Translating “Asia” in Philippine missionary-colonial texts

Abstract

The centrality of translation in the practice of historical research is magnified in contexts where language serves as an impediment to accessing knowledge, such as in the case of the Philippines. In this paper, I shall analyze missionary histories and grammars of Tagalog, the basis of the modern-day national language of the Philippines called Filipino, and examine how the concept of “Asia” is imagined as an exotic Other in the textualization of its people. In proposing a translational reading of missionary texts, I shall provide examples of how colonial writing was instrumentalized to inscribe the Other within the history of Christian salvation, and how historical and linguistic texts constructed a colonial vision of the Philippines and Asia through translation.