Philippine E-Journals

Coordinates of a Philippine World Literature Classroom: Notes of a Translated Filipino Reader-Teacher as Translator-Pilgrim

Marjorie Evasco

Discipline: Humanities, Philippine Literature

 

Abstract:

This article explores the problems that arise in teaching and reading translated works in World Literature; it also prescribes strategies to overcome these problems. The article establishes the problems by highlighting the universal instability of translated texts due to their need to “circulate” two cultures, as well as by confronting the distinct Filipino experience of tackling a translated work from another country using English, not the native language. To prescribe strategies, the author uses her own experience as a teacher, and that of her colleagues, in teaching and reading the poetry of female Japanese poets from the Heian period. “Addressing the gaps” of translation can be done using: (1) the traditional immersion and scholarship within the culture from which the translated text comes; (2) “transcreation” to discover the untranslatable elements in the work; and, (3) texts very familiar to the reader-teacher, in order to share the “pleasure craft” of translation to the students.