Literature is often assumed to be monolingual: publishing rights are
sold on the basis of linguistic territories and translated books are
assumed to move from one "original" language to another. Yet a wide
range of contemporary literary works mix and meld two or more languages,
incorporating translation into their composition. How are these
multilingual works translated, and what are the cultural and political
implications of doing so?
In Literature in Motion, Ellen Jones offers a new framework for
understanding literary multilingualism, emphasizing how authors and
translators can use its defamiliarizing and disruptive potential to
resist conventions of form and dominant narratives about language and
gender. Examining the connection between translation and multilingualism
in contemporary literature, she considers its significance for the
theory, practice, and publishing of literature in translation. Jones
argues that translation does not conflict with multilingual writing's
subversive potential. Instead, we can understand multilingualism and
translation as closely intertwined creative strategies through which
other forms of textual and conceptual hybridity, fluidity, and
disruption are explored.
Jones addresses both well-known and understudied writers from across the
American hemisphere who explore the spaces between languages as well as
genders, genres, and textual versions, reading their work alongside
their translations. She focuses on U.S. Latinx authors Susana
Chávez-Silverman, Junot Díaz, and Giannina Braschi, who write in
different forms of "Spanglish," as well as the Brazilian writer Wilson
Bueno, who combines Portuguese and Spanish, or "Portunhol," with the
indigenous language Guarani, and whose writing is rendered into
"Frenglish" by Canadian translator Erín Moure.
