How does the act of translating serve as a metaphor for crossing cultural boundaries?
AO: I think immigrants and, particularly, exiles are always translating, not just language but culture and circumstance. One of the most significant differences, I think, between an immigrant and an exile is that the immigrant, on some level, undertakes the possibility of a new identity with some willingness and transports herself emotionally to a new home. But for the exile, return to the native land–and the true self–is both essential and eventual. Translation for the immigrant is necessary in order to penetrate, integrate and, more often than not, assimilate. For the exile it may be all that as well, but there is, I think, a great desire to preserve. An exile holds on, I think, in ways that require translation to be constant, as much an act of resistance as of survival, because the exile–forbidden to return home–lives for that return, even if only symbolically. Native skills–including language, ritual, the way of tuning one’s senses–can’t ever be taken for granted or lost. Exi
