ABSTRACT
Patterned after the Spanish and French national hymns, the Philippine national anthem, the Lupang Hinirang, was originally composed as an instrumental piece, to which lyrics in Spanish were later added. This chapter discusses translation and memory in two sections: one that looks into the visible and official facets of the anthem; another that scrutinizes its spectral and archival characteristics. The first part analyses aspects of the Lupang Hinirang’s interlingual translations, its evolution from archive to canon, and its status, in Pierre Nora’s terms, as a lieu de mémoire. The second section re-examines the anthem by drawing from theories of translation as afterlife and survival and memory as trace and archive.
It is argued that the Philippine national anthem is a product of mnemonic entrepreneurs and mnemonic trans(articu)lation. Mnemonic entrepreneurs include translators, people, and institutions that intervene in discursive positions and, in so doing, determine what is to be remembered and forgotten. Mnemonic trans(articu)lation combines aspects of memory, translation, and ‘articulation,’ as coined by Stuart Hall. The analysis shows how memory and translation politics and practices travel and thrive within cultural and historical hegemony. Lastly, since a national anthem is expected to represent a nation, the chapter concludes with some reflections on the re-translatability of the nation.
