Yoko Tawada's Portrait of a Tongue: An Experimental Translation by Chantal Wright

Yoko Tawada's Portraitof a Tongue: An Experimental Translation by Chantal Wrightis a hybridtext, innovatively combining literary criticism, experimental translation, andscholarly commentary. This work centres on a German-language prose text by YokoTawada entitled ‘Portrait of a Tongue’[‘Porträt einer Zunge’, 2002]. YokoTawada is a native speaker of Japanese who learned German as an adult.

Portrait of a Tongueis a portrait of a German woman—referred to only as P—who has lived in theUnited States for many years and whose German has become inflected by English.The text is the first-person narrator’s declaration of love for P and for herlanguage, a ‘thinking-out-loud’ about language(s), and a self-reflexivecommentary.

Chantal Wright offers a critical response and a new approachto the translation process by interweaving Tawada’s text and the translator’sdialogue, creating a side-by-side reading experience that encourages the readerto move seamlessly between the two parts. Chantal Wright’s technique modelswhat happens when translators read and responds to calls within TranslationStudies for translators to claim visibility, to practice “thick translation”,and to develop their own creative voices. This experimental translationaddresses a readership within the academic disciplines of Translation Studies,Germanic Studies, and related fields.