Translating culture: linguistic attachment, detachment and (self)-narration

This chapter explores the extent to which Eva Hoffman and Ariel Dorfman translate themselves in the process of translating for others the new cultures which they adopt or adapt to in the process of migration. Through examination of their memoirs, it charts their bilingual journey and represents the translational process by which they come to accept their doubleness and bilinguality as something to be celebrated rather than something to resist or to mourn. In reviewing their memoirs through the lens of changing contexts for, and new understandings of, bilingualism, the chapter indicates the extent to which the bilingual condition itself has undergone transformation in literary and academic discourse