FAREWELL TO RIVERS, HELLO TO OCEANS – ROSALÍA DE CASTRO IN TRANSLATION María Reimóndez Meilán The author is indebted to Iria González Liaño for her interesting masters thesis on the translations of Rosalía de Castro into English Rivers are complex beings. They are inscribed in the land. They flow on the earth. They carry the past with them and move towards the future. They are populated by fauna, flora, whirlpools and backwaters. They establish lake systems. Underwater currents. On maps, they are simplified as blue lines. But we all know that they are far more than that. Some poets are also like rivers. For when they speak, they do it in a language that carries with it the weight of a whole society, of a whole time past and present. But when a poet speaks, like a river flowing, she may ignore that that language, that society and that time can move beyond their borders and enter new places. It can inhabit new bodies. It can ignite the minds of people close and far. It can change the future. Touch new shores. Like a river with its mouth in the ocean. Easy as it may seem at first sight, flowing into the ocean is no easy task for a river. Especially when that river is so complex and full of meaning as Rosalía de Castro. This is no ordinary stream or creak. It is a whole system with life of its own. A river that flows with the force of the universal and the local. Because she was capable of combining both, she was capable of juggling with the nation, with class and with gender in one go. She did it before her time. Before she could be read with full awareness of her worth. She was writing for the future, though she wrote precisely and accurately about the things and events that surrounded her. She blurred borders, such a postmodern concept, in the 19th century. She struggled with her identities, so 21st century. She did not use the poor as a landscape, she was aware of her position and power struggles. She claimed the nation and as a woman felt excluded from definitions of it made by others, such a current debate in literary-feminist criticism in Galicia at present. She managed to combine all these things and flow. There were many dams around her when she wrote, and therefore she had to play it tongue-in-cheek – also so postmodern! And many dams were built after her time, with the constant attempt to appropriate her, to keep her quiet, uncomfortable as she still is. That complexity does not travel easily. Especially as we have to speak about processes, and those are hardly ever grasped by critics. Translation, that travel, is a process rather than anything else. A process led by human beings, translators, by societies, cultures and languages. For many decades such difficult matter was explained in very simple terms: language A enters here-stop-language B exits there. As if nothing happened in between. In between, the black-box. But in recent years and after thorough studies, the black box has proven to be a human being, and a very relevant one indeed. The theory of the black box was the best way of simplifying complexity and by the same token legitimate mainstream values (the patriarchy, the empire). When the translator refuses to acknowledge her responsibility in the process of translating, she is definitely complicit with the values of power. Only translators who are aware of such frames, of the patriarchy, of empire, of racism, can actually develop a different standpoint and fight for it in their works. Unfortunately, translation theory nowadays is still busy with fidelities and equivalences. Fortunately, the influence of Althusserian ideology, of feminisms, postcolonialism and other revolutionary theories, has helped uncover the ways in which mainstream discourses dominate this activity. For some, a marginal one. For some, a way to change the world through something that permeates everything, from corn-flakes packets to TV-serials, instructions handbooks and, not least of all, literature. At least this is the fact for those of us who no not live in the Empire (Anglophone at this point in time), who can afford to ignore the rest of the world. This new set of approaches to translation, to this process of bringing rivers to oceans, has yielded interesting reflections that are applicable to the particular case of Rosalía. The first one is that translation is a political and social process. Since the “cultural turn” in translation studies, as Bassnett would call it, this activity has been seen as something that goes beyond languages and involves “cultures” (however diffuse the term can also be). Cultures hardly ever live in harmony. Rosalía's poetry is a good example of that. This means in the end that the very decision of what gets translated into what language is already a highly political decision. Feminist and postcolonial approaches to translation have actually proved some general points of view for translated literature that shall help us understand Rosalía in translation: 1) it is usually men who are translated (by invisible women, most of the time) 2) it is usually texts from “major” languages that are translated (watching TV serials I have always wondered why we are supposed to be interested in the lives of people who live, for example, in New York and not of those who live in New Delhi). These two points highlight how the patriarchy and empire interact to