Noely Perez

Writing 2
Article Genre Translation Reflection

For my genre translation, I translated my article into a letter. The article I chose was called "On

Our Toes" and was written by Cristina Rivera Garza, a Hispanic studies professor at the

University of Houston where she is also the director of the Creative Writing Program. Garza is

also the author of six award-winning novels and other pieces of writing. The audience for this

article is the readers of the literary magazine, World Literature Today as well as any trying to

inform themselves about Mexico's feminist movements. The main argument of this article is that

the feminist response to violence against women in Mexico came to a "boiling point" in 2019.

Essentially, she is saying that this was the year when being a feminist in Mexico was no longer a

thing to keep hidden as it was in years prior and where moves were being made to push for

change. The thesis can be found on the second page but it is plastered on the front cover, it

grasps the reader's attention. The thesis is identifiable because most of the article revolves around

this central idea, everything she talks about points back to it. The author argues this thesis by

talking about the events leading to 2019 and by talking about the various movements created by

feminists in Mexico during the years leading up to 2019, the events of 2019, and how those

events were set apart from other years. The evidence she used was various movements that were

documented online or took place on social media platforms, specifically Twitter.

For my examples, I chose three different letters. One being to a friend, a cover letter and one to

an employer. What I got from those letters is that letters are non-fiction and usually in the first

person point of view. Letters start with a greeting, such as “Dear, (recipient)” and end with a sign

off such as “Sincerely, (author)”. The tone for a letter is set depending on the audience, the

recipient. If you're writing a letter to a friend or family, your tone is usually informal and maybe

even humorous. If you are writing a letter to a potential employer, your tone is formal and

1
Noely Perez
Writing 2
serious. The tone is also set by the contents of the letter, if you are delivering good news the tone

is joyful, if the content of the letter is bad news it’ll take a sad or pessimistic tone. A letter’s main

goal is to communicate between the letter’s writer and the letter’s recipient. In my case I made

the recipient of my letter a friend. Therefore my letter took on a more casual tone. I would say

my letter was a good example of a letter as it contained the main components of one, a greeting,

a sign-off, and I was communicating the contents of my article to the recipient of my letter. I

took the main parts of my six page article and condensed them into a one page letter. I think my

main challenge was picking and choosing the information that made the final cut. My whole

article was not going to fit into a one page letter so I had to prioritize what I thought were the

most important parts and cut off what I didn’t deem as necessary to convey the article’s main

objective.

As I mentioned, my new audience is the recipient of my letter, my friend. This is different from

the original audience for the article as I doubt my new audience is subscribed to World Literature

Today. I chose this genre because I thought it would be fun to change this academic article into a

less formal form. This genre still effectively communicates the key points of the article as a

letter’s main point is to communicate. I transferred the key ideas by keeping it concise and

sticking to only the main ideas. I tried my best not to stray into information in the article that

wasn’t as important. Although the length, audience, and delivery of the article changed, most

everything else stayed the same. I had to take off a lot of the length from the original article. I

had to add a greeting and sign off. I also had to rewrite keeping in mind that I was writing a

letter.

The two readings I found the most helpful when doing my genre translation were “Reflective

Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?” which was helpful for writing

2
Noely Perez
Writing 2
this reflective essay and “Navigating Genres” which really helped me understand what a genre is

and how they are formed.

One of my biggest challenges was having to choose what information made the cut. I didn’t want

to write a wordy letter but I also wanted to keep the key ideas of the article. I overcame this by

just writing what I had deemed important from the first time I read this article and editing as I

went. As I was writing I realized what information was more important and edited my letter

based on that. Another issue I had was trying to change the tone of the article. Since this was an

academic article, a lot of the vocabulary used is not vocabulary I typically throw around on a day

to day basis. For my letter I switched out words and rearranged things to make them fit how I

would write a letter to a friend.

3
Noely Perez
Writing 2

Bibliography:

4
Noely Perez
Writing 2
Zemliansky, P., Lowe, C., & Giles, S. L. (2010). Reflective Writing and the Revision

Process: What Were You Thinking? In Writing spaces: Readings on writing (Vol. 1).

essay, WAC Clearinghouse.

Zemliansky, P., Lowe, C., & Dirk, K. (2010). Navigating Genres. In Writing spaces:

Readings on writing (Vol. 1). essay, WAC Clearinghouse.

5
Noely Perez
Writing 2