On an early December afternoon in 2007 I sat down to talk with Rigoberto González, prize-winning author of Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, about the translation component of the new MFA program in creative writing at Queens College (described in the previous article). The following is based on this conversation—it is, true to its topic, my translation, interpretation, and compression of our talk. The inspiration is Rigoberto González’s; any errors are mine.
The MFA program and translation at Queens College
Starting our conversation, we began talking about the MFA program as such and its position within Queens College as a multilingual campus, answering questions such as: What is the function of the MFA program at Queens College? What is the relation between creative writing and translation? What is the art of translation? How does working with translation prepare students to work in the academy in general? The philosophy behind the MFA program is to combine a “traditional” program of creative writing with a program in literary translation. The literary translation program distinguishes the Queens College MFA program from other creative writing programs on the East Coast, allowing for students to focus on the relation between the “original” work, its translation, and the production of both, all within the same program. In this way the program has the potential of working not only on the students’ knowledge of translation theory and practice, but also on their literary abilities, combining literary translation as a teachable practice and as an art. The program currently has about 30 students primarily focusing on prose and poetry. However, playwriting and translation will eventually be core elements of the program as well, and the translation program will start accepting students in the fall of 2008.
In the current American educational system, bilingual academic programs traditionally operate within an English / Spanish paradigm, but the translation program at Queens wishes to work with other languages as well because of the large multilingual component of the college and the borough itself. Insisting on a truly multilingual program might also—and this is definitely the wish of the program—keep writing alive in the many local languages in Queens by translating some of these non-English works into English.
The MFA program—as of now—has mostly native speakers and monolingual students, primarily native English speaking students, enrolled. However, the translation program wishes to develop the entire student body in a more multilingual direction in order to create a space for several languages working within the same classroom. Working with undergraduates on issues of translation and forcing them to work in several languages will also ultimately help them as graduates. When working on issues of translation, students are forced to pay much closer attention to the English that they read and write in other classes and, ultimately, pay closer attention to their own economy of language. By having worked with each and every word while translating a text, students will have gained the important knowledge of choosing the right words that best and most concisely describe what they are aiming to say.
Translation within CUNY and the Borough of Queens
Following this discussion, our conversation turned specifically to translation within CUNY, Queens College, and Queens as an incredibly ethnically and linguistically diverse borough. Questions discussed were: What is the potential for the MFA program in translation within the CUNY system? Are there particular qualities that Queens College students have in relation to an MFA translation program?
For the program to become truly multilingual it cannot be an insular program. So the program intends to help identify professors throughout the CUNY system who will work with students in different languages and cultures. Consequently, a multilingual program in translation at Queens cannot exist only as a multilingual program, but must also be a multi-disciplinary program—having translation majors work with professors from a wide variety of different schools, programs, and disciplines. In this way, Queens College and the MFA program in creative writing can serve as an example of how languages can work across campuses—helping to establish solidarity between campuses, within the CUNY system, and, ideally within multilingual New York.
A large number of students at Queens College already have tremendous experience in working with issues of translation. For example, many students will have experience with naïve translation—translating on the spot for family members who do not speak English, translating contemporaneously in class, and so forth. Multilingual or bilingual people will almost all recognize a situation in which naïve translation is needed. However this impressive ability often remains under-utilized in writing—be it creative or academic—because when translation is defined as an art or a scholarly task instead of a lived practice, it becomes hard for some students (and others) to do. In order to utilize this already existing ability to translate, the students in the translation program will be working with a wide variety of documents: textbooks, advertisements, legal documents, official letters and so forth. Many students will have experiences working with such materials and will therefore be truly able to investigate the purposes and strategies of different kinds of documents. One of the difficult elements in translating some of these documents, as in any translation, is to be able to find the right tone, which is of course not just a question of language but is also always culturally determined.
Translation as Preservation
From this point, our conversation turned to the question of translation as preservation. Can translation be considered linguistic archaeology in which something new emerges from the artifacts of the old? In her article in this issue, Nicole Cooley writes that “Our MFA focuses on translation across cultures, between continents, between and among theoretical approaches to literary texts, between and among various cultures that make up the diverse and varied landscape of Queens,” and my conversation with Rigoberto González touched on this aspect as we slowly centered in on the notion of translation as an act of preservation.
The Queens program in literary translation wishes to tap into the population of Queens and thereby elevate the value of literature written in other languages, expressing different cultures. This process can happen by translating local literatures into English. For example, it would be helpful to have English translations of Middle Eastern protest poetry. Such work would allow students and faculty at Queens College to get another view of how Middle Eastern poets, whether in Baghdad or in Bay Ridge, respond to the war.
Having a translation program at Queens College is a perfect combination in a creative writing program. Queens is a tremendously diverse borough—both linguistically and culturally—and still has very insular cultural pockets. As gentrification takes place throughout the outer boroughs, languages and cultures disappear or lose their specificity. Working within these cultures before they disappear can help preserve their texts and develop literary practices. Sending students out to work with local cultures can serve the function of preserving these cultural identities. The translation program wants to participate in these communities and to foster bi- and multilingual creative communities, not just inhabit the land of Queens and the language of English. It is a goal of the program to educate students who will keep discussing “the word” in multiple languages and keep translating texts into a multitude of languages. Keeping these unknown bodies of foreign words, produced either globally or locally, alive through giving them life in another language is an important act of multilingual literary preservation.