Yeasemin Yildiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823241309
- eISBN:
- 9780823241347
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823241309.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses the practice of translating the expressions of one language literally into another as a particular mode of multilingual writing. Identifying the specificity of this mode, in ...
More
This chapter discusses the practice of translating the expressions of one language literally into another as a particular mode of multilingual writing. Identifying the specificity of this mode, in which another language is simultaneously present and absent, as well as its prevalence in postcolonial writing, it turns to Turkish-German writer Emine Sevgi Özdamar's stories and novels from the 1990s, in which literally translated Turkish expressions feature frequently. Reading literal translation in relationship to the literality of the traumatic flashback as elaborated by trauma theorist Cathy Caruth, the chapter shows that these multilingual instances do not so much express the experience of migration from Turkey to Germany, as is so often presumed, but rather refer back to the experience of state violence perpetrated in the “mother tongue” prior to migration. A discussion of the linguistic history of the Ottoman Empire and the radical language reform in the Turkish Republic underscores the role of state intervention in the construction of the mother tongue. Özdamar's practice of literal translation, it is finally argued, also reconfigures German as a post-Holocaust language.Less
This chapter discusses the practice of translating the expressions of one language literally into another as a particular mode of multilingual writing. Identifying the specificity of this mode, in which another language is simultaneously present and absent, as well as its prevalence in postcolonial writing, it turns to Turkish-German writer Emine Sevgi Özdamar's stories and novels from the 1990s, in which literally translated Turkish expressions feature frequently. Reading literal translation in relationship to the literality of the traumatic flashback as elaborated by trauma theorist Cathy Caruth, the chapter shows that these multilingual instances do not so much express the experience of migration from Turkey to Germany, as is so often presumed, but rather refer back to the experience of state violence perpetrated in the “mother tongue” prior to migration. A discussion of the linguistic history of the Ottoman Empire and the radical language reform in the Turkish Republic underscores the role of state intervention in the construction of the mother tongue. Özdamar's practice of literal translation, it is finally argued, also reconfigures German as a post-Holocaust language.
Yasemin Yildiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823241309
- eISBN:
- 9780823241347
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823241309.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book is a study of the workings of a monolingual paradigm and of multilingual attempts to overcome it. It argues that monolingualism—the idea that having just one language is the norm—is a ...
More
This book is a study of the workings of a monolingual paradigm and of multilingual attempts to overcome it. It argues that monolingualism—the idea that having just one language is the norm—is a recent invention dating back only to late-eighteenth-century Europe, yet has become a dominant, if overlooked, structuring principle of modernity. According to this paradigm, individuals are imagined to be able to think and feel properly only in one language, their “mother tongue,” while multiple languages are seen as a threat to the cohesion of individuals and communities, institutions and disciplines. The book argues that since reemergent multilingual forms and practices exist in tension with the paradigm, they need to be analyzed as “postmonolingual,” that is, as marked by the continuing force of monolingualism. Focused on canonical and minority writers working in German in the twentieth century, the individual chapters examine distinct forms of multilingualism: writing in one socially unsanctioned “mother tongue” about another language (Franz Kafka); mobilizing words of foreign derivation as part of a multilingual constellation within one language (Theodor W. Adorno); producing an oeuvre in two separate languages simultaneously (Yoko Tawada); writing by literally translating from the “mother tongue” into another language (Emine Sevgi Özdamar); and mixing different languages, codes, and registers within one text (Feridun Zaimoğlu). These analyses suggest that the dimensions of gender, kinship, and affect encoded in the “mother tongue” are crucial to the persistence of monolingualism and the challenge of multilingualism.Less
This book is a study of the workings of a monolingual paradigm and of multilingual attempts to overcome it. It argues that monolingualism—the idea that having just one language is the norm—is a recent invention dating back only to late-eighteenth-century Europe, yet has become a dominant, if overlooked, structuring principle of modernity. According to this paradigm, individuals are imagined to be able to think and feel properly only in one language, their “mother tongue,” while multiple languages are seen as a threat to the cohesion of individuals and communities, institutions and disciplines. The book argues that since reemergent multilingual forms and practices exist in tension with the paradigm, they need to be analyzed as “postmonolingual,” that is, as marked by the continuing force of monolingualism. Focused on canonical and minority writers working in German in the twentieth century, the individual chapters examine distinct forms of multilingualism: writing in one socially unsanctioned “mother tongue” about another language (Franz Kafka); mobilizing words of foreign derivation as part of a multilingual constellation within one language (Theodor W. Adorno); producing an oeuvre in two separate languages simultaneously (Yoko Tawada); writing by literally translating from the “mother tongue” into another language (Emine Sevgi Özdamar); and mixing different languages, codes, and registers within one text (Feridun Zaimoğlu). These analyses suggest that the dimensions of gender, kinship, and affect encoded in the “mother tongue” are crucial to the persistence of monolingualism and the challenge of multilingualism.
Brian Lennon
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665013
- eISBN:
- 9781452946344
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665013.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Multilingual literature defies simple translation. Beginning with this insight, this book examines the resistance multilingual literature offers to book publication itself. In readings of G. V. ...
More
Multilingual literature defies simple translation. Beginning with this insight, this book examines the resistance multilingual literature offers to book publication itself. In readings of G. V. Desani’s All about H. Hatterr, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Christine Brooke-Rose’s Between, Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation, Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Mutterzunge, and Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul, among other works, this book shows how nationalized literary print culture inverts the values of a transnational age, reminding us that works of literature are, above all, objects in motion. Looking closely at the limit of both multilingual literary expression and the literary journalism, criticism, and scholarship that comments on multilingual work, this book presents a critical reflection on the fate of literature in a world gripped by the crisis of globalization.Less
Multilingual literature defies simple translation. Beginning with this insight, this book examines the resistance multilingual literature offers to book publication itself. In readings of G. V. Desani’s All about H. Hatterr, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Christine Brooke-Rose’s Between, Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation, Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Mutterzunge, and Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul, among other works, this book shows how nationalized literary print culture inverts the values of a transnational age, reminding us that works of literature are, above all, objects in motion. Looking closely at the limit of both multilingual literary expression and the literary journalism, criticism, and scholarship that comments on multilingual work, this book presents a critical reflection on the fate of literature in a world gripped by the crisis of globalization.
