Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Comparative Literature

Advisor

Bettina Lerner

Committee Members

Esther Allen

Sarah Pollack

Subject Categories

Latin American Literature | Translation Studies

Keywords

translation, Mexican literature, borderlands, multilingual literature, Spanglish, Tijuana

Abstract

This dissertation offers an original translation and critical analysis of Crosthwaite’s Estrella de la calle sexta. In so doing it engages with recent work on contemporary Latin American literature, translation theory, and border theory, while also offering a version of Crosthwaite’s text—itself a seminal work in studies of the Tijuanan imaginary—that will be accessible to anglophone readers. The critical chapters, too, will allow scholars of the border to revisit the stories of Estrella through the lenses of language, translation, and heterolingualism. Chapter One offers a reevaluation of the mode of translation theory that posits translation as a textual transfer from one discrete language “sphere” into another. I suggest that all language is in fact a site of heterolingual encounter, and that therefore translation is more productively viewed as a practice that occurs within language as opposed to between languages. Chapter One then goes on to look at specific case studies of heterolingual texts both in and out of translation, with a particular focus on Spanish-English and Spanglish texts, as a way of contextualizing Crosthwaite’s own use of language as well as my own translation of that language. Chapter Two moves on to a more specific discussion of Estrella, its stories, and the scholarship surrounding Crosthwaite and the space of borderlands. I also address my own approach to the translation of Estrella and discuss some of the particular linguistic and translational challenges I have encountered along the way.

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