Product Overview
Yoko Tawada's Portraitof a Tongue: An Experimental Translation by Chantal Wrightis a hybridtext, innovatively combining literary criticism, experimental translation, andscholarly commentary. This work centres on a German-language prose text by YokoTawada entitled Portrait of a Tongue[Portrt einer Zunge, 2002]. YokoTawada is a native speaker of Japanese who learned German as an adult.
Portrait of a Tongueis a portrait of a German womanreferred to only as Pwho has lived in theUnited States for many years and whose German has become inflected by English.The text is the first-person narrators declaration of love for P and for herlanguage, a thinking-out-loud about language(s), and a self-reflexivecommentary.
Chantal Wright offers a critical response and a new approachto the translation process by interweaving Tawadas text and the translatorsdialogue, creating a side-by-side reading experience that encourages the readerto move seamlessly between the two parts. Chantal Wrights technique modelswhat happens when translators read and responds to calls within TranslationStudies for translators to claim visibility, to practice thick translation,and to develop their own creative voices. This experimental translationaddresses a readership within the academic disciplines of Translation Studies,Germanic Studies, and related fields.
