“Yup, So-Jeer”: Interlanguage and Ruptured Translation in Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins’s The Perils of Certain English Prisoners

Coauthored by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, The Perils of Certain English Prisoners is a tale of linguistic subversion in colonial spaces. Christian George King demonstrates a linguistic phenomenon called interlanguage, or a quasi-language that partially resembles both English and his native language. King’s interlanguage disrupts the linguistic hierarchy of the tale by opening possibilities for miscommunication. To combat this linguistic tension, colonists must rely on translation—specifically, on the mistaken belief that all non-English languages, including an interlanguage, can be translated perfectly into English. Yet the very notion that meaning can be perfectly translated is shattered by interlanguage’s ability to cultivate both intimacy and resistance in the translator—intimacy, because the colonizers see enough of their own language in the learner to lull themselves into thinking that meaning is transparent; and resistance, because the foreign parts of the learner’s speech that remain serve as a continual reminder of the unconquered tongue. While interlanguage is most apparent in King’s speech, it is also present in the construction and coauthorship of “The Perils” itself. Indeed, interlanguage proves a useful concept for thinking about any textual moment in which individual voices combine into a hybrid voice that cultivates the illusion of cohesion.