Adapting the Unfamiliar… Through Translation.

Adapting the unacquainted(predicate) through with(predicate) 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 emotion eachy supercharged word. It is essential and the process of becoming different.The inspiring narrative, Always living in Spanish,by Dr. Marjorie Agosin, originally written in Spanish, tells of Dr. Agosins Chilean childhood and her move struggle to embrace the change that came with moving to America. Destiny and the always double nature of history continued my familys enforced migration (Agosin, 22) she states. Her story uses ain details to bring her childhood in Chile to life. It is her clear write out for her people and the constant battle to non let go of her individualism element that inspires her poetry all of which is written in Spanish.For her, like many others, makeup and thinking in Span ish is a gesture of survival through her journey from Chile to Georgia, as from her Chilean childhood to Ameri sack up adulthood. Philosophers a good deal say that it is important to find yourself, to identify who you are. But the self is not something unitary finds, it is something one creates through the process of change. The Encarta dictionary English (North America) defines identity as the name or essential character that identifies somebody or something (def. 1). We all have sets of characteristics that we recognize as belonging uniquely to ourselves.This constitutes his or her individual personality for life. The concept of identity in Dr. Agosins essay is sh experience vanquish when she states Daily, I felt the need to translate myself for the strangers living all roughly 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. lonesome(prenominal) at night, writing poems in Spanish, c ould I return to my senses, and soothe my own sorrow over what I had left behind. (Agosin, 22) For a while Marjorie was at a loss 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 expression, culture and history she was born with. rescue all of her characteristics together in a consolidated place where she can let go and just remember herself as she is intact with her identity. In America, when we hear someones poor spoken English with a thick accent or when we see someone not getting an American Sarcasm, we may not know what their ethnicity is, but we are accredited 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 Lee narrates this thought curiously well in her short story Mute in English-only World. She dialogue about her Korean mothers men tal struggle in an English speaking world by saying, In Korean she could be fiery, stern, deeply funny, and ironic, in English just slightly less so (Lee, 801). All languages have their distinct ways of expressing happiness, sadness and other feelings.Those differences locate how one translates themselves in the society they live in. As Dr. Agosin says, Translators are not traitors, as the proverb says, but rather splendid friends in this gigantic human community of language (Agosin, 24). It is hard to adapt and accept the changes that language barriers bring to our lives when we leave our homes. But that is what brings us one step mental block 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 animal we have separate ourselves into ethnicity, cultures and countries. It is where we currently are that has to be our new home away from home. We all secretly desire a perfect life, a perfect family or a perfect boss. After all if a pair of garment wouldnt have changed Cinderellas life then she would be one of us. She would have moved for a wear life, learned English, and gotten a better job with a healthcare package.CITATIONS Agosin, Marjorie. Always Living in Spanish Recovering the Familiar through Language. The Norton Field Guide 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. 4th 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.