Isabel Gómez: Cannibal Translation

Isabel Gómez's lecture was fascinating. Her theory of cannibal translation is post-colonial and focuses on bringing Latin American translation theory into global discourse. It was emphasized as a creative translation strategy offering new concepts such as transrelationships and transcreation. As she stated, it’s moving away from the source to move toward the aesthetic; a reproduction of prioritizing aesthetic information over semantic. We were able to see what this meant not only with the examples she gave in the lecture with Octavio Paz and Haroldo de Campos work (which I’m now excited to read Transblanco) but also with her translation of Angelica Freita’s poem we read earlier in the week.

Before entering the MFA program, my view of the translator’s task leaned towards translators being completely invisible. I found complete adherence to the author’s text to be the most important thing and always felt uncomfortable about liberties taken by translators. A reason for this is that I didn’t understand why someone would want to take liberties in a text. But Gómez’s framing of cannibal translation as being loving made me think about this more. She discussed that some works need to be devoured to be recreated or translated (reminding me Megan McDowell’s comments about some texts calling for liberties to be taken). She also mentioned reciprocity over extraction; independence even in translation; and leaving teeth marks on a work. All of these concepts really took me out of the mindset of invisibility.


I was glad Gómez brought up Venuti’s words of how we have yet to read translation as translation and so, cannibal translation, encourages us to read translation anew. In addition, I was grateful she provided ways in which this strategy could be useful such as in editing translations, consulting, teaching, and even post-editing in machine translation which is work I’ve done myself in the past.


By the end of her lecture, I felt inspired to think of how I could leave “teeth marks” in my own work.


- Maria

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