Translating from the Interstices

The privileging of finite products, the original and the printed translation, seems to go right against the very nature of translation which is intrinsically fluid, under way. What I concern myself with here is the investigation of the area in-between the original and the translation, that zone in which two languages and two cultures come together and fuse in a kind of cross-fertilization where their distinctive traits are blurred and confused by the process of superimposition. It is the zone, which in the course of my article I call "interstitial", where the original is no longer itself, having experienced already the departure from its point of inception, and where the translation is not yet completed, being still in the process of reaching its "home". The "interstitial" zone is neutral and defies the clear definition of "home" as a given set of accepted cultural values and tastes. It lies in-between, in the mid-way and as such is characterized in equal measure by the memories of the origin and the expectations of the arrival, by the features of the known (the original) and those of the "becoming" (the translation).