Salvadon readings

Alexander Pfau

    Salvadon's translations are a passion project, more than her job. As a university professor, her income allows her to work on translation in her off time while still being able to make money. Her translations are all feminist texts, focused on the Caribbean islands. The most interesting thing about her to me however, was her pronunciation of the word "Haiti". She says it like "He-di", and in a quick fashion, much different than the normal American would. I think it symbolizes her focus on identity, and how important a place's history is in giving it its own identity and purpose. In one of her excerpts, she even highlights how the character is struggling to find their identity in the French world that is attempting to shun them. With the goal of discerning the "blackness" from a text and expelling it onto the audience, she feels her translations are a high stakes race to preserve the history of her own history.

    The readings for this week were much more focused on the the process of translation than actual translated works. Once again, the idea of identity is present, creating a much more important reason for translating work. In her talk as well, she continues to talk about differences between the French and English, and how placement of the verbs makes a huge difference in terms of sentence structure between the two languages. Another important point was the difference in dialects between, for example Haitian -Creole, and the mainland French. Salvadon avoids the use of slurs in her translations, instead translating terms like n---- into man or woman, which keeps the text more academic, and keeps the historical context more fitting.