The Concept of Translation in Yoko Tawada's Early Work

Hiroko Masumoto

《Interface --Journal of European Languages and Literatures》 12期 (2020/06) Pp. 5-28

https://doi.org/10.6667/interface.12.2020.107

摘要

Yoko Tawada chose a foreign language as her literary medium and enjoyed its foreignness, which simultaneously alienates her from her mother tongue. By writing in another language, she gained a distance from her mother tongue, but at the same time a new literary creativity was formed for her. Her poetics of ＂exophony,＂ with which she tries to liberate a language from its fixed meaning and to revive it, is presented in her early work as a translation process. The idea of considering ＂exophonic＂ writing as ＂translation＂ is understandable because it involves a constant process of self-translation. The following article attempts to shed light on Tawada's concept of translation in her early work, especially in her first work nur da wo du bist da ist nichts (Nothing only where you are, 1987).

關鍵字

exophony ； translation ； Yoko Tawada ； L. Vygotsky ； inner speech ； W. Benjamin