{"id":268366,"date":"2009-02-06T14:34:20","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T14:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2009\/02\/06\/eating-a-translated-burrito\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:24:23","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:24:23","slug":"eating-a-translated-burrito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2009\/02\/06\/eating-a-translated-burrito\/","title":{"rendered":"Eating a Translated Burrito"},"content":{"rendered":"

The source of this somewhat odd post title is Aviya Kushner’s article in the new issue of the Wilson Quaterly<\/em>. Entitled McCulture<\/a> Aviya writes about the strange relationship of American readers to other cultures, including the way in which readers resist translations, but love bicultural writers:<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s not that Americans aren\u2019t interested in the world at all. It\u2019s just that we seem to want someone else to do the \u00adheavy \u00adlifting required to make a cultural connection. As the \u00adPeruvian-\u00adborn writ\u00ader Daniel Alarc\u00f3n ob\u00adserves, Americans would rather read stories by an American about Peru than a Peruvian writer translated into English. \u201cThere\u2019s a certain curiosity about the world that\u2019s not matched by a willingness to do the work,\u201d Alarc\u00f3n said in a phone interview from his home in Oakland, California. \u201cSo what happens is that writers of foreign extraction end up writing about the world for Americans.\u201d [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

We don\u2019t have much time, so we want a taste, some fast food to go. And so we read ethnic literature the way we down an ethnic meal. We can get a burrito almost anywhere, but it\u2019s often mildly spiced, adjusted just for us, and wrapped for those in a rush. So we\u2019re eating a translated burrito, and we\u2019re reading a world prepared especially for us. But we don\u2019t believe anything is missing. After all, we eat \u201cethnic\u201d food, and \u00adoften. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is an interesting phenomenon that is definitely prevalent in today’s culture. When Horace Engdahl blasted America for being too isolated, the knee jerk response from American critics was that our literature is an immigrant literature, one that is enlivened by the viewpoints of bicultural writers. Which is absolutely true and commendable, but it is still a bit weird that the hyphenated writer’s novel about Spain sells in the tens of thousands, whereas the Spanish novelist writing is completely ignored. Or, in Aviya’s words:<\/p>\n

\n

We prefer to read of a Bosnian immigrant in New York instead of a Bosnian man in Sarajevo, written by a Bosnian. This way, at least we can recognize New \u00adYork. [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

It is not that Americans lack curiosity of any \u00adkind\u2014\u00adbut that we seem to lack the right kind. Europe is overrun with young American tourists. Unfortunately, these college students tend to pack a dozen countries into a month or less. They often tote guides such as Let\u2019s Go<\/em>, which highlight the greatest hits and cheapest places and are written by, you guessed it, other American college students. That\u2019s how we seem to read international literature as well. Let\u2019s go, we might say, but let\u2019s go easy. And \u00adcheap. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The entire piece is worth reading. And Aviya’s book — And There Was Evening, And There Was Morning<\/em> — about reading the Bible in English for the first time after a lifetime of reading it in Hebrew sounds pretty interesting as well. <\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The source of this somewhat odd post title is Aviya Kushner’s article in the new issue of the Wilson Quaterly. Entitled McCulture Aviya writes about the strange relationship of American readers to other cultures, including the way in which readers resist translations, but love bicultural writers: It\u2019s not that Americans aren\u2019t interested in the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[19716,1836,19726],"class_list":["post-268366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-aviya-kushner","tag-cwp","tag-wilson-quarterly"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354586,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268366\/revisions\/354586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}