
prefer in her cunt, both races, both languages, English
and Spanish, grew into one soul, one wordweed of
love.”
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Wordweed – suggestive of a new language which is prolific
in its growth, resisting boundaries.
But this version of Gloria as positive, is not a part of
Maldito Amor. It is only in translation that the fact that she
is a prostitute is interpreted as positive, as emblematic of
Puerto Rico’s and Puerto Rican’s future.
In Maldito Amor
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The focus is on the oppression she has experienced as a
mulatta. The idea that she is a prostitute is only insinuated –
and only by the men. The women, Laura and Titina, never
mention prostitution with reference to Gloria, except to deny
it.
In Sweet Diamond Dust, it is only the male characters who cast
pejorative aspersions at Gloria for being a prostitute. Laura
describes Gloria as “the priestess of our harbor, Pythia of our
island’s future, of a time when a scanty, meager land that for
centuries had condemned us to immobility and backwardness
will ultimately have no importance and where our souls, our
very lives will be determined by transformation and daring, in
other words, by change.
The Future
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Laura bequeaths the plantation to Gloria with the
expectation that she will sell it off little by little – not
to North American Sugar interests, but to Puerto
Ricans returning to the island after picking grapes or
driving taxis through New York.
It is the prostitute/translator who builds bridges that
create opportunities for cultural survival in Sweet
Diamond Dust.
The prostitute/translator is the reproductive one,
giving birth to something entirely new – Nicolasito –
fathered by Nicolas or by one of her clients, the child
of all.
Murakami and Translation
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MY MOST INTENSE EXPERIENCE with translation, thus
far, has involved a Japanese author. . . . Haruki Murakami is a
writer who is intimately acquainted with Anglo-American
culture even as he remains outside it. (I think writers of this
kind may well make the most interesting test cases for
translation; at any rate, I find myself repeatedly drawn to
them.) Murakami, who has translated Raymond Carver, F.
Scott Fitzgerald, and Paul Theroux into Japanese, is quite
attached to the Beatles, jazz, Scotch whiskey, Marx Brothers
movies, and many other products of Western culture. He
repeatedly injects something akin to an American sensibility -a rebellious, non-salaryman's sensibility -- into his hapless
fictional protagonists. Yet the novels are written in Japanese
and set, for the most part, in Japan, so when we read them in
English, we get . . .a strange sensation of foreignness mixed
with familiarity, of worlds collapsing in on each other.
Translation by Rubin
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Here, submitted as Exhibit A, are the opening sentences of the
Rubin translation:
"When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful
of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the
overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie, which has to be
the perfect music for cooking pasta.
"I wanted to ignore the phone, not only because the
spaghetti was nearly done, but because Claudio Abbado was
bringing the London Symphony to its musical climax.”
Not bad, eh? Perfectly good English sentences presented by a
reasonably interesting narrator.
Translation by Birnbaum
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But now listen to Exhibit B by Arthur Birnbaum:
"I'm in the kitchen cooking spaghetti when the woman calls.
Another moment until the spaghetti is done; there I am,
whistling the prelude to Rossini's La Gazza Ladra along with
the FM radio. Perfect spaghetti-cooking music.
"I hear the telephone ring but tell myself, ‘Ignore it. Let the
spaghetti finish cooking. It's almost done, and besides, Claudio
Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra are coming to a
crescendo.’”
What’s the difference? Which one is better? Why?