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This article considers the Spanish and French translations of nonbinary pronouns in Netflix’s One Day at a Time, a social-justice-oriented sitcom. The article compares the source text with six parallel translations taken from one episode and isolates two main translation strategies. In the first strategy, translators rely on calque translations from English that demonstrate a misunderstanding of the source text. The second strategy shows an active engagement on the part of translators with Hispanic and Francophone Queer communities, replicating authentic Queer language practices. The article goes on to describe the implications of both strategies on reception and outlines several reasons why community-informed translation should be established as a best practice for Queer-oriented texts.

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Since the 1990s literary production in Spanglish, the so-called “hybrid” language that mixes English and Spanish, has been increasing. With increasing publication has come a demand for translations of these texts. While some authors readily choose to translate their work, others are closer in line with Gloria Anzaldúa who said “Until I can take pride in my language I cannot take pride in myself... Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate” (1999, 81). This hesitation to accommodate English speakers fails to consider that approximately 2/3 of them are non-native speakers. Consequently, the role that English can play in south-to-south translation is not negligible and “having” to translate because of the existing English hegemony in the US Latinx context is not the same as choosing to translate for any of a number of other motivating factors. Both are equally legitimate options, but this begs the question, is there a way to translate Spanglish so that English readers can access it without “accommodating” the English hegemony? This paper explores intralingual translation rather than normative interlingual translation as a tool to expand the readership of these texts while not fully assimilating them into the traditional English publication norms.

Fabián Severo’s collection of short stories, Viralata, from which this short story comes, was originally published in Portuñol, a “hybrid” mix of Spanish and Portuguese, as it is spoken near the city of Artigas in northern Uruguay. Portuñol, like other “hybrid” border varieties, has rarely been published, though it would seem that interest is growing since the 1990s, particularly in Uruguay.   As a scholar of “hybrid”, diaspora, and transnational languages I decided to explore the possibility of translating this work into Spanglish, the “hybrid” mix of Spanish and English commonly heard among Latinxs in the US. Though the cultural realities of Portuñol speakers and Spanglish speakers is different, there are some important parallels: literature in both has emerged only relatively recently, little has been translated into either language variety, education is not conducted in either, and the dominant discourses around language in both contexts has traditionally favoured literature written in the prestige varieties of English, Spanish, or Portuguese—which should come as no surprise. Given this, I wondered about the experience, aesthetic, and cultural value of putting two distant borders of Spanish in contact through translation.   This is my first translation of Fabián Severo’s work.