Panel: Translating Silence and Dis-ease
Copanelists: Elisabeth Hanscombe and Linda C. Middleton
Postcolonial literature is fraught with issues of complicated communication. Authors must choose a language in which to write: the language of the colonizer, or the colonized, or both? The act of translating an original text exposes various limitations. In spite of many challenges, certain unifying characteristics emerge from within the postcolonial canon: at every level of human interaction among textual characters—whether social, political, psychological, or spiritual—there is demonstrated a common searching, a yearning for freedom in the face of power struggles and a search for self when confronted with an identity crisis. Interestingly, postcolonial works frequently feature not only characters whose lives are complicated by communication issues such as translation, but also figures whose voices are foreclosed by communication handicaps or self-imposed silence.
Most notable is Sarah John Sally of Brien Friel’s play Translations. She personifies the work’s binaries of communication and silence, manipulation and acquiescence, power and impotence. The paper examines all circumstances of Sarah’s limited speech and frequent silences in the context of the action and discourse of the play. Although critics such as Nesta Jones and David Wheatley read Sarah’s silence in the face of the translating colonizers as an act of submission and failure, I argue that her lack of verbal response is an outright refusal, a defensive and defiant gesture. Sarah’s voice is her own. She chooses when and how to use it. Her voice is an expression of her identity, a force and commodity to use as she chooses. With that volition comes freedom, even when she chooses silence to represent her position before a dominant colonizer.
Lisa De Maio Brewer is a graduate of Wake Forest University (B.A., English, 1981; M.A., English, 2008). She is a former speechwriter, press secretary and campaign consultant. Her areas of interest include the medieval Icelandic outlaw sagas, the works and politics of Zora Neale Hurston, and issues related to translation. She has presented at the inaugural HumorFest conference at East Carolina University, and is a scheduled presenter at the Southern Appalachian Student Conference on Literature. A volunteer instructor of English as a Second Language, Mrs. Brewer lives in North Carolina with her husband and two sons.