Bridging Borderlands: Translating Giannina Braschi's translingual identities

‘Bridging Borderlands: Translatng Giannina Braschi's Translingual Identities’ Giannina Braschi's literary works stand at the intersection of languages, cultures, identities, and genres, presenting an intricate mosaic of hybridity, that challenges conventional notions of boundaries. This contribution explores the challenging task of translating Brasch i's multifaceted identities across linguistic and cultural borders. Drawing upon the “Borderland” conceptual framework (Anzaldúa, 1987), as well as theories of (multilingual) translation (e.g. Bennet, 2019; Simon, 2011; Munday, 2008; Cronin, 2006), we analyze the challenges inherent in rendering Braschi's translingual texts, written in Spanish, English and Spanglish, accessible to diverse audiences while attempting to preserve the nuances of her hybrid identities. Through an examination of selected excerpts from her works Empire of Dreams (1994/2011), Yo-Yo Boing! (1998/2011), and United States of Banana (2011) we explore several of the translation strategies Braschi’s translators have employed to navigate, and negotiate the complexities of her hybridity, such as the use of code-switching (or ‘translanguaging’ e.g. Moreno-Fernández, 2020; García and Wei, 2014), as well as the ‘cultural-linguistic layering’ and (multi)linguistic play, present in her writing. We will also briefly reflect on the implications of translation choices on the representation and reception of Braschi's identities within different linguistic and cultural contexts, with the Italian linguistic context being one of the most recent.