Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of Translation

by Vicente L. Rafael

In Motherless Tongues , Vicente L. Rafael examines the vexed relationship between language and history gleaned from the workings of translation in the Philippines, the United States, and beyond. Moving across a range of colonial and postcolonial settings, he demonstrates translation's agency in the making and understanding of events. These include nationalist efforts to vernacularize politics, U.S. projects to weaponize languages in wartime, and autobiographical attempts by area studies scholars to translate the otherness of their lives amid the Cold War. In all cases, translation is at war with itself, generating divergent effects. It deploys as well as distorts American English in counterinsurgency and colonial education, for example, just as it re-articulates European notions of sovereignty among Filipino revolutionaries in the nineteenth century and spurs the circulation of text messages in a civilian-driven coup in the twenty-first. Along the way, Rafael delineates the untranslatable that inheres in every act of translation, asking about the politics and ethics of uneven linguistic and semiotic exchanges. Mapping those moments where translation and historical imagination give rise to one another, Motherless Tongues shows how translation, in unleashing the insurgency of language, simultaneously sustains and subverts regimes of knowledge and relations of power. 

 


 


 

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Essays, Criticism

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2016

Reviews

[Miguel · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the translation nerds. More grounded in the historical than I expected (as someone who doesn’t really check synopses I thought it was going to be more on the practicality of translation though it’s also that). Highlights for me are the discussions on our colonial history with translation, i.e., the war between American English and Filipino, and the weaponization of language in counterinsurgency (again, ‘Merica), though this one for me teetered towards nice-to-know territory. The last part of this book is what I consider its ‘sentimental side’ wherein Rafael examines how translation moved in the lives of these scholars and historians, and the lessons he gleaned from them.

‘…translation as the experience of being detained and stranded between languages; and detention not simply as imprisonment but as the experience of attending patiently to the play of meanings and the expectation of something to come.’

Side story: This book has been my commute companion for the past months. It started out as an experiment to see whether I can read a dense text in a moving environment, and be more productive with it vs. just reading it at home. Turns out I can, and I have better concentration lol.

[Jee Koh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought-provoking essays on post-colonialism, neo-colonialism, translation, and the insurgency of language. Looking at the Philippines at the time of its Revolution, American occupation, and "People Power" II, and at the USA after 9/11, Rafael traces the attempts by colonial and neo-colonial powers to master translation in order to subjugate local populace. Each time he shows that the powers fail because of the insurgency of language, that which cannot be translated. Particularly interesting to me is the idea of the radical welcome that Revolution shows to the Other. Also fascinating is the failure of American schooling to eradicate Tagalog and other vernacular idioms and accents. The Introduction speaks eloquently of the author's own suppression of his other languages in order to speak and write in scholarly English. The final essays on Filipino scholars--Renato Rosaldo and Reynaldo Ileto--are appreciative of their achievements while remaining alert to their limitations. Of the latter's historical and autobiographical works, Rafael writes:

By contrast, the linguistic play evinced in Pasyon and Revolution between Tagalog and English, as I have suggested, speaks to the possibility of leveling hierarch. Rey gives a compelling explication in English of peasant movements as political projects intimately tied to ethical norms sustained by a messianic sense of history. But in doing so he also makes clear that the specificity of their thoughts and actions can be grasped only in and through Tagalog. The juxtaposition of the two languages, English and Tagalog, thus allows for the opening of worlds hitherto invisible to "us." The autobiography, however, moves in a different direction. Recounting life as a series of struggles against authority figures, the autobiography betrays an investment in hierarchy whether by way of a self commemorating an absence presence--the young "I," the silent mother--or a self overcoming the other that comes before it, in all senses of that word, whether it be a professor, another author, or one's own father. There is, then, the sense that autobiography forecloses the possibilities raised in Pasyon. The book speaks of a kind of unfinished social revolution evinced on the level of language and translation. The autobiography, however, deploys a gendered optic that conventionalizes the process of transformation, substituting social revolution with a narrative of generational masculine succession. (page 187)

[Peera Songkünnatham · Rating 5 out of 5]

three chapters assigned by tyrell's translation workshop. they're so good i ordered a copy. amazing case studies, admirable rigor in theorizing, but what impresses me most is rafael's language itself that i plan on consulting later in my intellectual life. rafael jus seems to always find the right word to describe things both conceptual and concrete, bringing them to life in my mind.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

My king Vincente was a prof for a Foucault class I took almost 2 years ago at UW, and I had no idea he was the author of this book until wayyyy too late in the game. It was electric to hear his voice coming off the pages and see how some of his ideology made its way to the class (which wasn't very related to this topic minus the whole capitalism and imperialism being ubiquitous). I really loved the beginning of this book, and its discussion of the impacts of missionaries and Americans on Filipino dialect. I never really thought about translation in a negative context (we understand each other better than before so must be good!) and Vincent uses quite strong language to convince me otherwise. And as an English speaker I think I implicitly think of translation as all roads converging in English (colonizer mindset baby), and Im seeing why thats not such a good goal! I also laughed at the idea of American military trying to teach soldiers arabic or Kurdish in Iraqi insurgency efforts and totally missing the mark. this book took me forever so I think some things are stewing that haven't cracked the surface yet. Also his last interview talked about English as the medium and value indicator of a linguistic capitalist market, and I kept trying to explain it to jessie and failing even tho it makes sense in my dome so theres just a lot here! and im definitely only getting some of it! some parts were too dense for moi, according to the reviews on the back this isnt an nyt best seller type beat and so I think thats to be expected. Hype for his next book on accents!

[Rebekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I doubt I would have ever found or read this book on my own, but it was gifted to me and I'm really glad of it as I got to learn a lot. In particular, the first part about general language use and the imperialistic imposition of English in the Philippines was really fascinating.

[Radhika · Rating 4 out of 5]

must read. the most lucid text on the same.

[Karlo Mikhail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some strong essays, some not very so . . .

[Jared Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

What we end up translating is the sense that something in our speech remains untranslatable and yet remains the basis for any future translations.