Cover not available

Article published In: Translation in Society
Vol. 4:2 (2025) ► pp.153–173

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

An ethnographic account of Spanish-language publishing and reading in the United States

The role of and attitudes towards translation

ORCiD logo with link | Autonomous University of Barcelona
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Published online: 26 September 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tris.24023.cus
Abstract
Through an ethnographic account, this article explores Spanish-language publishing and reading in the United States, focusing on the key role of translation and attitudes towards it, along with the social fabric of reading. The practice of “simultaneous and parallel publishing” (that is, publishing English originals and their Spanish translations at the same time) is found to be reflected in some reading practices that overlook the translated nature of Latina/o/x texts in Spanish translation. This special case of invisibility is considered alongside a type of talk among booksellers and readers that positions Spanish translation as best avoided. Thus, while the heterogenous Hispanophone readership in the United States could give rise to a laboratory for cohabitation, creativity and innovation in translation and language practices, this remains unlikely if translation is framed as an extension of an original’s market share or perceived as providing access to the “same” but an inferior text.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The role of translation, readers and ethnography
  • 3.The initial question of who reads in Spanish
  • 4.The subsequent questions of what is read and in which variety of Spanish
  • 5.The question of where and the game of mirrors
  • 6.Some Spanish-language readers and book clubs
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (63)
References
Allen, Brooke. n.d.a. “Por estas calles bravas / Down These Mean Streets Teacher’s Guide.” Translated by Anne Díaz. Penguin Random House. Accessed 18 August 2025. [URL]
Alire, Camila A., and Jacqueline Ayala. 2007. Serving Latino Communities. A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians. New York: Neal- Schuman Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Andringa, Els. 2006. “Penetrating the Dutch Polysystem: The Reception of Virginia Woolf, 1920–2000.” Poetics Today 27 (3): 501–568. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick, and Diego Hernandez. 2019. “Latinos, the Racial Wealth Divide and Rebuilding the American Middle Class.” National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Accessed 8 September 2025. [URL]
Benhabib, Seyla. 2002. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bielsa, Esperança. 2023. A Translational Sociology: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Politics and Society. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by R. Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Anna, and Mark Hugo Lopez. 2015. “Public Libraries and Hispanics: Immigrant Hispanics Use Less, but Those Who Do Appreciate Them the Most.” Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Camps, Assumpta. 2011. “‘A mitad de camino entre aquí y allá, en medio de quién sabe dónde’: Traducir la/desde la frontera.” MONTI: Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación 3 (3): 337–354.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Casanova, Erynn Masi de, and Tamara R. Mose. 2017. “Translation in Ethnography.” Translation and Interpreting Studies 12 (1): 1–23. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Casanova, Pascale. 2004. The World Republic of Letters. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chesnokova, Anna, Sonia Zyngier, Vander Viana, Juliana Jandre, Anna Rumbesht, and Fernanda Ribeiro. 2017. “Cross-Cultural Reader Response to Original and Translated Poetry : An Empirical Study in Four Languages.” Comparative Literature Studies 54 (4): 824–849. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cresci, Karen Lorraine. 2017. “Call It My Revenge on English: ‘Negocios’ de Junot Díaz y sus traducciones disonantes.” Literatura: Teoría, Historia, Crítica 19 (2): 147–181.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “On Loss and Gain: The Translation of Linguistic Simultaneity in This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Díaz.” Minorité, Migration et Rencontres Interculturelles/Minority and Migrant Intercultural Encounters 31 (2): 111–139.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cussel, Mattea. 2024. “When Solidarity is Possible Yet Fails: A Translation Critique and Reader Reception Study of Helena María Viramontes’ ‘El café “Cariboo”’.” Translation Studies 17(1); 70–85. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2025. Migration Literature in Translation: From Latinx Texts to Transnational Readers. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dali, Keren. 2021. “Fostering the Reading Experience for Spanish-Speaking Readers: Post-Migration Changes in Reading Practices and the Implication for Libraries.” The Reference Librarian 62 (1): 34–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. “Reading Practices of Spanish-Speaking Readers in the United States and Canada.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 54 (2): 188–207. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Díaz, Junot. 2002. “Language, Violence, and Resistance.” In Voice Overs: Translation and Latin American Literature, edited by Daniel Balderston, and Marcy E. Schwartz, 42–44. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel, and Ricardo Otheguy. 2016. “Contact and Coherence: Dialectal Leveling and Structural Convergence in NYC Spanish.” Lingua 1721: 131–146. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fernández Moya, María. 2016. “The United States, a Promising Market for Spanish-Language Publishing.” Informes del observatorio / Observatorio’s Reports. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fowler, Bridget. 1991. The Alienated Reader: Women and Romantic Literature in the Twentieth Century. Hoboken: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fuller, Janet M., and Jennifer Leeman. 2020. Speaking Spanish in the US: The Sociopolitics of Language. Vol. 11. Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbons, Jacqueline A., Martyn Hammersley, and Paul Atkinson. 2007. Ethnography: Principles in Practice. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glissant, Édouard. 1996. Introduction à une poétique du divers. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Godayol, Pilar. 2008. “We’re Mericans: Apuntes sobre la traducción de literatura chicana al catalán.” Transfer 11: 18–26.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gomez, Alexandra. 2020. “How To Start Your Spanish-Language Collection.” Library Journal. Accessed 8 September 2025. [URL]
