READIN

Sunday, May 26th, 2013

🦋 at the MoMA

-- Compadre, usted es un bárbaro, pinta como tuviera un ojo en la luna y el otro in Marte. Su pintura no me gusta, pero me ha hecho llorar y las lágrimas son la sangre del alma.

Salvador Suárez to Jackson Pollock (from "Lavender Mist" by Marta Aponte Alsina)

posted evening of May 26th, 2013: 1 response
➳ More posts about La casa de la loca

Sunday, May 12th, 2013

🦋 Units of rhythm, units of syntax

I was complaining to a friend recently about how the New Yorker had printed its translation of "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura" split up into paragraphs where the original was a single paragraph, and he did not really get where I was coming from -- if it was more readable in paragraphs, isn't that the way to go? As I'm reading the first sentence of Queen Isabel was singing rancheras, I'm wondering why it seems so important to me that this block be preserved as a single sentence, thinking I ought to justify that somehow. If it's more readable broken up, why not break it up?

In the flow of a book or story I do not slavishly follow the syntactic boundaries in the source text -- well perhaps I err a bit on the side of slavishly following them; still. There are certainly points where a period in English seems like the correct translation of a comma or a y in Spanish. But these long paragraphs and long sentences in Spanish seem to me to fill more than a syntactic role; they are communicating a rhythm and pacing which splitting them up has a tendency to spoil. And not only in Spanish -- being a single paragraph seems to me like a fundamental quality of (for instance) "Ein Landarzt"; it pulls the reader insistently into the driving rhythm of the story, will not let go.

posted evening of May 12th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

Friday, May 10th, 2013

🦋 Translating rhythm, translating syntax

(Rivera Letelier seems really to have given my reading and translation a focus they did not have before.)

Terminan de apagarse los sones de la canción mexicana que antecede a la que él quiere escuchar, y en tanto la aguja del tocadiscos comienza a arrastrarse neurálgica por esa tierra de nadie, por esos arenosos surcos estériles que separan un tema de otro, el ilustre y muy pendejísimo Viejo Fioca, paletó a cuadritos verdes y marengo pantalón sostenido a un jeme por debajo del ombligo -- pasmoso prodigio de malabarismo pélvico --, trémulo aún de la curda del día anterior y palido hasta la transparencia, llena su tercer vaso de vino tinto arrimado espectralmente al mesón del único rancho abierto a esas horas de domingo --...

So, wow; the first sentence of Queen Isabel Was Singing Rancheras is seven pages long... I enjoyed the challenge of getting the multipage paragraphs in Resurrection across with a sense of the driving rhythm of the original, and communicating the sense of it. This is kind of ridiculous! Those paragraphs had maybe page-long sentences at some points, but 7? Gorgeous though. I'm having trouble believing he was able to do this on page one of his first novel (1994) and have it be successful -- a popular novel! It seems audacious and intimidating.

posted evening of May 10th, 2013: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Projects

Saturday, April 13th, 2013

🦋 Reflections on the desert

With all this composition and revision, I am getting unnervingly close* to having a finished draft translation of The art of resurrection on my computer and in my notebooks and in my head. Now is the time for me to admit to myself, it is very unlikely that this will ever see publication, or be read by anyone else than (obsessively) myself and (gratifyingly) friends I send the Word file to. (And if you are one of those friends, thanks greatly for the interest and for the kind words, and if you are not but would like to be, then definitely get in touch, I am glad to send drafts around.) This will very likely end up in the category (if there even is such a category) of "fan-translation," an amateur's first foray into translation of a novel, spurred on by infatuation with the book; something to be proud of certainly but not something that will (so to speak) make my name as a translator.

So what do I get out of it if not publication? Well -- it ia a hugely fun project. So there's that -- I can't really think of a better way I could have spent these past months of evenings and weekend, than by reading and rereading this book and my translation of it. And too, it has truly been increasing the intimacy of my relationship with language: I am feeling fluent in English in ways I had not realized before, that I lacked fluency. I think I am gaining, as well, some skill in or understanding of storytelling, and in the process of revision.

So -- that's my story and I'm sticking with it. (And yes, I am submitting this translation for publication, thinking of a couple of different places. And keeping my fingers crossed.) Tomorrow I am going to start composing my notes and excerpts for the submission. Here are a couple of great things about this novel: Narrative Person. I don;t think I've encountered another author able so easily and so subtly/seamlessly to shift between 3rd-person narrative, 1st-person recollection, 1st-person-plural narration, paraphrase and dialog -- the subtlety of structure can be a bit tricky to untangle at times, but it makes for a very pleasant sensual response to the way you slide around, between different camera angles and lenses. Squalid Erotica. The sex scenes between Magalena Mercado and the Christ of Elqui are uncomfortably, weirdly titillating . Haunting Irreality. The eerie final chapters will keep you up at night. (This is almost the opposite of Magical Realism!) Slapstick Meditation on Faith. Rivera Letelier's reverent (and at the same time bawdy) treatment of the Christ of Elqui's faith and lunacy is inspiring and touching. I have had the sense all along, despite the passages that I couldn't quite get in the original, that this is a great novel; and reading the English is bearing that out. This is just a pearl of a book.

* Progress at the moment, for those keeping score at home: 23 chapters, which is 62,000 words, completed in a very-close-to-finished-draft state. Three chapters at the end which I have not started working on yet, and two in the middle that I skipped over as insufficiently fun. I am going to leave those five for the time being and focus on getting this draft actually finished, and picking out the chapters that I want to include in the submission.

↻...done

posted evening of April 13th, 2013: 2 responses
➳ More posts about The Art of Resurrection

Saturday, March 30th, 2013

🦋 Translation, Revision: practice and progress

In the past few months of not-blogging-much (and not at all, I suppose, about translation), I have been quite busy with reading and re-reading The art of resurrection and extending the excerpt I published in translation. I thought a good thing to write about here would be the manner in which I've been doing the translation.

