The Translation Studies Hub was delighted to host its third colloquium with UW History Professor Vicente Rafael on December 4. Professor Rafael is the author of several books and works on the cultural and political history of the colonial and post-colonial Philippines. Currently, he is finishing a book on the necropolitics and aesthetics of authoritarianism, Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte (Duke University Press, forthcoming).
During his lecture, Professor Rafael introduced his thoughts on translation by asking the audience first to reflect on what it means to experience translation. He likened translation to movement, reminding us that to translate is to transport or to transfer. For Professor Rafael, zigzagging is his preferred method of translation, moving in different directions through a text to grasp its meaning and understand its purpose.
Professor Rafael then explained the four spheres of translation of most interest to his work: personal, imperial, subaltern, and authoritarian populist. The personal sphere brings to the translator the initial question that Professor Rafael asked: how do we encounter and experience translation on the level of the body?
The imperial sphere is concerned with how language is treated as an object of conquest and control. In the context of the Philippines, European empires have historically invested in resources like translators to further their colonizing missions. Language is a tool imbued with power that permeates histories of Indigenous subjugation, racial formation, and imperialist politics.
In the subaltern sphere, translation appears as a never ending demand. To deal with foreign rulers and settlers, subaltern subjects have had no choice than to be innovative with language, hence the emergence of creole and pidgin languages. To colonize is to creolize or pidginize a language, linking people horizontally and vertically within the imperial project.
Finally, Professor Rafael presented his experimental ideas on the authoritarian populist sphere of translation. Given the viral spread of authoritarian speech, he explained, we can imagine translation as productive of a certain kind of autoimmunity: the body at war with itself. Language communicates by attacking itself.
Under an authoritarian populist system like that of Duterte’s in the Philippine, language is deployed to confuse, misplace, and destroy shared meanings. A dictatorial force may speak in the languages of his populace, traversing linguistic spaces in order to broadly enforce his tyranny—and to sound like he belongs to every community. He uses language and translation to behave like a sovereign trickster.
We’re grateful to Professor Rafael for spending time with us and answering our many questions about translation across multiple levels. His creative approach to translation allowed us to think through the simple yet challenging question: what is language, and how is it related to power?
Looking forward, the Translation Studies Hub is preparing for its winter quarter colloquia. Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on upcoming events.