How to Rewrite a Tagalog Novel into an English Classic: Danton Remoto’s English Translation of Lope K. Santos’s Banaag at Sikat

• Main Author: Kelly, Chris Cañete Rodriguez
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2023
• Subjects: Banaag at Sikat; translation; vernacular English; Art and Design; Arts and Humanities; Comparative Literature; East Asian Languages and Societies; Fine Arts; Music; Other Arts and Humanities; Philosophy; Religion; Theatre and Performance Studies
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/paha/vol13/iss2/1; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/paha/article/1303/viewcontent/PAHA_Vol_13_No_2_2_Articles__Notes__and_Comments___Kelly_Rev2.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

To appeal to a contemporary global readership, Danton Remoto in his English translation of Lope K. Santos’s Banaag at Sikat omits much of the original’s political passages. Such an approach to translation, however, hollows out elements of the original. Following the work of Annette Damayanti Lienau and Akshya Saxena, this essay understands colonial and vernacular languages as dialectically interdependent. It argues that Remoto’s abridgement of Banaag at Sikat is produced not by a refusal to translate the Tagalog of the original, but a refusal to translate the coconstitutive difference between English and Tagalog, which inheres precisely in the excessive political dialogism of Santos’s Tagalog original as a verbose response to—and resistance of—English’s colonial importation.