In “Why Fell the Supremo?”, a part of his collection of essays titled “A Question of Heroes,” National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin calls Andres Bonifacio an “uncomfortable hero.” This may be a jarring title to give, especially for the majority of Filipinos who view Bonifacio as the pioneer of revolution—the very essence of what it means to resist oppression. Yet, why did one of our National Artists dubb one of our heroes with such a shameful title?
My mother peels an orange for my father
I never understood why my father loved oranges
Father, are your hands so important that you couldn’t lift them?
Daughters are never as tolerable
But I thought about peeling an orange once
And the bitterness of an orange was all I knew
Oh Father, where did you go?
Mother, should we grow apples in our backyard?
Mother, you don’t have to peel oranges anymore
American novelist R.F. Kuang presented a thought in her novel Babel that has remained in my mind ever since the night that I first read it: “Translation means doing violence upon the original, it means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So, where does that leave us? How can we conclude except by acknowledging that an act of translation is always an act of betrayal?”
If what Kuang suggested is true and that the act of translation is truly an act of betrayal, then what does that make us—ignorant overconsumers of translation? With how accustomed our current generation is to the effects of globalization, it may be easy to overlook how often we encounter translated content in our daily lives.