MULTILINGUAL PRACTICES OF TRANSLATION IN THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE OF MACAO: REFLECTIONS THROUGH THE LENS OF PLACENESS AND SUBJECTIVITY OF PLACE

Abstract

As a Chinese territory under Portuguese administration for over four centuries, Macao has experienced a dynamic cultural and linguistic exchange, where different languages (Chinese and Portuguese, in particular) coexist and thus form an urban linguistic landscape with its own characteristics. Against this background and drawing on two concepts connected to the relationship between place and human subject (their emotions, language and cultural activities, etc.) – namely placeness (Augé, 2008; Chaveiro, 2012) and subjectivity of place (Brown & Knopp, 2008; Holzer, 2009) – the aim of this article is to examine and reflect on public linguistic manifestations in the city of Macao, with a focus on the multilingual and intercultural practices that are made visible through translation. Based on the analysis of case studies present in Macao’s public sphere, this article addresses those language practices, among which translation is central, as they interact in three main categories of space that fill in an urban territory: “space of state and government”, “space of private sectors”, and “space of interaction of multi-actors” (Zhang & Sun, 2019). Following this categorization, our corpus encompasses signs on public roads, namely street and commercial establishment nameplates, advertising posters, and institutional and governmental notices. Through this analysis, the article seeks to deepen our understanding of multilingualism and interculturality in Macao, while contributing to a reflection on the power relations between the languages and communities coexisting in the territory, and thus on Macao’s (cultural) identity. Furthermore, this article also seeks to provide a reference model for interdisciplinary research at the crossroads of translation studies, linguistic landscape studies, and cultural and humanistic geography studies, in which translation practices are understood as a language of place.

Keywords
translation; linguistic landscape; placeness; subjectivity of place; Macao Special Administrative Region