Spanish Imposition: Literary Self-Translation Into and Out of Spanish in Canada (1971-2016)

Abstract

To date, region-based scholarship into Hispanophone literary self-translation overwhelmingly locates practices in spaces where Spanish not only has official language status but is also the dominant language. Yet, in officially bilingual (English-French) Canada, at least 25 people translated their own writing into or out of Spanish between 1971 and 2016, making these writers the single largest subset of Canada-based self-translators working with an unofficial language. But who are these authors? What might be said about their self-translations? And what does it mean to self-translate using Spanish when that language does not have official status? Adopting a product-oriented perspective, I explore these questions via three lines of enquiry: 1) time and space: when and where were these writers born? 2) frequency: how often do these authors self-translate? and 3) language: how can self-translations and self-translators be characterized in terms of language variety and combinations? Ultimately, I argue that, in the context of Canadian self-translation, the Spanish language is simultaneously imposing—pushing resolutely against paradigms of two-ness embodied by official bilingualism—and imposed upon, since it lacks official status of its own and the infrastructural robustness that accompanies it.