Gratton, Brian, and Myron P. Gutmann. 2010. “Hispanics in the United States, 1850–1990: Estimates of Population Size and National Origin.” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 33 (3): 137–53. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Griswold, Wendy. 2000. Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jiménez Carra, Nieves. 2004. “Estrategias de cambio de código y su traducción en la novela de Sandra Cisneros Caramelo or Puro Cuento.” TRANS. Revista de Traductología 81: 37–59.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Joysmith, Claire. 1991. “Bordering Culture: Traduciendo a las chicanas.” Voices of Mexico 371: 103–108.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kingery, Sandra. 2019. “Translating Spanglish To Spanish: the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Translation Review 104 (1): 8–29.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
La Puente, Inés García De. 2014. “Autobiography in Self-Translation: Language towards Experience in Esmeralda Santiago’s Cuando era puertorriqueña.” The Translator 20 (2): 215–227. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levitt, Peggy. 2019. “Explaining Variations in Scale Shifting: The Role of Spatiality, Topography and Infrastructure in Global Literary Fields.” Poetics 791: 101397. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, Ping. 2012. “Ideology-Oriented Translations in China: A Reader-Response Study.” Perspectives 20 (2): 127–137. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Long, Elizabeth. 2003. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
López Ponz, María. 2010. “Escritoras híbridas, traducciones dobles y la influencia del poder en el proceso traductor.” TRANS: Revista de Traductología 141: 83–98.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “(Too) Changing Landscapes: The Translation of US Hispanic Literature into Spanish.” In Landscapes of Writing in Chicano Literature, edited by Imelda Martín-Junquera, 201–212. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marin-Lacarta, Maialen, and Chuan Yu. 2023. “Ethnographic Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies.” The Translator 29 (2): 147–156. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martín Ruano, M. Rosario. 2003. “Bringing the Other Back Home: The Translation of (Un)Familiar Hybridity.” Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series — Themes in Translation Studies 21: 191–204.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda. 2008. “Boricua (Between) Borders: On the Possibility of Translating Bilingual Narratives.” In Spanglish, edited by Ilan Stavans, 72–87. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mastropierro, Lorenzo, and Kathy Conklin. 2019. “Racism and Dehumanisation in Heart of Darkness and Its Italian Translations: A Reader Response Analysis.” Language and Literature 28 (4): 309–325. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munday, Jeremy. 2009. “The Creative Voice of the Translator of Latin American Literature.” Romance Studies 27 (4): 246–258. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Naseer, Sarah, Christopher St. Aubin, and Michael Lipka. 2024. “How Hispanic Americans Get Their News.” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nawotka, Ed. 2023a. “EBSCO Helps Librarians Build Spanish Collections.” Accessed 12 August 2025. [URL]
. 2023b. “HarperCollins Expands Its Spanish-Language Business.” Accessed 12 August 2025. [URL]
Ochoa, Pablo F., and Ruth E. Quiroa. 2020. “Transformative Learning in a Mexican American Mothers’ Book Club.” The Reading Teacher 74 (1): 19–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Radway, Janice A. 1991. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ramos Pinto, Sara. 2016. “Ya Care How Me Speaks, Do Ya? The Translation of Linguistic Varieties and Their Reception.” InTRAlinea: Online Translation Journal. [URL]
Sánchez, Marta E. 2019. The Translational Turn: Latinx Literature into the Mainstream. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stavans, Ilan. 2003. Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language. New York: Rayo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tekgül, Duygu. 2019. “Book Club Meetings as Micro Public Spheres: Translated Literature and Cosmopolitanism.” Language and Intercultural Communication 19 (5): 380–392. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thumala Olave, María Angélica, ed. 2022. The Cultural Sociology of Reading: The Meanings of Reading and Books Across the World. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Valdeón, Roberto A. 2023. “Translation and the Tabloidization of the New York Times in Spanish.” The Translator 29 (3): 346–361. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Velez, La Tesha, Patricia Lyons, and Anthony S. Chow. 2022. “It Starts by Asking the Right Questions — Meeting the Needs of the Hispanic Community in Public Libraries.” Public Library Quarterly 41 (2): 123–143. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 2008. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Washbourne, Kelly. 2014. “National and Supranational Spanish: Complexities of Production and Migration in Literary Translation.” Across Languages and Cultures 15 (1): 91–110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zentella, Ana Celia. 2017. “Linguistic (In)Security and Latina/o Unity.” In The Blackwell Companion to Latino Studies, edited by Juan Flores, and Renato Rosaldo, 25–38. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue