Translating Hybridity: On Giannina Braschi’s Yo-Yo Boing!

This article explores the challenges of translating hybrid language in literary texts, focusing on Giannina Braschi’s Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), a novel written in English, Spanish and Spanglish. Drawing on experimental and ethical translation theories, it analyzes the strategies used by Tess O’Dwyer (2011) and Alessia Patanè (2023), including domestication, foreignization and intralingual adaptation. The article examines how hybrid languages such as Spanglish function as cultural and political acts of resistance, complicating the translator’s task. Building on recent sociolinguistic and postcolonial frameworks, it argues for “resistant translation” as a means of preserving the linguistic and cultural hybridity of such texts. Through comparative analysis and short experimental translations, it concludes that when translation is used to preserve rather than erase hybrid linguistic ecosystems, it can serve as a space of cultural affirmation, resisting assimilation and standardization.