As Queer as Queer Can Be? William Burroughs? Novella through Rose-tinted Glasses

Belo Horizonte

Congreso; 5th IATIS Conference; 2015

International Association of Translators and Interpreters y Univesidade Federal de Minas Gerais

In translation studies, the cultural margins have acquired a key importance as dynamic spaces of political action in defense of the literatures of the oppressed. However, beyond the interest in these literatures, the question remains whether translators focus their energy in expressing loyalty toward these source, oppressed cultures or whether their craft is permeated by mainstream subjectivities which condition them socially in the target culture, such as the case of translations into English. Using tools from the cultural studies, linguistics and translation studies, I have studied William Burroughs? novella Queer (written in 1953 and published in 1985). The fact that the work did not enter the English literary system for over 30 years because its author feared legal prosecution due to the sexually-explicit nature of his text is in itself thought-provoking. Moreover, its translation was published in Spanish only in 2013, 60 years after it was written and almost 30 years after its first edition. In principle, my paper tackles the historical differences in 1953, 1985 and 2013 to frame the context of production and ponders on the two literary systems which the work entered to discuss it reception. Considering that in the sixty years that elapsed from its English version to its Spanish version, the Stonewall riots and the gay liberation movement occurred as well as the advent of AIDS and the birth of queer theory (milestones that shook the very foundations of gay literature), this synchronic analysis may shed some light on the reasons for its publication. Additionally, while at times Burroughs? novella steps away from traditional ?gaylese,? which Burroughs reportedly despised, some other times it sinks deep into ?camp? or at least flirts with it profusely. In Marcial Souto?s translation, ?butch? and ?camp? blend while some of the sexual power of the source is lost in translation. The translation of Queer into Queer may prove to be a benign (or self-censored) rendition of a pivotal work that was expected to raise havoc in the literary world (or worlds) where it was published. Tapping into Souto?s translation, we may see how far (or near) queer studies and queer translation have gone in the last sixty years.