Traduttore, Traditore

Elizabeth Rotunno

“If you catch the evil woman in the act, whose job is it to punish her? Is it: a) the husband, b) the church, c) the story, or d) the storyteller.” 

Erzsabet Gonzalez and Zoe Dorado stare at me from my cracked Chromebook screen. For just a moment, they wear expectant looks, as though I have been brought up to answer this question my entire life, and the moment of truth has arrived. I just need to whisper one obvious, little letter. 

They recite their way through the history: La Llorona and her hysteria, Manananggal leaving her lower half at the mercy of her husband, ‘Jane Roe’ and each American woman stripped of their basic bodily autonomy. Same story, reiterated. But each time, a little twist.

Their spoken-word poem, “How to Tell a Ghost Story,” isn’t a lesson on the subjugation of women. It’s more the retroactive review of a lesson all women have already learned. Here is the exam.

Yet, I can’t immediately answer Gonzalez’s and Dorado’s query. My hesitation is especially inconvenient considering I am presently meant to be discussing this question with my fellow interns at an Aster Lit meeting. We are contemplating the poem, but also what it means to translate and be translated. Emma, one of our Editorial leaders, tells us that translation is traditionally a tragedy.

I think I am hesitant to answer because there is something missing, some intangible process which itself empowers the untruths of the husband, the church, the story, and the storyteller. How else to explain the perpetual stench of fault that wafts up from the carrion of a woman who has been beaten down time and time again for the sake of a man’s story? How to explain its deep-rootedness in almost every culture in the world? The church could not have become the influential moral authority it is today without its sacred narratives, and therefore its biased storytellers. The husband all too often relies on these stories, these institutions, to impose his will on the woman. But how, exactly, has all of this become commonplace in such a diverse world? The woman is to blame in the story, always. This isn’t right. Men have become the stewards of women’s stories without our consent. Somewhere along the canon, something was manipulated. And somewhere in the world, that something was translated, such that we are now left to contend with the ubiquity of these misrepresentations.

So there it is, I think: translation—that faceless, nameless, invisible beast prowling the edge of our shared stories. 

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To tell a story includes translating it from the realm of the real to that of the fictive. Each detail awaits direction into its proper place by the storyteller. Having happened in real life is not enough; something must be included in the immortal story for it to be recalled as “real”. We will only remember the story, not the event, which is inevitably lost. Crucially, a story is merely a product, the creation of which is facilitated by our metaphorical “translation.” This kind of translation is better understood not as the codification of a narrative, but as a tool wielded by the storyteller. 

Furthermore, each time a story is “translated,” in the more literal, interlinguistic sense, it undergoes a metamorphosis, losing another element of truth to interpretation until all we have left in the case of women are one hundred versions of the same slander.

Translation, both figurative and literal, is therefore distinct from story, and translators from storytellers, because translation exists to propagate. When used as a tool to carve stories, its fundamental goal is to create something transmissible, communicable. When employed in its traditional sense, its very purpose is to disseminate and adapt an idea to fit the cultural and linguistic norms of global societies. Thus, translation necessarily lends stories their ability to exist, to be understood, and to be internalized. Translators of all manner consequently bear a serious responsibility, one which has historically been seized as a power against women and other oppressed groups. 

The story of translation and the translation of female stories are thereby intertwined in a coevolution which is founded upon prejudice and vitriol. The church, the husband, the storytellers, even the story itself—their fundamental power derives from the translation of harmful fabrications. They are spread from ground zero, like a sickness whose transfer is facilitated by translation. In this way, women have been subjected to translation of the worst kind, the malignant kind which is denigrated in the old Italian adage, “Translator, traitor.” I agree with Emma: translation is a tradition of tragedy. However, tradition isn’t definition. 

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The conversation has now moved on in the Aster Lit Google Meet, and the two spoken-word poets have concluded their performance. I think for a moment about the work I’ve seen over the course of this internship, particularly that submitted to Aster Lit. The pieces which touch me the most are, invariably, those which understand both the great capacity for destruction, and for joy, that translation presents. These pieces, like “How to Tell a Ghost Story,” beat their subjects over the head, reverse the blame, and take relentless pride in their linguistic and cultural practices. They tame the faceless beast which has ravaged their stories for centuries, reminding us that translation is a neutral tool which can be used to the benefit of marginalized voices. Through them, we are reminded to question, defy, and reclaim the punishing frameworks that call women evil.

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I try again. A and B are too easy. D is responsible for C, but C lives on beyond D. I resolve in my head that the answer might be something along the lines of E: The translation.