"'No Speak English' in The House on Mango Street: A textual space for a political translation."

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros is one of the most renown narrative works among the Chicano/a literature. It has been translated into Spanish by the Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska. The inclusion of this text in the programs of study at schools and colleges all over the United States is interesting, since it presents many instances of language admixture, as well as the incorporation of non-standard registers of both English and Spanish. This is an important transgression of the dominant literary canon that needs to be at least acknowledged.

The purpose of this work is to explore the effect of the language admixture in the tone of the vignette "No Speak English" as well as the examination of the political consequences of the decisions made in the process of translation of the text. In this vignette, the issue of the language is particularly stressed, as it depicts the situation of a female immigrant to the United States, who is unable to speak English. The tone of this vignette acquires a cunning pitch as it deals with political issues such as the language barriers confronted by immigrants, and the articulation of a series of dichotomies that underline the oppression of minorities by the dominant culture as well as the oppression of the woman by the man. These issues are especially meaningful to the process of translation of an "interlingual text" and thus need to be considered in the study of both English and Spanish versions of the work. In fact, the analysis of the translation issues represent the space for a political —and certainly richer— interpretation of the text.

Carmen L. Rodríguez-Marín