impose their meanings and to project their work onto other cultures. The chances for a woman writing in a “minority” language to be translated are therefore scarce. But still we know that Rosalía is the Galician author who has been translated more often, with the exception of Xosé Neira Vilas, and thus we will try to explain why in the following lines. Another interesting contribution of these theories to translation is the focus on the translator. Translators are many times the actual people who initiate translation processes, who present their proposal to publishers and who may have some (very limited, that is for sure) power to open up new fields. But apart from that, and maybe more significantly, translators have to claim their role back in order to contest black-box theories. The process of translation is always a mediation, and the translator is always present in the translated text. She has to be aware then not just of the cultural environment in which the text was produced, of the cultural environment in which the new text is going to be written, fully master both languages, be familiar with the author's “world” but be aware of her own position in the translation process too. Any denial of such position is being complicit with centres of power, who have made all efforts possible to erase the translator from this process (before copyright laws -and after- literally not mentioning her name on the texts) and to undermine her role in beautiful sexist metaphors: translators were often described as “handmaidens to authors” and translations as being “like women”, if they are beautiful, they are unfaithful (belles infidèles, which was transformed by feminist translators Suzanne Lobtinière-Harwood into Re-Belle et Infidèle). Furthermore, when the translator is not aware of her own ideology, she is likely to suitably erase certain readings of the texts (Rosalía did not need translation to experience that, so many of her clear rebellious attempts were erased in the creation of her image as a saint or crying mother). The results of such positions have become clear for feminist translation critics such as Louise von Flotow or Olga Castro, who have studied how the translation of Simone de Beauvoir by a patriarchal translator (who of course never thought of himself as such, he was just a black-box) created a gap between Anglophone and francophone feminists, thanks to his erasure of what he considered “superficial” aspects of the work (an example of this: all the references to women in history!). There are too many examples of this kind, and many more implications if we take a look at different translation strategies of a more subtle kind. More about this later. This whole scenario does not seem all too optimistic for the flow of Rosalía into the ocean of socalled world literature through translation. The author and her work are too complex, she wrote about a nation not backed by a state, in a minority language, in times past, from feminist point of view, as a woman... the winds do not seem favourable, but are they? Therefore, why was Rosalía translated? The first key to the projection of Rosalía abroad has much to with the phagocytising process of her work by Spanish literature (written in Spanish). The fact that she also wrote in Spanish is many times used as -not at all innocent- excuse to ignore the fact that she wrote in Galician and that even when she wrote in Spanish she did it to speak about her nation. As recent examples show, even if she had not written in Spanish, she could have been digested by that macrophage called Spanish literature (we have current examples in Manolo Rivas or Teresa Moure whose works are not presented as translations from Galician when they are translated into Spanish). The fact that she was considered the most relevant writer of the Spanish Romantic period gave rise to some interest abroad, especially during the 20th century. Though there are some translations before this time, the translation of her work outside Spain happen in the 1950s. With the exception of her translations into Catalan, for example, where a general context is shared and a feeling for Nationalist politics is also shared, the translations of Rosalía abroad have always been marked by a clear interest in her as an object of study. This interest was based precisely on the image projected by the Spanish literary system of a Romantic Rosalía, a sensitive woman who suffered and wrote sublime poetry. The idea behind those first translations was to bring that period of “Spanish” literature closer to scholars in different parts of the world. The starting point, i.e., seeing her as a Spanish writer (the same woman who claimed that Galicia should never be called Spanish!) did not give much hopes of a complex understanding of her work, to begin with. A clear example of this is seen by the translation into English of En las orillas del Sar by S. Griswold Morley (1937) Beside the river Sar. Selected poems from En las Orillas del Sar. Morley describes Rosalía as a “wise and sad little Celtic woman”, precisely the same perception of her in the Spanish literary system. Indeed, if the translator had such view of the author and her work then there is little to be guessed about his choices in the translation. One remarkable and ironic aspect of these early translations is that she was