Dicte: Translation, Dictation and Postcolonialism

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Lacking a common quality to make a comparison, mutual understanding of cultures is confronted with incommensurability. Ironically, as a result, we become alert to make an utmost effort to comprehend formidable differences, and to communicate with each other better. The act of translation, whether literal or cultural, is not just necessary but required to co-exist, creating a new space to accommodate those differences. It is true that, in the process of writing, postcolonial writers encounter contradictory differences in and between spaces, and feel helpless to reconcile the differences.
Among other postcolonial feminist texts, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée (1982) is an exemplary, yet experimental work. Throughout Dictée, Cha tries to create the postcolonial narrative form while constructing her identity as a Korean American woman, which cannot be defined as a single defined subject. The fragmented sentences of deliberate mistranslation and faithful dictation demonstrate that Cha, as a postcolonial and multilingual feminist writer, has more options to create new meanings in the space. Cha's dislocated position, therefore, is not to be considered as displacement but as a constructive site for a positive relocation across national languages and cultures.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 "Writing at the Crossroads of Languages: Telling It Slant" Tuscaloosa: The U of Alabama P 207-223, 2002

2 "Unfaithful to the Original The Subject of Dicte" 35-69, 1994

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4 "The ‘Liberatory Voice’ of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dicte" 73-99, 1994

5 "Tell This Silence:Asian American Women Writer and the Politics of Speech" Iowa City: U of Iowa P 2004

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8 "Dicte." Berkeley:U of California P 2001