translatitudes
persigo traducciones lit orales I’m chasing after lit oral translations
el litoral la costa the littoral the coast la lit oralidad a lit orality ni vernácula ni barroca neither vernacular nor baroque a flow like this Atlantic un flujo como este Atlántico que aborda ciudades lit orales that encompasses lit oral cities New York San Juan Rio no hay hemisferio que valga a hemisphere won’t cut it transnational translation is a function of privilege la traducción transnacional es function del privilegio traslatio das capital no hay tal cosa como la auto-traducción there’s no such thing as auto-translation porque no hay un yo because there’s no self perhaps auto-strangulation tal vez auto-estrangulación maybe auto-triangulation tal vez auto-triangulación de yo y mi voz y el capital of me and my voice and capital ahogados por un blues occipital drowned out by an occipital blues there is no translation no hay traducción just eco-location solo eco-localización e-colocation e-colocación el eco y la canción the echo and the song
Tudocelular
Pensei outra doutrina eleitoral I thought another electoral doctrine achei sem espera ele dourado falei que eu found no waiting it golden told I elite elite Whitney Houston Whitney happy Houston feliz orando gols praying blitz goals blitz ou raridade or rarity Alice horário de Alice time to see ver na fila de banco in the bank queue Mirabilândia horário samba rock Mirabilandia time samba rock a floresta lance to bid forest o filme como extra Bandicam the
film as extra Bandicam que abordasse horas decoradas that addressed hours decorated quem come pessoas loterias eateth best lotteries people melhor sanfona trio people concertina Noemi trio Noemi ferir alguém vai ligar hurt someone will call renascer o cara hamster revive the guy hamster residencial sonhando plays no SoundCloud residential dreaming plays SoundCloud atuador do filme actuator film transnacionalização do Senhor ele privilegia transnationalization of the Lord he favors translater das capivaras translater of Capybara muita força como na outra operadora much force as the other God Deus não sabe se tem nas horas translation operator does not know if you have the time translation porque não avisou because not warned equalizar sinal selfie equalize sign outside selfie fora os cães e os sons dogs and the sounds fale bem auto extra no Brasil speak and auto extra in Brazil baby hora One Direction baby time One Direction fazer versão triangular filmes make triangular version movies perdoe-me você capital forgive me you capital as minhas mais cedo do cabaré my earlier salty cabaret salgado por um blitz hospitalar by a dreamgirls hospital blitz dreamgirls Paraná superou bullying Paraná surpassed translation seleção translation selection bullying no extra do filme in extra Justin film Justin coloquei sim put rather sleep sono ecolocalização echolocation e coloquei sim and put yes e colocar filmes and put carousel elenco da carrossel cast films ficar com o ânus stick to the anus
“translatitudes” is a smartphone improvisation recorded while walking along the beach in Far Rockaway, NYC, in August 2016. It is based on WOKITOKITEKI, an ongoing bilingual, improvisational vlog that explores poetics at the intersection of walking, talking, and “tech-ing.” This particular piece performs and comments on a baroque/vernacular poetics of self-translation, seeking an embodied, localized, and mediated "lit oral"/"littoral" alternative to translation’s imperious/imperial trans-nations. “Tudocelular” is a homophonic translation of “translatitudes”—accomplished by reading the original into the speech-recognition tool Dictation.io set to Brazilian Portuguese—along with the GoogleTranslate English version of the homophonic translation. While elements of my Caribbean Spanish survive in the Brazilian Portuguese text (in keeping with their linguistic littorals), the English portions tend to foreground superficial pop culture or technological terms as well as some stereotypically Brazilian references, as if to highlight the technology’s algorithmic bias. For its part GoogleTranslate produces the ugliest of texts, doing significant syntactic and semantic violence, and revealing the bankrupt hegemony of global translatability.
Urayoán Noel
