The poetics of Creole translation

Abstract

Despite the advancements of European translation studies, the relationships between post-slavery, postcolonial and postmodern languages, identities, and cultures are still rarely studied. In this context, in particular, the atavist notions of diglossia and alienation are still at the heart of debates, forcing the present identities and cultures into a tense relationship. These notions are actually opposed to the free expression and the free development of the individual and of the society they form. It is an ambiguous, controversial and restrictive situation for the researcher, who is permanently faced with relative approaches to the meaning of reality –a dichotomy. For the Creole author and/or translator –defender of the word and of its authenticity, always looking for collective realizations–, restrictions are the reality of a description of what is universal.

Today, at a time in which globalization has definitely imposed itself on the world’s destiny, what remains of the Creole utopias? What is the place of the author –of the translator—in the new context of Creole society, where the ancestral and authentic word seems to have lost all its meaning and value? Within which frameworks should the works thus created be included? Which destinies are these works heading towards? Which horizons, which utopias?