READIN

Wednesday, February first, 2012

🦋 Before Don Quixote

Some idle Googling the other day brought me to Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernandez Rodríguez-Mediano's essay on Miguel de Luna, Arabic Christian from Granada and thence to de Luna's True History of King Roderic... Lots to read... (And can it really be true that de Luna's True History has never been translated into English? It seems strange to think such a thing but I am not finding it anywhere. This looks like a pretty key bit of history of literature to me...)

posted evening of February first, 2012: Respond
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Monday, January 30th, 2012

🦋 L2 translation and "speaking Spanish"

Los traductores traducen por traición (y por hoy casi como mandato) de un idioma extranjero a lo que se llama su lengua materna. En la jerga de los estudios de traducción, éso se llama traducción L1, a diferencia de la traducción L2, que se dice traducción hacia un idioma entendido, un otro idioma. Pero, ¿qué significa una lengua materna?

-- D. Bellos
¿Es un pez en tu oreja?

Examinando más tarde la declaración del San Jerónimo -- Ego enim non solum fateor, sed libera voce profiteor me in interpretatione Graecorum absque scripturis sanctis ubi et verborum ordo mysterium est non verbum e verbo sed sensum exprimere de sensu -- escribe Bellos que el San Jerónimo quizás trataba sobre un verdadero problema para los traductores: ¿cómo tratar los expresiones que no entiendes? En la lectura y la plática cotidiana nos acostumbramos a pasar por encima de tales expresiones, el sentido interpretando del contexto.

Donde el contexto no basta por interpretar, pasamos por encima. ¡Pasamos por alto todo el tiempo! Nadie entiende todas las palabras de Les Misérables, pero éso no mantiene nadie de disfrutar la novela de Hugo. Pero los traductores no se les permite pasar por alto.

posted evening of January 30th, 2012: Respond
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Saturday, January 28th, 2012

🦋 Tirando a las lavazas con el bebé

de "Cosas que se dicen sobre la traducción"

por David Bellos
¿Es un pez en tu oreja?: La traducción y el sentido de todo
Capítulo 4

(porque me está gustando traducir de un lenguaje que conozco solamente corto en inglés: intentamos el proceso al revés...)

Y aún es verdad, los ejemplos de Cervantes, Walpole, MacPherson, Gary, Guilleragues, Makine, Clifford y otras también se demuestren que nunca podemos estar seguros de que leemos una obra original.

Ismail Kadare recuenta otra historia sobre la dificultad de distinguir entre textos originales y traducidos en su novela memorial, Chronicle in Stone. Teniendo luego diez años, se fue encantado de un libro que lo regaló un tío de él. Su historia de fantasmas, de castillos, asesinos, traiciones le gustaba inmensamente, precisamente porque parecía explicar en parte las circunstancias que a él alrededor tenían lugar, en la ciudad fortificada de Gjirokastër durante esos años de guerras y disputas. Eso libro fue Macbeth, por William Shakespeare. El joven Ismail podía ver a la Dama Macbeth en su propia calle, se las manos retorciendo en el balcón, las cosas terribles lavándose que le sucedían en la casa. Tenía ninguna idea de que este libro ha sido traducido de inglés. Fascinado infantilmente con un muchas veces releído texto, copiaba sus palabras; preguntado hoy por los periodistas el título de su primero libro escrito, responde siempre Macbeth, y hasta no más que la mitad de bromo. De cualquier modo que fue la traducción buena o mala, que a él tan le inspiró, seguramente no fue lavazas. Mucho mejor un elixir.

posted evening of January 28th, 2012: 1 response
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Friday, January 27th, 2012

Es un hecho bien conocido que una traducción no buen sustituía el original.

Es también todamente falso.

También no tengo respuestas...

It's a well-known fact that a translation is no subsitute for the original.

It's also perfectly wrong

--David Bellos, Is that a fish in your ear?

↻...done

posted evening of January 27th, 2012: Respond
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Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

🦋 El Círculo Croata de Venezuela

El último cuento de la colección nueva de Zupcic, Médicos taxistas, se dramáticamente diferencia del resto -- todos los son muy elegantes y lúcidos pero no (a excepción tal vez del hermoso "Tescucho, Italia") me inquietante cogen como los padre-ausente-y-criminal cuentos de sus colecciones jóvenes. Éso sí y hace una conexión bonita a los cuentos anteriores. (Los nuevos son indudablemente más fácil traducir, no estoy seguro de cómo esto interpretar.)

Cada uno de los cuentos en Médicos taxistas es a su manera excéntrico, es difícil clasificarlos juntos. El cuento titular me encuenta y en segunda lectura me deja pensando que es otra cosa detrás de la historia pero no puedo ver qué es. "El Barbero de Dalí" me ha riendo y rascándome la cabeza. "Doble Chávez" me da un sentido no del todo bienvenido de la identificación. Una lectura muy divertida.

"Amor que a otro puerto pertenece," el último cuento y el más largo, reexamina a otra manera la tema de Zlatica Didic y su hijo Zlatko Didic que Zupcic (Slavko el hijo de Slavko Zupcic) visitó por primera vez en su "Cartas hacia una novela". Zlatko comienca aquí, "Comencé a escribir este relato hace casi veinte años..." y de repente tengo una imagen más claro y más estimulante del (sin duda pequeño) cuerpo de su obra. Todo se junta.

