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Joseph Aimone Brings Poetic Skill to the Art of Translation

(Houston, Texas, February 18, 2007)   Translating the foundational works for a whole literature is a satisfying experience, according to Joseph Aimone, UH-Downtown assistant professor of English.   He and Professor Olga Rojer of American University in Washington, D.C. who is a native of Curcao in the Dutch Caribbean and was raised in the remnants of the colonial aristocracy speaking Dutch, English, and Papiamentu (a Creole language of the islands), have established an effective partnership for translating Dutch Caribbean works of fiction.  

The team began by translating the first piece of fiction published in Dutch by an author from the Dutch Caribbean - a novella entitled My Black Sister by Cola Debrot - chosen in part because Debrot had political as well as literary importance.   They hope to work with more of his fiction later.  

The team then proposed to translate Boeli Von Leeuwen's novel A Stranger on Earth, which had similar themes to the novella - racial mixing, the erasure of the role of the colony in the world system, and neocolonialism following the discovery of oil on the island of Curcao.  

"Our translation of My Black Sister received favorable responses from learned journals.   So, when we wrote the proposal for A Stranger on Earth , the international publisher Peter Lang Press wanted it," Aimone says.

Founding Fictions of the Dutch Caribbean by Aimone and Rojer has just been released through Peter Lang Press and contains both translations.

Watch for a trilingual edition of the Ananzi stories from the islands, should the team's new proposal be accepted.   (Ananzi is the trickster spider seen in countless stories throughout the African diaspora.)

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