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Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

🦋 Shame

“War is hell,” said Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration: he said it following the killing of 16 civilians, among them children, by a deranged sergeant in the Afghan province of Kandahar. This massacre unleashed on the world a series of images that one cannot look at without being reminded of similar massacres from the Vietnam War — for instance, My Lai.

-- "Shame", by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

On the subject of shameful killings: Founderstein's Michael Austin has exactly the right take on the killing of Treyvon Martin in Florida last month. (via Russell Arben Fox)

posted evening of March 20th, 2012: Respond
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Thursday, March 15th, 2012

🦋 New Saramago! New Pontiero!

How exciting: the current issue of Guernica features the first half of the story "Things", from Saramago's short story collection Objecto Quase (1978) -- the second half will be published in April. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first time any of these stories has been seen in English translation. The full collection will be published by Verso Books at the end of April, under the title The Lives of Things. Really great news -- Saramago's signature style begins to take shape in these stories, and themes that will occupy his writing throughout his career.

It is also great news to see that the translation is by Giovanni Pontiero, the master who translated so many of Saramago's early books before his untimely death in 1996. Clearly the translation has been out there for a long time, at last it will be available to the public.

Speaking of translation -- I had good news today, word from the editors of Words Without Borders that they'll be publishing my translation of Fernando Iwasaki's "A Troya, Helena," my project of last weekend. It will appear in their April issue.

posted evening of March 15th, 2012: 5 responses
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Sunday, March 11th, 2012

🦋 Oh, that's what that means! ...What does that mean?...

Spent this weekend working on a translation of Fernando Iwasaki's A Troya, Helena, and I think I came up with a pretty convincing rendering by this morning's (submitted) draft. A couple of fun bits from researching meanings in this short story:

• "Helena había resistido demasiado, más de lo que se le podía pedir a una chica que se casa a los veinte años con un huevón de oficio pero sin beneficio."
  I spent a while trying to figure out "de oficio pero sin beneficio" -- my first guess was that the narrator was referring to himself as a jerk "with a job but with no money," which would sort of fit the story but not particularly add much to it... Mariana laughed when she saw the phrase and said he is calling himself un "heuvón de oficio", i.e. an asshole by trade, and then bringing in the phrase "sin oficio ni beneficio" to say he was not doing well even in that chosen trade.
• "Parissi se esmeraba en prolongar el último orgasmo de Helena hasta el límite de las gunfias."
  It took me a long time to get anywhere with this last word, and I'm still not quite comfortable with it. It turns out to be a word from Cortázar's invented jargon glíglico, from Hopscotch. I've taken what might be the coward's way out and rendered it as gunphies, which is the word Rabassa uses in his tranlation, out of a desire to keep the Hopscotch reference intact. (And yes, Cortázar is another big hole in my literacy...)

  Daniel González Dueñas says, in his post on glíglico (which is based on the Porteño dialect Lunfardo), that ‘gunfia’ is an apheresis of ‘esgunfiola’ and can be used to mean ‘boredom’ or ‘disgust’; that “hasta el límite de las gunfias” is something like (if I'm reading right) "as far as propriety will allow." Which sounds, well, a little strange in the context in which it occurs here; but the narrator is a very strange dude to be sure. Maybe "for as long as she would let him."

• "Parissi aferró enhiesto la odalisca cintura que se apretaba contra su cuerpo y ordenó con voz ronca y temblorosa: 'A Troya, Helena. Ahora vamos a Troya'."
  My first reaction was, Why would Parissi say something like that, in that situation? It did not seem to make any sense and kept me from really processing the last two or three paragraphs. It took several rereads of this and the following sentences before I got that Parissi was talking about anal sex; and even after I hit on that interpretation, although it made a lot of things about the closing paragraphs make sense which had not, I was reluctant to go with it. Then I found Francisca Noguerol Jiménez' paper "Vitality, Sensuality, Erudition, Ingenuity: the narratives of Fernando Iwasaki" in which she comments that "The expression ‘To Troy, Helen’ is a clear reference to ‘Greek’ love ‘from behind.’"

posted evening of March 11th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, February 19th, 2012

🦋 El espectador

I am embarking on a new project this week. Recently Yascha Mounk of The Utopian contacted me to ask if I'd like to contribute some short translated pieces to their site's blog. Naturally (given that I've been reading and thinking about Vásquez' work so much lately) the first thing to come to mind was Juan Gabriel Vásquez' weekly column for El espectador, which seems almost perfectly suited for this format. I made contact with Anne McLean and received permission to give this a try -- the first column is up, his January 26th column about Salman Rushdie's canceled appearance at the Jaipur literary festival: Bullies and their certainties.

posted morning of February 19th, 2012: Respond
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Thursday, February 16th, 2012

🦋 The Christ of Elqui in Tocopilla

Thanks to Damir Galaz-Mandakovic Fernández of Tocopilla y su historia for running this report on Domingo Zárate Vega's visit to Tocopilla in 1932. The photo is from a local newspaper.

