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the German “lesbiche” or the French “gouine”? How do you approximate the sweet aromaof a corn tortilla that evokes the “arepera” or “cachapera” of Colombia and Venezuela? Howdo you narrative in other languages the South American genealogy that connects prostituteswith lesbians in names like “trola” and “degeneradx”? How do you tell the story of thesecondemned and banned professions associated with those assigned the female gender thatconnect the local [Argentine] “camioneras” with the Mexican or Ecuadorian “camiones” andthe Costa Rican “tractor”?B. The precious im/possibility of translationPerhaps it’s appropriate to recuperate that distinction that Jacques Derrida proposes about thepurpose of a “tongue”. For the French-Algerian philosopher, in the strict sense a “tongue” refersto a language; in a broader sense, however, a “tongue” is tied to an ethos, which is to say, withwhat the gringxs call a “way of being,” of acting, of feeling, of inhabiting the world:“In the broad sense, the language in which the foreigner is addressed or in which he is heard,if he is, is the ensemble of culture, it is the values, the norms, the meanings that inhabit thelanguage. Speaking the same language is not only a linguistic operation. It’s a matter of ethosgenerally.”In every language lies (or adheres) a tongue, moreover, many tongues. Between one and theother, between the tongue and the language, the philosopher warns, “difference and adhesion,”separation and superposition. For this reason, translating always entails confronting a doublechallenge: the (im/possible) passage from one language to another and the complicated taskof rendering a tongue (that which all languages carry), which is always a view of the world, notassimilatable nor fully comparable to the ‘destination’ tongue. But it is this very adhesion of thetongue–that which unifies it and separates it from distinction languages–that makes it possibleto think about translating (in one language made up of many tongues) from the Argentine lesbitongueto the Colombia, Chilean, or Mexican lesbi-tongue. This adhesion allows us to think,feel, and smell the nuances that unite and separate this pastry tradition from the Colombian“arepera” to the Spanish “bollo” or our already mythical “tortón patrio.”Perhaps this is why translating entails not just a challenge, but a risk: that of passing, inhabiting,and connecting languages, as well as the tongues that nest within them. At stake would not justbe accuracy or correcting the passage from one language to another, but the hospitality–just asDerrida also asserted–of the translation, which is to say, the capacity we have to let in, to give26
space or to welcome this whole ethos that dwells in our tongues, where they don’t just speakthe world, but also produce it, mold it and make it possibile.C. The threshold of the untranslatable: the zone of contagionsOn the threshold of the untranslatable circulate the nuances and wrinkles of our existences, inthis traffic zone also circulate experiences and ways of being that can turn out to be contagious,inspiring, productive.The untranslatable is, in part, a traffic zone of tongues (in the broad sense) with a creativeand contaminating potential. Where there doesn’t seem to be an adequate translation, wherewe can’t find the words or even where a misunderstanding arises, that’s where the zone ofpromises lies: the promise of an unexpected encounter that collapses borders between worlds,maybe even provides the possibility of mixing, as Silvia Molloy affirmed:“Mixing, coming and going, switching belongs to the realm of the unheimliche [uncanny],which is precisely that which rocks the foundation of home.”Through mixing, through this contact that takes us out of the familiar and hurls us towards thesinister space of the other that invades their own home, where, perhaps, the un/translatablebecomes a zone of promises. “The distinct always results–if it results in anything–dangerouslyin translation,” Molloy also states. And it is this potential to insert difference in the home ofthe tongue (of departure or of destination) that makes translation an act of creative risk, evenof producing difference, of reverberations in other worlds, of contaminated feelings that crossborders between languages and echo in our words.27
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