Spanglish
As AATIA celebrates its 40th anniversary, we are pleased to publish a series of articles and cartoons authored by longtime AATIA member Tony Beckwith.
Tony is a writer, translator, poet, and cartoonist. He was born in Argentina and brought up in Uruguay. After living and working in various countries for a number of years, he came to Austin, Texas, in 1980 and has been here ever since. Until his recent retirement, he specialized in art translation for museums and galleries.
In this first article, “Spanglish,” Tony reflects on how learning to “fracture the [English and Spanish] languages” while growing up in a bilingual community in Uruguay helped lay the foundations for his future career as a writer and translator.
The article was first published in Source, the quarterly online journal of the Literary Division of the American Translators Association (ATA).