Translating the Real to the Reel: The Representation of Latinx Migration in Documentaries

The present doctoral study aims to chart the representation of Latinx migration to the US in documentary films. As US immigration policy grew increasingly restrictive over the course of the 20th century, public discourse became more antagonizing towards Latinx immigrants. Hence, there is a wealth of literature on stereotyping and antagonizing media frames of Latinxs. There is little information, however, on attempts by the media to approach social issues such as Latinx migration from a less prejudiced angle. The present study addresses this knowledge gap by focusing on documentary depictions of Latinx (im)migrants. This study draws from Translation Studies to map out the route of real-life stories on Latinx migration to the documentary reel. By positing that documentaries and translations are prompted by the same oscillation between reality and representation to make authenticity claims, the study proposes to view documentaries as forms of translation. Such a stance allows for the documentary maker to take center stage and become a documentator: a documentarist-cum-translator with an agency to intervene in the transfer process from the real to the reel. The corpus of this study consists of documentaries on Latinx migration to the US that were broadcast between 1988 and 2018 on the PBS series POV, the first and longest-running showcase of independent nonfiction films in the US. Looking at these documentaries as translations, the study zones in on their contexts, agents, discourses, and practices - four basic factors of translation. Defined in function of the study's aim to chart how independent documentary makers, as documentators, translate stories on Latinx migration from the real to the reel, "context" alludes to the properties of the target structure in which the transferred products were meant to circulate; "agents" are understood to be documentarists-cum-translators with an agency defined by their habitus; "discourses" stand for the documentators' ideological choices in their documentary target texts; and the "practices" are the concrete translation decisions that these agents made in the said texts.

Publication year:2021

Accessibility:Open