capable of reverting the gender roles and she became the author and was translated by men. An irony, however, that was not funny after all, as they were capable of erasing many of the feminist strategies of Rosalía, as we will briefly see later on. We can easily claim that Rosalía was then phagocytised by the Spanish literary system and she was transmitted as a bolus into the digestive tract of other literatures. The river was assigned to the wrong fluvial system. A clear fact is that most of the translations of her work into languages that are not Spanish and Catalan, are precisely of her books in Spanish as their language of origin and only some have compiled Galician and Spanish texts. Wrong fluvial system, wrong ocean. This approach to Rosalía led her to the ocean of a literature of the past, of 19th century Spain, and therefore circumscribed the interest in this translation to circles of Hispanist scholars or those interested in Romantic literature in general. However, there is a different ocean waiting for Rosalía. She created it with her work, with her feminist standpoint. There is a new ocean of sisterhood. Approaches to feminist translation have precisely highlighted the conscious role of feminist translators in bringing to light the works of women writers. This is a crucial task in the feminist goal of sisterhood (now deprived of its imperialistic aftertaste thanks to Chandra Talpade Mohanty and other theoreticians). Feminists drew attention to the work of Rosalía as a woman who had fought for the cause of women, relevant for Herstory as a whole, a writer who had been aware of patriarchal constrains and who could not just shed light about the past but help understand the position of women writers in the present and in the world. Rosalía had to be shared with other women. She had been finally given a nation –a partial one, we will see- with the feminists of the world. This is mainly seen in her English translations as it is precisely in the Anglophone world (especially in Canada) where feminist translation has had a wider scope and more chances to be published. In English, Rosalía was translated and included in different feminist anthologies, such as those by Kate Flores (1986) of Spanish (here we go again) feminist poets and then those of world women poets of Joanna Bankier (1976) and Cosman, Keefe and Weaver (1979). Feminist translators do not only bring the work of women writers to the limelight. They also use specific translation strategies that question the notions of objectivity, fidelity and the like, i.e. of the patriarchy. These strategies include: -Prefacing, foot-noting, hijacking and supplementing (Lobtiniere-Hardwood 1989): feminist translators do not want to be invisible any more, they want to show that they are in the text and how they see it an work with it. That is why they write prefaces and explain their choices. That can only be called honesty. Strategies such as hijacking (which includes rewriting elements of patriarchal texts in translation thus erasing sexism, for example) may seem “aggressive” for the patriarchy, but in fact it is what the patriarchy has been doing with women’s texts all the while without ever mentioning it. Patriarchal translators have erased and altered what they deemed “necessary”, as we have seen with Beauvoir. If we take as an example the English translation of a selection of texts by Rosalía: Women Writers in Translation by Aldaz, Gantt and Bromley 1991, we see precisely these strategies, especially prefacing. Aldaz, Gantt and Bromley are the feminist translators of Rosalía per excellence into English at least. They explain the context in which the work was written, the struggles of Rosalía and the way in which her image and work as co-opted by the patriarchy. They also give visibility to their strategies. These three translators also translate the Galician works of Rosalía: Cantares Gallegos, Follas Novas and then also En las Orillas del Sar. Another feminist translator of Rosalía who uses this strategy but not others is Kathleen March, who includes interesting prefaces in her translations of Rosalía’s prose works from Spanish. In both cases, the translators explain in an introduction what kind of choices they have made and in the case of Aldaz, Gantt and Bromley they criticise the masculinist bias of other translations into English. Their prefaces are completely different to those of Morley, who just reproduced the patriarchal appropriation of Rosalía. Of course, in Morley’s times hardly anybody in Galicia had realised that there was much more to Rosalía than a crying mother or dove. -Visibility: highlighting sexism, highlighting other gender roles and strategies of reading and rereading is also a key strategy for feminist translators. It works both ways, regarding the author and the translation. The relevance of this strategy is key if we think about sexist language as something that goes unnoticed in general translation circles. When translating gender-neutral names from English into Galician (teacher, speaker, etc) the patriarchal translator sees them as males, if there is no she, her/s to indicate otherwise or if social gender roles do not “logically” indicate otherwise too (nurse, for example) When translating from Galician into English the same thing happens. Rosalía was an expert in keeping the