After the publication of the breakthrough book Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule (1988), Vicente Rafael, with his broader political and cultural perspectives, has continuously published articles and essays on Philippine history and culture. The Motherless Tongues is his fourth single-authored book, succeeding two other titles: White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (2000) and The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines (2005).
In his previous three books Rafael's main concerns are to depict the nature of Philippine history and society from cultural perspectives, largely based on post-structuralist analysis. By contrast, The Motherless Tongues is an anthology of various essays and articles that feature diverse topics relating to the Philippines, the United States and the area studies on Southeast Asia which are linked to each other under the broader understandings of the cultural and political roles of “translation.”
In this book, translation does not only mean the translation of languages. Instead Rafael places it in different social and cultural circumstances. First, the author deals with the shifting meanings from the original languages to the translated ones and the various cultural impacts of the translated languages in the Philippines as colonial and postcolonial societies. Second, he shows us his interest in the role of translation in the national security or counterinsurgency in the United States as hegemonic state. Third, he questions the meanings of translation as the action of scholars in Southeast Asian Studies. In this context, we might take this volume as the author's masterpiece in the understanding of translation as the “relations of power” of the plurality of languages – vernacular, Spanish and English – by traversing two cultural milieus between the Philippines and the United States.
In the Introduction, the author argues the meaning of mother tongues as a Philippine-born historian. He frankly mentions: “Whenever I am asked what my native language is, I always hesitate to respond. I cannot point to a single one without feeling that I might be betraying the others” (p. 5). As is widely known, the Philippines has had lengthy colonial experiences, from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of World War II, under three colonial masters, Spain, the United States, and Japan. In this society, Spanish terms are often inserted into the vernacular language of Tagalog with some deformation, while English is widely used as a written and spoken language.
Thus, Rafael says that he himself lives in the world of “multiple mother tongues.” He continues: “To inhabit multiple mother tongues means that speaking any one language entails translating not only across different languages but also within the same language insofar as they are spoken in different ways in different contexts. Inter-and intralingual translation defines the condition of speaking any language in the Philippines – and perhaps elsewhere” (p. 5). Here is the quintessential standpoint of this anthology.
This book has three parts. The three essays of Part I deal with the different historical periods in Philippine society. Chapter 1 takes up the period of the Philippine Revolution at the turn of the century and shows how sovereignty and independence in western terms were popularly understood through Tagalog writings. The author aptly argues that Apolinario Mabini played the vital role of theorizing the revolution against Spain, but it was the vernacular writings by Emilio Aguinaldo and others that might have received wider support from the masses.
Chapter 2 discusses the historical process of the rise of creole Spanish, American English, and Tagalog slang and shows how effectively these languages have been used in postcolonial Philippine society. Here the author contrastingly argues for Renato Constantino's critical interpretations on the role of English under American influence in Philippine education and Nick Joaquin's particular interest in the unique intralingual relations between Tagalog, Spanish and American English, or the vernacularization of foreign languages in Tagalog.
Chapter 3 explains how the messages of the middle class can be easily transmitted to the masses through cellphones as the new technology of communication and translation in the Philippines. This phenomenon actually achieved the political effect of the resignation of the Philippine President in 2001. Featuring the growing rise of “Generation Txt,” this chapter also depicts the changing structure of Philippine society in the 1990s with the rise of the middle class.
Part II has two chapters on the United States. Chapter 4 discusses how the United States has emphasized the role of translation in relation to its state security since the Cold War period with the unique historical background of the formation of American English under monolingualism. The author traces the process by which the United States became a monolingual state, after the late eighteenth century when over one fourth of the white population spoke a language other than English. This evidence shows that the Americanization of English functioned as the translation of English into a national language (p. 108).
Chapter 5 takes up the issues of the role of translation for national security and counterinsurgency in the age of terrorism. The author pays special attention to The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual of 2006 because it gives us an idea of the task of interpreters in detail. Rafael remarks: “Appropriating its distant origins, the interpreter domesticates a foreign power and brings it forth as something intelligible and accessible to the target audience” (p. 135). “By containing, in all senses of that word, unfamiliar in the familiar and vice versa, the translator thus assumes an uncanny power” (p. 136). This explanation strongly indicates Rafael's understandings of the act of translation as the “extravagant fantasies of perfect communication,” though remaining largely unrealized.
Then how has the translation of languages functioned in area studies in Southeast Asian studies? Part III has four essays on major scholars who have held prominent positions in this area of research, questioning how these scholars were involved in area studies during the Cold War period. Here the author's major concern shifts to the dialogue between the researchers and the researched areas or peoples under the theme of “translating lives.” Thus, we might place the theme of Part III as the phenomenology of area studies.
Chapter 6 discusses the cases of Benedict Anderson and Arjun Appadurai as immigrants to the United States who incidentally joined Asian Studies “by their recurring fascination with the foreign” (p. 160). Chapter 7 describes the case of Renato Rosaldo, who conducted ethnographical study on the Ilongots, a minority living in the mountainous area of Northern Luzon. Here the author tries to grasp the meanings of the dialogues between the anthologist and the Ilongots, making “nostalgia” the key term.
Chapter 8 exemplifies the case of Reynaldo Ileto's seminal work Payson and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines (1979), and discusses the significance of the act of translation between two languages, that is, Tagalog and English. Rafael sees the success of the book as follows: “It is through English that Ileto is able to see in Tagalog words a kind of uncanny power to mobilize a mass of interests and commitments at odds with those of the educated and the wealthy ruling classes… . Throughout the book English and Tagalog are thus less opposed than juxtaposed to one another” (p. 175).
Chapter 9, lastly, is the interview in which the author speaks of his idea of translation, including the trajectory of his research on Philippine history and culture for over three decades. At the end of the interview he mentions that the next topic of his research will be “accents” as the physical aspects of speech or languages. With the author's wider knowledge of postcolonial and cultural studies, his next volume might reflect his long-standing career as a Filipino diaspora intellectual in the United States.
