Edwin Gentzler. Translation and Identity in the Americas: New Directions in Translation Theory. New York, Routledge, 2008, 232 p.

In Translation and Identity in the Americas: New Directions in Translation Theory, author Edwin Gentzler investigates the critical role translation plays in creating, transforming and reflecting the identities of those who live in Central, North and South America. Emphasizing minority and/or marginalized groups and drawing on his own research as well as that of many other artists and scholars, notably Jacques Derrida, Gentzler focuses on multiculturalism in the United States, feminist translation and theatre translation in Quebec, anthropophagia (cannibalism) in Brazil, fiction writing in Latin America, and literature produced in the Carribean and along the Mexico-United States border. Throughout, Gentzler’s text reveals that the study of translation and identity in the Americas is a valuable means of questioning and developing various concepts and postulates of translation studies.

Although the book frequently adopts the Jakobsonian definition of interlingual text-to-text transfer, it challenges fixed definitions of translation by embracing polysemy. For example, Québécois feminist translation is described as an intralingual practice, moving from patriarchal to non-patriarchal discourses; Brazilian cannibalist writer Mário de Andrade illustrates corporeal translation by changing the black skin of a native Brazilian character to white, which subsequently alters the character’s life because of the new ways in which he is perceived; and daily living for Caribbean natives is discussed as a process of perpetual self-translation between native and colonizing languages. Furthermore, when the text describes how translators in the Americas frequently use antitranslation, nontranslation and deliberate mistranslation to assert identity or to exclude the Other, it challenges theories advocating that translation render all aspects of the text. While such definitional openness regarding translation could be problematic in another context, perhaps leading to unfocused discussions, polysemy in this study broadens the potential for subsequent research on translation in the Americas and elsewhere.

Gentzler’s investigation also challenges various binarisms common to translation discourse by showing how translation in the Americas repeatedly blurs the lines between so-called opposing pairs. Translation in la frontera—zones along the Mexico–United States border, which have belonged at times to Mexico, at times to the U.S.—reflects how notions of “home” and “foreign” are indistinguishable and how those living in such in-between spaces are simultaneously at home and abroad. “Original” and “translation” are conflated in works such as those by frontera writer, Rolando Hinojosa, who writes/self-translates texts in both Spanish and English, often producing bilingual works. Moreover, the slippery nature of the distinction between “author” and “translator” is illustrated by this and other examples of self-translation, where author and translator are the same individual, and is further emphasized by instances where non-self-translating translators are listed as the original author, as in Quebec translator Michel Tremblay’s interpretations of several plays and in cannibalist translator Haroldo de Campos’s translation of Goethe’s Faust. Translation and Identity is an important publication partly because, as it reflects heterogeneity and hybridity in the Americas, it emphasizes the grey areas of translation theory as well as the agency and visibility of the translator and the creative nature of her work.

Gentzler’s text is weakened, however, by poor editing. In addition to many typographical errors, there are significant problems with its content: the subsection entitled “Tremblay, Garneau, and Germain,” contains no reference to Germain (pp. 48-51); though neither she nor her area of study is Québécois, Luise von Flotow is termed a “Québécois feminist” (p. 52); one subsection of the Latin American fiction chapter introduces both Julio Cortázar and Mario Vargas Llosa, yet Cortázar is not discussed again until two subsections later.

The more disappointing aspect of Gentzler’s text lies in the terminology he uses to designate groups of people. In the introduction, he addresses the complicated nature of terms such as “American,” which simultaneously refers to citizens of the United States and residents of the Americas; yet he continues to use this term equivocally throughout the book, thereby perpetuating the power it assigns to the United States. This is a surprising choice since his book focuses on the links between translation and power imbalances. Gentzler could have taken advantage of this opportunity to suggest and use a more progressive designation for U.S. citizens, particularly given that alternatives already exist in other languages in the Americas (e.g. estadounidense in Spanish and Portuguese; Étatsunien/étatsunien in French). In fact, the English word Unitedstatesian already exists, but it has not (yet) gained common currency. This would have been a perfect opportunity for Gentzler to mobilize it.

Nonetheless, Gentzler’s text is very compelling. He persuasively argues that, rather than being a transitional phase in their evolution, translation is “constitutive” of the Americas (p. 5). Furthermore, his work corroborates both his call for and his anticipation of a new turn in translation studies—the social-psychological turn, which “expand[s] a functional approach to include social effects and individual affects” (p. 180). In doing so, he points out which research areas require further attention, thereby laying the groundwork for the eventual surge in this anticipated new turn.