An insight into the postcolonial work of Zadie Smith’s NW and the analysis of some cultural referents in its translation into Spanish

Abstract

[eng] This work will be based on studies related with postcolonial literature and translation in order to analyse some cultural referents in Zadie Smith’s NW. Colonialism’s effects on society gave room to the need of a liberation for the dominated peoples. Literature helped, then, to build an agency space where the subaltern could express themselves via differentiation, the exaltation of exoticism and the representation of their realities. Postcolonial literature is also related with feminism as women have experienced the patriarchy’s oppression, just like the dominated societies by colonialism. Furthermore, the translation of these works into the masters’ languages have caused controversy until nowadays. Some authors, such as Carbonell, argue that some current translation tools may be detrimental for postcolonial writers. As a result, standardised translation methods have been established to achieve a respectful representation of distant cultures (Marco, 2002:208; Venuti, 2008:19), which are described in the current paper.