3/25 Readings - Lane

 These readings also called to mind a symposium presentation I saw last year, wherein there was a discussion of the Korean translation of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The novel utilizes African American Vernacular English quoted from interviews and other primary sources, and in Korean, the AAVE was rendered in the Jeolla dialect of Korean, a dialect associated with dissent, protest, and uprisings; and often stereotyped as "backwards," "rough" or "scary." This translation was criticized for insensitivity, in that the cultural contexts surrounding AAVE and the Jeolla dialect are not equivalent, and the racial dynamics and importance of the Lacks' family's AAVE are removed from the translation, much like how they were omitted from a Spanish translation of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved." The discussion about colonialism is important to consider in this case, as well---AAVE exists due to violent linguistic imposition. The testimony in Patel and Youssef's piece from the speaker who considers AAVE their language elucidates this:

 "underneath the violently enforced 'standard' English I think of as a veneer, our true language was African American Vernacular English, a variation on the English that was brutalized into my bloodline in the place of anything I would have been able to call a mother tongue. AAVE repurposes imperial English and ruptures its constraints. It’s dynamic. It’s warm. It’s evocative. It is the closest thing I have to something I can call my language."

AAVE holds a unique cultural and linguistic position; it inherently pushes back against colonial boundaries and violent linguistic imperialism, and to translate AAVE as another dialect that does not have the same colonial implications is dangerous. Still, to ignore it in translation is just as dangerous; a translator who understands the violence on a personal level can portray that violence, that colonial experience.