gender of the poetic voice concealed if she wanted to. Michelle Geoffrion-Vinci speaks precisely about this aspect in her comparison of three translations of Rosalía’s “Cerrado capullo de pálidas tintas”. Some questions to be considered: in Galician the subject of the verb is usually absent; seu/súa in Galician refer to the grammatical gender of the thing possessed, not of the person it belongs to. How do we know if it is a male or a female? We cannot know, therefore we have to make decisions, and these are usually influenced by patriarchal and sexist values, unless the translator is aware of it. Feminist translators are keen to explain the whys of their choices and to dismantle sexist language in this textual and political practice too. In the case of Rosalía it is only Aldaz, Gantt and Bromley and also Geoffrion-Vinci who have clearly adopted such strategies. The comparison of three translations by Geoffrion-Vinci shows how the sexist bias of Morley led him to decide that everything that was not marked by gender in Galician but did have to have a gender reference in English had to be masculine –what else?-. Aldaz, Gantt and Bromley decided to do the opposite thus giving visibility to sexism in language and opening completely new readings for Rosalía’s poems in English (the perception changes radically if some sentences are said by a male or by a female voice, this is easy to understand). Still, these strategies alone may not be enough. Because the fact that Rosalía wrote in Galician, that she claimed a nation apart from that of women (where there are inequalities and exploitation, as Rosalía cleverly portrayed in her depictions of villagers vs. saints or rich women). A nation that spoke Galician and where Galicians had the right to decide over their lives. If these issues are not considered, then the feminist enterprise of translating Rosalía may be once again partial. The work of Aldaz, Gantt and Bromley is for the English language the only work that combines these two aspects, thus adding the postcolonial point of view to translation in their work to their feminist approach. Kathleen March, though aware of both positions, has mainly translated Rosalía from Spanish (as she concentrated in her prose) and this has not helped her maybe give visibility to the national struggle in her work as translator (though she has done it through other aspects of her research endeavours). Postcolonial theories have been used in translation to speak about the texts that are translated, the dynamics of centre and margin also in that process, and to uncover strategies that seek to “domesticate” (in Venutti’s words) foreign texts (i.e. fully incorporate them into the target culture erasing whatever is “different”) or foreignise (keeping that portrayal of a world view that may be alien to the target culture) them. This is of course a simplification, as both strategies may be undertaken differently depending on the cultural context of the texts and languages involved (Venutti speaks about the American context, which cannot be compared to that, for example, of Galicia). To continue our focus in the Anglophone world, as this has to be analysed for each language and literary system, we can claim that all of Rosalía’s translations have used a foreignising approach, as they tried to precisely show the fact that this was a woman from a different country (Spain, in most cases, as we have seen, instead of Galicia). The objective of the translations (to be able to study Rosalía) already marked this kind of strategy. We can easily draw as conclusion that the translations of Rosalía are marginal for the whole Anglophone literary system (as they are not published for a wide audience) but not irrelevant however. Of course Rosalía’s meanings may be more central to other literatures (Catalan, Basque, Tamil, Ukrainian, and so many others) where gender and national struggles go hand in hand. There are still many people’s waiting for Rosalía, and the fact that she has been translated into English or other major languages can help her reach these audiences for which her work may have wider implications. That is why these translations are so important, if the feminist and nationalist readings of Rosalía are undermined in her translations into English, French or German, the flow will be stopped towards waters that are more welcoming and rich, more comfortable for her words. The combination of feminist and postcolonial theories in translation can therefore make Rosalía flow into the ocean. One could think that rivers are endangered and oceans polluted. But from feminism and postcolonialism standpoints we believe they can be rescued if we are mistrustful of centres of power and the ways in which they disguise themselves as “universal”, “objective” and, for translation “faithful and equivalent”. Rosalía herself has taught as many of these lessons. We are indebted to her and it is our responsibility to share her with the world in her full complexity, fighting against the co-option of her readings. It is the task of feminist and postcolonial translators to overcome the difficulties of a highly hostile environment at times to make the voice of Rosalía be heard through our multiple interpretations of it. The ocean is rough, the sail is difficult but we know that we can reach the shore. She is already there.