Sinag

…moving beyond transation is also an attempt at restitution for the careless aggression and violent appropriation involved in any act of translation—a restoration of the balance, a making visible of our failures. It is a new sense of what fidelity in translation means.

…

The need for restitution came to me strongly a few years ago when I discussed before a Malay audience, in a stranger’s version of their language, my experiences in translating the opening lines of the great Malay classic, the Hikayat Hang Tuah … When I was finished, and the last polite questions appeared to have been asked, a respected Malay scholar stood up and said he hoped I would not translate Hang Tuah into English.

I was nonplussed. Why not? He explained that if it were available in English, no one would read the Malay. He seemed to state this as a matter of obvious fact, not as an accusation. I did not make a good response. I suspect he knew I wouldn’t and had politely waited until the end of the questioning. I had not thought that a translation might come to represent the Malay original. I had seen it, naively, only as giving access to the original. I had no sense of the responsibility of it or even being entitled to… translate.

… Translation has not been a neutral painless act. It has been necessarily full of politics and semi-intended errors of exuberance and deficiency. … Some reciprocity is called for, not out of silly sensitivities and politeness alone, but because translation is not a neutral act. Translation fidelity itself demands a reciprocity, a sorting out of exuberances and deficiencies, a confession of failures and sleights of hand.It is the only way I know of by which to make restitution to those who, in old Malay words, mpunya carita ‘wrought the words and in that sense own them’.

Riding bikes everywhere? Using recyclable diapers? Carpooling? We’ve been doing that in Eritrea for decades. Where’s our reward for saving the Earth? Why aren’t we plastered all over Time magazine? If we lived in the same disgusting, gluttonous fashion that Americans lived, this planet would no longer be able to sustain the human race. But yet, they blame the world’s environmental ills on “overpopulation” (code: poor brown people existing) and then usurp our lifestyle habits, trademark it as their own and pat themselves on the back for doing the bare minimum.

How convenient of such a narcissistic nation.

When people ask—and it seems like people always be askin to where I can’t never get away from it—I say, Yeah, that’s right, my mother name was Henrietta Lacks, she died in 1951, John Hopkins took her cells and them cells are still livin today, still multiplyin, still growin and spreadin if you don’t keep em frozen. Science calls her HeLa and she’s all over the world in medical facilities, in all the computers and the Internet everywhere.

When I go to the doctor for my checkups I always say my mother was HeLa. They get all excited, tell me stuff like how her cells helped make my blood pressure medicines and antidepression pills and how all this important stuff in science happen cause of her. But they don’t never explain more than just sayin, Yeah, your mother was on the moon, she been in nuclear bombs and made that polio vaccine. I really don’t know how she did all that, but I guess I’m glad she did, cause that means she helpin lots of people. I think she would like that.

But I always have thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors? Don’t make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even knowin about them takin her cells, now we don’t get a dime. I used to get so mad about that to where it made me sick and I had to take pills. But I don’t got it in me no more to fight. I just want to know who my mother was.