Isabel Gómez's translation

Ruoyi.zhang

This week's speaker is Isabel Gómez, who primarily translates Latin American literature. I've always had a question: whether she is now an author or a translator (these two professions still have completely different meanings for me). Is the Cannibal translation she proposed now summarized in the book her own idea, or is it one of her translation methods? Neither the PPT nor her lecture are very clear, so is she now a full-time translator or an author who has moved away from translation? In the lecture, she mentioned that an important part of cannibal translation is letter exchange (and digital) between authors and translators, which I think is particularly important. Among the speakers so far, except for Glaser, who barely communicates with the author, most translators maintain close contact with the author, not only for the purpose of better communicating vocabulary selection, but also to further understand what they really want to convey in the sentence. In her words, this relationship is referred to as a "translationship," which has a positive impact on both parties and is mutually beneficial. It was also mentioned in the lecture that the shape and meaning of the text can still express the idea. In addition, it spawned a kind of Doublet nonsense poem where changing a letter in the word changes its meaning completely.

Well, regarding cannibal translation, on the premise of the success of the big market in North America, we can see the tendency of Latin American authors to try their best to cater to them. But in the final analysis, is it more important for their works to be recognized by themselves or by the market? In my opinion, the first pass is themself, because only the work that please themself would have the ability to be recognized by the market. For this reason, the cover she chose to represent the wilted food on the outside, representing Latin American literature itself, is very appropriate. Another very special place is that I saw the translator and the author's name, placed together with same size and approximate same place on the cover of the book. It's hard to see the scenario, including whether the publisher wants to make money by using the title of the translation, or whether the translation is really the focus of the book rather than the author, which contains their mind rather than the original author's strained space for them. Cannibal translation where “swallowing things that is not mine, untranslated”, “leave toothmarks on the book”, "consuming recipe" seems to me to be closer to a book eater in a way, but what she says as a broad code word and in combination with Brazilian culture, cannibal is a really good choice, because what it stands for, being demonized by the Europeans, actually starts to "intimidate" those who shy away from the word.