Literary Translations: From Bikol to the World and Back

What does it mean to do literary translation in the Philippines, home to more than a hundred evolving indigenous languages, and host to English as a colonial language that remains to be the dominant lingua franca? Though often regarded as a thankless preoccupation, Cordero argues that translation is priceless and remains to be the bloodline of literatures as they traverse time and space, oceans and cultures. The Bikol literary community, outside of imperial Manila, thrives and throbs from this bloodline. In translating foreign literary works to our local languages, and as our works are translated to other languages, this presentation highlights the conceptual and practical challenges in the performance of this task, that clearly is both a political and creative act.