En-gendering Translation as a Political Project: The Subversive Power of Joyce Lussu’s Activist Translation(s)

Drawing on the importance of orality and its recent re-conceptualization in many cultures and research fields, this paper wants to discuss the boundaries between translation and other sorts of re-writing, re-processing or representing source text by exploring issues related to the representation of otherness, the assertion of dissident voices in mainstream historiography and literature, and the somatics of the inter-linguistic dialogue. In particular, the research attempt here is to investigate the trans-creational value of the orality/writing interface by retracing Joyce Lussu ’s legacy as an ‘unconventional’ translator in so far as she translated into Italian-without speaking the writers’ native language- the works of Albanian, Afro-American, Inuit, Kurdish, Turkish and Vietnamese poets such as António Agostinho Neto, José Craveirinha, Nazim Hikmet and Ho Chi Minh. Crucially, her translation method was based on a ‘revolutionary’ principle according to which she did not need to follow any scientific and philological academic training to translate such poets’ works, rather she just had to passionately conflate into the historical pathway of their contemporary revolutionary movements. Thus, performing such ‘embedded’ and ‘embodied’ translation practice Lussu opens up new possibilities for the translator role, that is activating a collaborative exchange of poetic communication through modern European languages other than the poets’ mother tongues and sharing their political activities, ideological dissidence, forced exile, and the painful separation from their families. The translation of their works could be achieved only after she travelled abroad and met the poets during their exile, listening to their stories for long hours and days, establishing an intimate and intellectual relationship with them, learning words of their native languages from a third common language, finding equivalent or similar concepts, poetic images and emotions into Italian by means of paraphrases, circumlocutions, analogies or by pointing to objects, using facial expressions and gestures. Giving voice and introducing to Italy the works of Agostinho Neto, José Craveirinha, Nazim Hikmet- among the others- who used to bear historical and social witness by interpreting situations of people’s subjugation to ignorance, poverty and colonialism and to claim ethnic identities which exist in [the people’s] consciences but not on a map (Capancioni, 2011), Lussu takes translation on a new journey of orality, performance, collaboration, mediation and transmission demonstrating that subverting the view and the practice of translation as conceived only in terms of static ‘original’ written source text -as for many years Western cultures have been obsessed with- can be a transformative and committed political act. Finally, the paper aims to unfold and explore the most relevant paratextual materials (e.g.: prefaces, footnotes, endnotes, critical notes, glossaries) which accompany Lussu’s translations of the above-mentioned poets, locate her voice as an interlocutor for stories claiming responsibility for her interpretations, and show her translation practice as characterized by the orality/writing interface that is, in Bandia’s terms (2008), a textual transformation which can be described as a form of inter-semiotic translation.