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

Yoko Tawada's Portrait of a Tongue: An Experimental Translation by Chantal Wright is a hybrid text, innovatively combining literary criticism, experimental translation, and scholarly commentary. This work centres on a German-language prose text by Yoko Tawada entitled 'Portrait of a Tongue' ['Portrat einer Zunge', 2002]. Yoko Tawada 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 &quote;thick translation&quote;,and to develop their own creative voices. This experimental translationaddresses a readership within the academic disciplines of Translation Studies,Germanic Studies, and related fields.- This book is published in English.