Rendering Otherness: the Translation of Francophone Caribbean Poets

Abstract

Since the 1990s and the growing influence of the so-called ‘cultural turn’ in Translation Studies, considerable research has been devoted to the difficulties arising from the translation of linguistic variation, particularly the translation of literary texts written in linguistic varieties with culture-specific references. Drawing on the poetic works of a several contemporary Francophone Caribbean authors (Guy Tirolien, Ernest Pépin, Joseph Zobel and Nicole Cage-Florentiny) we analyze in this paper some of these translation issues and suggest strategies that can be adopted so as to render in Spanish both denotative and connotative meanings of the lexical items specific to the variety, and at once preserving their local character.