Translating translation

Nothing promises the possibility of translation. This is why translation is always tentative, approximate and incomplete, an unfulfilled promise; necessarily trailing in its wake the 'remainder' of its past, no longer accessible. This article discusses three films that are all not only such things that withhold that promise; they are also about this withholding. They are about the difficulty of speaking in a foreign language. Three examples, from three different films, speakers, and even media, each present an issue of the poetics of the accent that is the focus of this article. The author first ponders the difficulty of speaking English and the violence of its imposition. Then she extends the idea of 'language' to other cultural media or practices from everyday life, and discusses how they, too, are 'accented' in the precise sense of accenting translation. In her conclusion, the author returns to language and discusses a single instance of translating translation as an activity of accenting.