Correspondência com Velma Pollard

com autorização de Velma Pollard, reproduzo aqui o último mail que enviou, após discussão sobre as alternativas de se traduzir o seu texto com um crioulo "ficcionalizado" e mantendo referências à localização e cultura jamaicanas (nomes de ruas e personagens, marcas, etc.), ou com um crioulo mais acentuado de Cabo Verde e respectiva translocalização, transferindo para lá a acção. No mail, resolve-se ainda um malentendido, uma vez que de início Velma Pollard entendeu que "crioulo ficcionalizado" não seria uma atenuação do crioulo mas uma língua completamente inventada e que isso iria contra a sua necessidade de afirmação de diferença linguística étnica. Porém, tudo acabou em bem, e julgo que saímos todos mais enriquecidos, demonstrando que vale a pena o diálogo entre tradutores e autores vivos.

I have to admit to having been a little peeved at the notion of an invented Creole.  Cross cultural communication is always tricky and a language difference exacerbates it.  I certainly got a different idea of what your students had done. Thanks for the clarification

With regard to the options you suggest I favour the first one for the reasons you already appreciate: like retaining the Caribbean flavour. I would definitely want the characters, streets etc. to retain their names.

About the name Altamont Jones. It is a commonplace kind of name here. One of the differences between colonisation on the African continent and colonisation in the Caribbean and the Americas certainly by the British is that we were routinely given English type names. My friend and colleague from Ghana which had been colonised by England just as Jamaica was, is Ama Ata Aidoo while I  was born Velma Earle Brodber ( Pollard is a name by marriage). This difference really came home to me earlier this year when I taught a group of university students visiting here from the USA. It was a very mixed group in terms of origins. The blacks from America had names like mine while those from Africa had African names. Those from India, China, Japan had names from their own cultures.  So you will always find West Indians with names like mine and one like Altamont Jones is perfectly normal. By the way I have always known “ Altamont” (sometimes Altimon) as a person name and never heard it as a place name. It really depends on what one has read.  The ironic twist, if any, is that such a man, one with quite formal name, a name that could belong to anybody at any level of the society could be subjected to such treatment. I mean the indignity of the suitcase at the gate.

I am very humbled by this whole conversation which needn’t have gone on at all. Most people translate other people’s writing with no comment from the author. In fact most times the author is already dead. I have friends whose area is French Literature and they translate to English, texts written partly in one or other of the French Creoles of the Caribbean so I am very aware of the problems across languages. I have also had a few encounters with the process involving my own stories.

This kind of thing will happen more and more as literatures written in english ( small “e” as explained in  The Empire Writes Back) become part of  the experience of people from other languages. Indeed even within the English speaking world some of our Creole writing is problematic.

This letter has been long too but I hope I have answered everything

Best wishes to you and to your students. Please explain to them how our different meanings to words caused the misunderstanding.

Sincerely

VelmaP