Staging Translation: The Polylingual Narratives of Derek Walcott and Rabih Alameddine

Abstract:This article analyzes how authors respond to the implications of translation, circulation, and readership in a global market dominated by particular linguistic superpowers. The two authors I examine compose their works in English in a way that complicates the language's hegemony. Focusing on the staging of translation in Derek Walcott's poetic sequence "Sainte Lucie" (1976) and Rabih Alameddine's novel An Unnecessary Woman (2013), I demonstrate how these Anglophone writers enact a polylingual consciousness. I argue that the English content of the first-person narration in the two texts provides monolingual readers an entryway into the transitional linguistic space of a translator. Through relational, rather than hierarchical, approaches to translation, the translatornarrators in these texts unsettle market expectations and destabilize the local-global dichotomy. Ultimately, this article exemplifies how Anglophone writers can reject the premises of a philological tradition that partitions linguistic environments.