Adapting the Unfamiliar… Through Translation.

Adapting the unacquainted(predicate) through Translation. Marjorie Agosin (born June 15, 1955). Source Wikipedia. 07/12/2012 Komal Shah Eng. 101C- 24 R. C. Muniz 333 Adapting the Unfamiliar through Translation. By Komal Shah. Change is a very powerful and emotionally supercharged word. It is inevitable and the process of becoming different.The inspiring narrative, Always lifespan in Spanish,by Dr. Marjorie Agosin, originally written in Spanish, tells of Dr. Agosins chilian childishness and her continuing struggle to embrace the change that came with moving to America. plenty and the always ambiguous nature of narration continued my familys implemented migration (Agosin, 22) she states. Her story uses personal details to bring her childhood in Chile to life. It is her clear love for her people and the constant battle to non permit go of her individualism that inspires her poetry all of which is written in Spanish.For her, alike(p) many others, writing and thinking in Span ish is a gesture of survival through her journey from Chile to Georgia, as from her Chilean childhood to American adulthood. Philosophers often say that it is important to find yourself, to identify who you argon. tho the self is not something unmatchable finds, it is something one creates through the process of change. The Encarta psychic lexicon English (North America) defines identity as the name or essential oddball that identifies somebody or something (def. 1). We all have sets of characteristics that we recognize as be uniquely to ourselves.This constitutes his or her individual personality for life. The concept of identity in Dr. Agosins essay is sh stimulate best when she states Daily, I felt the need to translate myself for the strangers alert all around me, to tell them why we were in Georgia, why we are different, why we had fled, why my accent was so thick, and why I did not look Hispanic. Only at night, writing poems in Spanish, could I buy the farm to my sense s, and soothe my own sorrow over what I had left behind. (Agosin, 22) For a while Marjorie was at a injury the loss of the familiar, and more importantly, the loss of her identity.She found a way to reconnect herself with her identity by doing something that reminded her of language, culture and history she was born with. Bringing all of her characteristics together in a consolidate place where she can let go and just remember herself as she is intact with her identity. In America, when we hear psyches poor communicate English with a thick accent or when we see someone not getting an American Sarcasm, we may not know what their ethnicity is, only we are sure that the person is an outsider.That is because of the shape of someones identity is by the usage and understanding of a language. A Korean- American novelist, Chang-Rae leeward narrates this thought particularly well in her short story dampen in English-only World. She talks about her Korean mothers mental struggle in an E nglish speaking world by saying, In Korean she could be fiery, stern, deeply funny, and ironic, in English just close to less so (Lee, 801). All languages have their distinct ways of expressing happiness, distress and other sprightlinessings.Those differences decide how one translates themselves in the society they live in. As Dr. Agosin says, Translators are not traitors, as the proverb says, but rather thin friends in this great human community of language (Agosin, 24). It is hard to reconcile and accept the changes that language barriers bring to our lives when we leave our stands. But that is what brings us one step closure to our true selves and how we were made.Despite of more than seven billion of our own kind on the planet earth, there are times we feel shipwrecked and alone when we are away from the familiar, because as a social wolf we have grouped ourselves into ethnicity, cultures and countries. It is where we currently are that has to be our new home away from ho me. We all secretly desire a perfect life, a perfect family or a perfect boss. After all if a pair of shoes wouldnt have changed Cinderellas life past she would be one of us. She would have moved for a better life, wise to(p) English, and gotten a better job with a healthcare package.CITATIONS Agosin, Marjorie. Always spirit in Spanish Recovering the Familiar through Language. The Norton Field look at to Writing with Readings and Handbook 2nd Edition. New York W. W. Norton , 2009. 21-24. Print. Lee, Chang-Rae. Mute in an Enlgish-Only World. Everythings an Arguement. quaternate ed. Boston Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 800-02. Print. Encarta Dictionary(Online College Dictionary)Review. Encarta Dictionary (Online College Dictionary). N. p. , n. d. Web. 11 July 2012. http//www. really-learn-english. com/encarta-dictionary-online-college-dictionary. html.