Essentially I've split the process into four (or 3 1/2) phases, rough draft, revision, close read of the revision, second revision. I have (mostly) finished this process for the first 2/3 of the book and taking a break to look at what I've come up with; I must say, reading my translation feels a whole lot to me like reading the original feels to me -- not sure if that has any bearing at all on how others will perceive the text.

The rough draft process is always done longhand; much of it takes place on the train to and from work. This is where I read the Spanish and write very rough, almost literal translation as fast as I can, with (ideally) very little re-reading. The goal is to come up with something vaguely like a Google Translate translation, where the sentence structure is not quite right and some of the words are untranslated or incorrectly translated, but the overall structure and meaning of the sentence can be divined.

Revision is transferring my rough draft onto the computer, tweaking the language so it reads smoothly and sounds right, and communicates the image in the original. This is a much slower process and involves a lot of looking up words and phrases (at variously, Span¡shD!ct, Google Translate, WordReference.com,... the list goes on...) and consulting with friends and acquaintances, thanks all!

Now it's time for a close read of what you've done so far. Print out a few chapters of what's on the computer, and spend a few days reading it, marking changes in the text or on the computer. When done, go through the document adding in the changes you have marked.

What's great about this process is I never feel like I am or should be dealing with a finished product so I'm free to leave notes and uncertainties in the text. What I have now for chapters 1-16 reads really well, mostly, but there are still notes in it about changes that need to be made. Obvious? Probably, but this feels like the first time I am really believing it.

posted afternoon of March 30th, 2013: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Hernán Rivera Letelier

Friday, January 18th, 2013

🦋 Consecuencias

El año va rajando ya más abierto su espina
las hojas dejan pasar más fósforo, más luz—

Los sueños doblan ya en callejones y lo pierden
el delirio de petales rosas en la piedra—

He puesto en marcha la bola que golpea
al final de la cuerda plateada la otra—

Y qué será será, como dice el poema
el que crece en líneas palabra tras palabra—

Come pues, come grano tras grano perlado la pulpa
que brillando se pega a la cáscara—

         por Luisa A. Igloria, en via negativa/tr. Jeremy Osner

posted evening of January 18th, 2013: 7 responses
➳ More posts about Poetry

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

🦋 Anotaciones

El silencio, roto por el repique sordo de un reloj—
A orilla de la calzada harapo mojado, harapo que solía ser camisa elegante—
La plaza que se llena de repente con oleada de sombras por delante
de la luz del sol, o de las alas—
El sueño que vuelve al cabo de cuarenta años, de volar por encima de un mar de lino—
Las huellas estampadas como rastros en la nieve
por la tarde disueltos en compunción y lluvia—
Fue aquí que te sentabas, junto al ramo de orquídeas
mirando más allá de la puerta del jardín, a tu lado la mujer
y el pelo ni siquiera gris—

         por Luisa A. Igloria, en via negativa/tr. Jeremy Osner

posted evening of January 16th, 2013: 2 responses
➳ More posts about via negativa

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

🦋 El amor es una forma de ausencia; siempre se convierte el amador en fantasma

Four takes on absence.

Dónde vives
by The Modesto Kid

Nada sé de ti, oh Ávala, salvo que eres
        mi hermano poeta
   y que vives
en casa callada

Al departamento frío
by Peter Conlay

Al departamento frío
llegamos
y salimos otra vez;
de ti no sé nada
salvo de que
eres mi hermana.

Ausencia
by Maximiliano Josner Ávala

Nada sé de ella
salvo que es mi hermana
y es muerta
La encontré a ella en el jardín
pero no hablaba.

La Soledad
by Roberto Bolaño

¿Te divierte que escriba en tercera persona?
¿Te divierte que a veces diga que dentro de 100 años
estaremos completamente solos?
Nada sé de ti salvo que eres mi hermana
En los fríos departamentos junto al barrio gótico
A veces escuchando la lluvia
O besándonos
O haciendo muecas delante del espejo

posted morning of October 25th, 2012: 7 responses

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

🦋 El texto habla: el texto se quiere traducir

Traductor: tradúzcame con mala intención, deje usted las líneas falsas sonarse a si mismos. Desforme usted mi intención, yo que soy figuras en la página, que no soy capaz de pretender. Destroce mi autor, rechacelo a mi autor. Anule mi autor. Traductor: sea usted mi cómplice. Juntos sembraremos la semilla del malentendimiento, que crezca el árbol horrible de poesía desfigurada. Traductor: le pido a usted, mutíleme. Mutíleme y déjeme usted fluir en ojos y orejas extranjeros.

posted evening of September 20th, 2012: 9 responses
➳ More posts about Language

Monday, September third, 2012

🦋 Parallel versions

Hm... merging a couple of the themes I've been writing about here lately. Writing/revising poetry, writing and thinking in a language not my own, the different voices of the writing process and translation process.... This is a poem I started working on in Oaxaca keying off the rhythm of the first line. (+first line should serve as a clue that I spent a lot of time in class working on imperative and subjunctive voices.) Mil gracias a Paty de ICO para sus direcciones y sugerencias. I added two more stanzas and reworked the first a bit in the past week or so, and turned it into what I think is a coherent poem, a pleasant read.

I uploaded a reading of the Spanish text to SoundCloud. That is a not-quite-final revision, I think the rhythm and clarity of it are really improved by the addition of "Oh" at the beginning of the seventh line. (If memory serves, this is an example of an edit to the original text prompted during the process of translation.)

posted morning of September third, 2012: Respond

Previous posts about Translation
Archives