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Friday, May 10th, 2013
(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 pendejÃsimo 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 dÃa 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
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Saturday, April 13th, 2013
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
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Saturday, March 30th, 2013
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
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Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
The narrator himself is just the author,
it's a shorthand, see,
unclothes himself seductively
and cryptically
and hands to you
his heart
posted evening of February 27th, 2013: 1 response
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Saturday, January 26th, 2013
Anoche soñaba contigo y con el abuelo.
Miramos al oeste donde se crepusculaba
y me apretaste la mano mientras
me explicabas la ausencia de los padres
y la furia del viejo.
Y encima de todo y atrás de todo se parecÃa
rondar el rostro y el ceño hostil de él, de Pablo Josner.
Voy soñando y lo que sueño no me parece tal sueño.
--
from journals of Lorenzo Josner (undated)
posted morning of January 26th, 2013: 2 responses
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Sunday, January 20th, 2013
caminamos tú y yo
se anochece en el cielo
como un borracho en el arroyo
visitamos calles desiertos
esquinas quejumbrosas
y otras calles las que sigamos
y que formen argumento
cada vez mas aparente
hacia un propósito muy obvio
lo que sin embargo no podemos llamar
por cualquier nombre
o palabra
pero vengamos, no discutamos.
posted afternoon of January 20th, 2013: 2 responses
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Saturday, January 19th, 2013
Possibly premature (heh) but I have a title page totally thought out for This Silent House... I had been thinking a snippet from "Lullaby for Laura" would be the epigraph, but I just found a JoaquÃn Pasos poem that makes me think of Ãvala: it is the one.
Canción para morir
¡Qué oscuro mar
sin velas
sin sol
sin agua!
¡Qué lejano recuerdo
sin alas
sin luz
sin sangre!
posted afternoon of January 19th, 2013: Respond
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Friday, January 18th, 2013
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
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Thursday, January 17th, 2013
El desvanecimiento desvanezco desaparezco
salgo callado de esta estructura
de recuerdos
y mi voz
también.
(from the journals of Lorenzo Josner, April 20, 1919)
posted evening of January 17th, 2013: 3 responses
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Wednesday, January 16th, 2013
El silencio, roto por el repique sordo de un reloj—
A orilla de la calzada harapo mojado, harapo que solÃa 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 aquà que te sentabas, junto al ramo de orquÃdeas
mirando más allá de la puerta del jardÃn, 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
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