The last story in Zupcic's new collection Médicos taxistas differs dramatically from the rest -- all of them are elegant and clear but none of them (except perhaps the beautiful "Tescucho, Italy") seizes me in the disquieting way that the absent/criminal-father stories in his juvenile collections do. This one does, and it creates a nice link to his earlier stories. (The new ones are indubitably easier to translate, I'm not quite sure what to make of this.)

Each of the stories in Médicos taxistas is oddball in its own way, I would have a hard time grouping them together. The title story enchants me and on second reading makes me feel I'm missing some element behind the story -- but certain that the unknown element is present behind the story. "The Barber of Dalí" ("Dalí's Barber" is probably a closer translation but I like the rhythm of this title) leaves me laughing and scratching my head. "Chávez Double" gives me a not completely welcome rush of identification. All in all a lot of fun to read.

"A Love Which Belongs to the Other Door," the last story and the longest, takes another look, through a different glass, at the subject of Zlatica Didic and his son Zlatko Didic, whom Zupcic (Slavko son of Slavko) first visited in his story "Letters Towards a Novel". Zlatko starts off by saying, "I began writing this story almost twenty years ago..." and suddenly I get a much clearer, more moving vision of the (to be sure small) body of his work -- it all comes together.

↻...done

posted evening of January 25th, 2012: Respond
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🦋 Conrad and the 20th Century

Juan Gabriel Vásquez took part in a live chat at the Guardian's Books section today -- here is what he has been thinking about recently:

For three whole days I have been thinking about Conrad's novels. Three in particular: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and The Secret Agent. I wrote a small text trying to suggest how amazing it was that those three novels, published between 1899 and 1907, anticipate every major issue the world had to deal with during the â…©â…© century.

Oh and also: " I have a tendency to trust translators, mainly because nobody does it for the money."

posted evening of January 25th, 2012: Respond
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Thursday, January 19th, 2012

🦋 Hurrying back

Dora was hurrying now and wanting her lunch. She looked at her watch and found it was tea-time. She remembered that she had been wondering what to do; but now, without her thinking about it, it had become obvious. She must go back to Imber at once. Her real life, her real problems, were at Imber, and since, somewhere, something good existed, it might be that her problems would be solved after all. There was a connexion; obscurely she felt, without yet understanding it, she must hang onto that idea: there was a connexion. She bought a sandwich and took a taxi back to Paddington.

Then again I got a similar vibe from The Little Stranger, which was pretty clearly not written for philosophical argument.

posted evening of January 19th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, January 15th, 2012

🦋 Tescucho, Italy

I rode my bike down Muntaner to Diagonal. Parked it in front of the Dau al set gallery and rang Valerie's doorbell.

—When you come to the door, so you won't have to tell me who it is, ring three times in a row: ta, ta, ta. That way I'll know it's you. —that's what she had told me, the first day.

The door opened and I went upstairs. Valerie went over to the sofa with me as soon as I came in, she was moving her hands slowly in front of me, telling me her mother had been in the hospital since that afternoon, she feared the worst, that she had only come away from there to meet me, so that I would not come to an empty apartment and be scared.

She gave me a kiss on the cheek, paid me, and we left the apartment. Of course I didn't tell her any of what I'd been thinking about. I wasn't going to be seeing her anymore, surely; but I had left the mobile -- the lizards, the Gaudi mobile, on her sofa.

I have made a couple of revisions and have submitted the story to Words Without Borders. The biographical note I submitted:

Jeremy Osner is a computer programmer living in New Jersey. He came to Spanish translation late in life and has been learning the language as he learns the voices of the authors he has translated. Notable among these is Venezuelan Slavko Zupcic, a psychiatrist now living in Valencia, Spain, whose stories examine the gaps in understanding at the borders between people.

This story is from Mr. Zupcic's recently published collection, Médicos Taxistas.

posted evening of January 15th, 2012: Respond
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🦋 Zupcic podcast

I have been struggling for a couple of weeks with translating a trilogy of stories by Zupcic about his character Vinko Spolovtiva... took a break from that to work on "Tescucho, Italia" from his new book Médicos taxistas and I was able in just a few days to get a working version together that I think reads quite well. You can listen to me reading it if you like; and hopefully soon you will be able to read it published somewhere!

posted afternoon of January 15th, 2012: 1 response
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Saturday, January 14th, 2012

🦋 Want

Zoe Leonard's political wishes (found at towleroad.com, and thanks for the link, ragebunny!):

I want a dyke for president. I want a person
with aids for president and I want a fag for
vice president and I want someone with no
health insurance and I want someone who grew
up in a place where the earth is so saturated
with toxic waste that they didn't have a
choice about getting leukemia. I want a
president that had an abortion at sixteen and
I want a candidate who isn't the lesser of two
evils and I want a president who lost their
last lover to aids, who still sees that in
their eyes every time they lay down torest,
who held their lover in their arms and knew
they were dying. I want a president with no
airconditioning, a president who has stood on
line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare
office and has been unemployed and layed off and
sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported.
I want someone who has spent the night in the
tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and
survived rape. I want someone who has been in
love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has
made mistakes and learned from them. I want a
black woman for president. I want someone with
bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has
eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who
crossdresses and has done drugs and been in
therapy. I want someone who has committed
civil disobedience. And I want to know why this
isn't possible. I want to know why we started
learning somewhere down the line that a president
is always a clown: always a john and never
a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker,
always a liar, always a thief and never caught.

(Check out this group reading of the piece, in English and in Danish!)

posted afternoon of January 14th, 2012: Respond
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