Who’s afraid of difference? Post-monolingualism against power

ABSTRACT

The way the West thinks of the subaltern has opened an extremely necessary research venue in Translation Studies which underlines the importance of improving communication in managing emergencies and crises. Translation is an underdeveloped tool in situations of risk, and therefore the right to language access is in many cases overlooked. It seems things are beginning to change if we take into account the literature on the subject. However, the aim of this is not to analyse how Power harms the subaltern by silencing them but the opposite. By taking a less travelled road, I will try to show how the subaltern’s linguistic diversity, fundamentally ‘queer’ with respect to the normative, is seen as a risk by the status quo. I do not intend to study the subaltern’s vulnerability but the Power they exert through language. My aim is to show how writers who have experienced the structural violence of migratory crises, marginalisation, social exclusion and unbelonging, react not fearing the dominant culture and accepting its language as a way for them to be recognised by Power, but quite the opposite.

KEYWORDS:

• Linguistic terrorism
• translation
• subaltern
• migrants

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For an analysis of Mock Spanish reproducing racist stereotypes in commercials on food see Hill (2005), 115–116.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte

Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte is Professor of Translation at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Her research interests include translation theory, migration studies, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, contemporary art and gender studies. She has published 19 books, 12 anthologies (among them The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies, with Roberto Valdeón) and over a hundred book chapters and essays (Meta, Perspectives, The Translator, European Journal of English Studies, Translating and Interpreting Studies, Forum, etc.) on these issues. She has been included in Routledge’s Collection of Great Linguists and Translation Theorists. She has lectured in México, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Chile, Germany, Italy, England, Ireland and France. She is a practising translator specialised in the fields of philosophy, literature, history and contemporary art.