Abstract

Self-translation studies have given less critical attention to essays than to other literary genres such as novels or poetry. However, inasmuch as essays often display a subjective apprehension of collective values and ideas, their self-translations are a showcase of the complex interactions between cultures, languages and the individual. Gustavo Pérez-Firmat’s Life on the Hyphen (1994) provides an in-sightful analysis of the hybrid Cuban-American culture as part of the vibrant us melting-pot. Vidas en vilo, its Spanish “therapeutic” self-translation, introduces important changes in the original that reaffirm the author’s bond to the Spanish language and to his Cuban home-land. Paradoxically, translation as a “distancing mechanism” draws the author nearer to a native tradition of cultural syncretism. Self-translation exposes the author’s divided self, but, for a bilingual and bicultural subject, assuming duality is the only available means to wholeness.