The translation of identity on the frontera. Sandra Cisneros in Mexican Spanish, Galician and Catalan

Apart from referring to a geographical or physical border, the notion of frontera has also become a metaphorical or psychological construct which represents any situation of contrast, such as belonging to two different national, cultural or linguistic communities. Latino writers in the United States live and write on the frontera. The coming together of two cultures forges a new hybrid identity which fights against essentialism and homogenization. This hybrid identity is reflected in these writers’ language, a border tongue constantly switching from English to Spanish. Sandra Cisneros is one of those Latina writers who resort to code-switching as an identity hallmark. By introducing Spanish words, phrases or syntactic constructions into her English texts, Cisneros tries to evoke the feeling of inhabiting two worlds which can be conflicting and complementary at the same time. Departing from the notion of frontera, several translations of Cisneros’s works are analysed, paying special attention to those aspects related to identity and language. Particularly, I focus on the Mexican Spanish, Galician and Catalan versions of The House on Mango Street, the translation of Woman Hollering Creek into Mexican Spanish, the Catalan versions of several short stories from Woman Hollering Creek and the Galician translation of Loose Woman. In all the analysed versions, the translators use strategies which reflect the border identity present in the source text, such as the resource to code-switching and typographical markers or the use of calques and other borrowings, dialectalisms, and non-standard vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar.