|
Bit 1
|
Foreign Dialogues is a collection of translations that were, at some point in time, memories and conversations.
Mary Zournazi (whose name conveniently means "to speak in tongues") positions herself as editor, interviewer and
styliser of this series of transformed yarns with "Australian and international writers, intellectuals and film
makers" (back cover). Like an academic conference, a nebulous theme of 'foreignness and identity' allows the
interviewees to discuss language, culture, nationalism, sexuality and belonging, while referencing their own work
and pushing their individual theoretical barrows. Sneja Gunew, Julia Kristeva, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Eva Hoffman are
just a few of the individuals who became involved in discussions about foreignness with Zournazi. The result is a
diverse and often highly personal collection of thoughts-on-the-topic that will cyclically enlighten, enrage and
enthral the reader, depending on his or her own theoretical or political bent.
|
|---|
|
Bit 2
|
My desire to flag the translated nature of this collection is in fitting with Zournazi's aim for the work. She
refers to this as a "project" (12), a term that describes the resultant text more amply than any of the introductory
allusions to friendly conversations between "thinkers" (back cover). The reader receives a conventional question
and answer transcription of each conversation, but the fine print alerts us to the fact that some of these
conversations took place over considerable distances and time spans, commencing on the phone, continuing on a fax
months later. The responses are evidently not spontaneous and are often drawn from, or inspired by, the
interviewees' previous works. Zournazi states that the choice of oral medium was a "tactic" on her behalf, allowing
her to "translate and transform the theoretical practices" of her own research through dialogues with others (13).
She likes to mention that the discussions have travelled through various forms of interference and forms of being
(oral, written, pictorial). She suggests that "the way in which these conversations came into being
intersects with the themes and questions of foreignness explored throughout the book" (11). In this way, the
"project" is a self-conscious examination of translation; of the ways in which information is transformed,
transmutated and transcribed; and of the way in which conversations can be recorded and then repackaged in a manner
that means we will never know what was actually asked or answered. Zournazi eliminates the "scraps of language" --
gestures, "ums, ahs, buts", "repetitions and redundancies"(12) -- acknowledging that there is a level of
untranslatability (from the oral to the written) in a conversation. There is a certain impossibility (discussed
specifically, on page 57, by Trinh T. Minh-ha) of capturing a moment in time between two people due to the
inevitable interference in the transmission process.
|
|---|
|
Bit 3
|
Zournazi's choice of format and approach to what constitutes translation is appealing. It emphasises gaps and
ruptures; it speaks about the inherent falsity of representation and the dialogic experience of identity formation.
Her sensual experience of the wider interpretations of both 'translation' and 'conversation' is tangible in her
sectional introductions, some of which are manic in their attempt to explain the processes involved in the
interview -- the phone, fax, email, disorganised meeting times, actual interpreters, translators and transcribers,
funding assistance, travel, and so on. If you read the silences, these conversations about distance and
displacement have been obviously mediated and, as such, distance the reader from the conversational event, and this
excites Zournazi.
|
|---|
|
Bit 4
|
Zournazi's project shows that translation is able to create reading positions and dictate distance. The Kristeva
interview, for example, was first filtered by an interpreter, then translated, then rewritten. The eternally
fraught nature of translation usually necessitates the replacement of a term which does not have an 'equivalent'
(itself a problematic notion) in the second language with something as close in meaning as possible. Traditionally,
the best translation is one that does not look like a translation; that reads as if it could have been written in
the second language. In its final incarnation, the Kristeva chapter features French words in brackets next to
apparently insufficient translations of their meaning. In doing this, a decision has been made to make translation
obvious, to encourage various levels of reading where readers of French might receive a different understanding of
the text. This text, which is published in English here, positions the reader of English as an outsider and excludes
them from an aspect of the communication process. Zournazi wishes readers to think about the unreliable nature of
communication and what it is that makes us feel foreign.
|
|---|
|
Bit 5
|
Always engaging, these dialogues discuss the experience of foreignness through ethnicity, sexual foreignness in the
marginalisation of women or homosexuals, the indigenous experience of being foreign in one's own country, speech
styles, gestures and the body as politically and culturally charged signifiers. There is examination of the utter
frustration of being unable to communicate in a given environment and the psychological ramifications of torn
cultural allegiance. Assumedly to address Zournazi's concern about "current tensions and cultural fears as we enter
into a new millennium" (9), there is also discussion of why nationalism is important at this time in history. There
were places where I found the talk of universal values or a unitary language (as a potential solution to
inter-cultural communication problems) unsettling amidst such a celebration of diversity. Yet I was forced to think about
these comments as the products of a deeply felt relationship with language -- perhaps one of the few things we
do all have in common.
|
|---|
|
Bit 6
|
An interesting sideline to the translation questions addressed here is a discussion of the nature of 'the interview'
itself. Trinh T. Minh-ha speaks of the interview (particularly with an artist/writer/intellectual) as potentially
assisting accessibility and providing interlinearity to the wider work of an interviewee. The interview will also
contribute to the "life-afterlife cycles that allow a work to travel and live on" (56). In my own thesis work I
have referred to this as "extratextual translation", where readers may find an inroad to a text through its
surrounding promotion and criticism. An implied author is formed for the reader in this way -- to 'know' Kristeva one
reads not only her academic publications, but also the interviews and reflections which intersect with her other
work. Yet Foreign Dialogues would have us believe that, if we have only read Kristeva in English, there is
much that we will never know. That is the nature of translation.
|
|---|
|
Bit 7
|
This text is a useful contribution to cultural studies, but similar collections have and will be produced. What is
interesting about this text is the notion of a working example of exactly that which Zournazi has sought to discuss.
It provides a series of fascinating and intelligent personal accounts of national belonging, for "it is the capacity
to move outside and within stories of longing and belonging that produces different identities" (11). At the same
time, it encourages the reader to consider the space around each (and every) interlocution and to give thought to
one's own relationship with communication.
|
|---|
| |
Bit 8
|
Details
Foreign Dialogues: Memories, Translations, Conversations. Ed. Mary Zournazi.
Annandale, NSW: Pluto, 1998. ISBN: 1-86403-047-X; RRP: A$ 29.95.
|
|---|
| |
Bit 9
|
Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Lara Cain. "Acts of Storytelling: Translation in and around Mary Zournazi's 'Foreign Dialogues: Memories, Translations, Conversations'." M/C Reviews 11 Oct. 1999.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/dialogues.html>.
Chicago style:
Lara Cain, "Acts of Storytelling: Translation in and around Mary Zournazi's 'Foreign Dialogues: Memories, Translations, Conversations'," M/C Reviews 11 Oct. 1999,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/dialogues.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Lara Cain. (1999) Acts of storytelling: translation in and around Mary Zournazi's 'Foreign dialogues: memories, translations, conversations'. M/C Reviews 11 Oct. 1999.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/dialogues.html> ([your date of access]).
|
|---|
|
|
![[image]](http://media.socialchange.net.au/pluto/gifs/148_FD.gif)