Along with the many intertexual and historical elements that comprise parts of Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle, the question of translation also arises. I am interested to see what you all think about the author’s decision to include un-translated words in several different languages throughout the text. My first experience with Hagedorn was reading Dogeaters, in play form, which also had several words and phrases in different languages. In this case, though, there was a glossary in the back, with the translations. Do you think that Dream Jungle should have included a glossary? I think that one of the major successes of the novel is that even without notes on translation, Hagedorn’s prose is lucid and evocative enough so that the reader can gain understanding of the words or phrases contextually and within the included sentences. In fact, in some instances, I feel that the un-translated, italicized words were more effective in relating emotion, confusion, and sentiment. The mix of Tagalog, German, Spanish, English and other languages intertwined the narratives of the individual yet interconnected stories. It is interesting to note that language, particularly such a mix of languages, are that which binds the characters together. Walter Benjamin, in his 1923 essay entitled “The Task of the Translator” asserts that translation is a mode, and therefore, one of the key elements in this mode is the original, and its meaning, particularly tied to the “translatability” of the original. Then, because there is a temporal quality to the original and its relation to the translation, it is through the translation that the original work sustains and maintains a “continued life.” Hagedorn’s decision to include in the text words that are un-translated echo Benjamin’s observations of translatability, not necessarily that the words cannot be translated, but that the text is better served by leaving the words un-translated, that their force as linguistic modes is more powerful in the original. There is also the sense of a sustained life, in the telling and retelling of a tale in several translations, moving contextual and historical information to fit the language of the new translated text.