In 1932, in a time of chaos, misery and crisis in the country and likewise at the local level, there appeared in Tocopilla a figure both picturesque and controversial, of national fame, named Domingo Zárate, alias ‘The Christ of Elqui.’ He was a preacher who had taken up travelling throughout Chile and the neighboring countries, Bolivia and Peru, after he learned of his mother's death in 1922. Ever since then, as a form of penitence, he had devoted his life to evangelical sermons, had given up his clothing for a simple sackcloth and sandals, had let his hair and his beard grow unchecked. Hundreds of people came to hear his preachings; children were scared by his strange appearance, which provoked jeers and catcalls from the unfaithful -- he would reply in his own defense, ‘...better to be serious than to jest, especially when we are dealing with the Gospel. They will laugh at me, perfect, it is not the first time, not for Our Lord Jesus Christ; the public will have its say...’ (Revista Sucesos 1932 p. 7: Universidad de Tarapacá archive)

posted evening of February 16th, 2012: Respond
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Saturday, February 11th, 2012

🦋 in re. The Christ of Elqui

(Continuing in this year's theme of re-readings:) A correspondent has gotten me back interested in Domingo Zárate Vega and The Art of Resurrection. This is the frontspiece to the book, a pastoral letter written on the 25th of February, 1931, by the bishop of La Serena, José María Caro; in my own rough/not-fully-coherent translation (original at Casa del Libro):

Dear children of Our Lord:

What has been transpiring among you has filled with grief your bishop's heart.

A poor demented man presents himself among you -- one like those who fill our madhouses; and the faithful (I include in this adjective all those who go to church and who comply with their religion, fulfill their sacred duties) have received him as God's messenger, as the Messiah himself, no less, and have made themselves his apostles, his flock.

And meanwhile the faithful -- the judicious, the educated faithful -- have been tolerating this scandal, this blasphemy, tolerating mockery from these faithless maniacs; whose meanness of consciousness seizes any occasion to display its own lack of taste, lack of discretion, of appreciation for the things and people most worthy of universal respect and veneration... How can such a thing have happened -- how can such a hallucination be contagious? Our Lord has permitted it as a punishment for some one and as a humiliation for many.

We are all sensible enough to tell when someone else is in his right mind and when he has lost it. If among you, some poor campesino stood up and claimed in all seriousness, to be the King of England, if he surrounded himself with ministers (like such a king), and wore a special gown to show his office... Is there anyone among you, even a single one, who would not see the madness such a poor man was suffering from? Wouldn't it be the same if he claimed to be Our Holy Father?

And yet there are those among you who do not recognize his madness, because he claims to be not a person of this world, but nothing less than King of Kings and Lord of Lords himself. I repeat myself, our madhouses are full of just such things... Will any one among you let himself be led by the hallucinations of such a madman?

I pray that you, you who have suffered before this spectacle, will assist with your charity, with your prayers and with your counsels in ridding us of this contagious madness.

I ask, for the love of God and of one's brother, the love that we all must bear, I ask that you do everything, with your parish in mind, devote every force to keeping from this danger those who might fall into it, and to bringing back those who have been lost to this madness.

I hope, besides this, that when the authorities come to understand this evil, as I have demonstrated it to you, they will bring some remedy, will separate this danger from us all.

I wish you peace and felicity in Our Lord.
José María Caro

posted evening of February 11th, 2012: 1 response
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Friday, February 10th, 2012

🦋 Welcome 3% Readers

Glad to see you! Have a look around...

posted afternoon of February 10th, 2012: Respond
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Thursday, February second, 2012

🦋 Epifarfulla

Parecido a las otras utilizaciones de los labios y las manos, como sonreír, acariciar, enfurruñarse y pegar puñetazos, el ruido vocal hace enlaces entre la gente que desean o necesitan ser conectado -- para el apoyo reciproco o para establecer la jerarquía o para declarar la hostilidad, por ejemplo. Así vemos que la canguro que hace monerías al niño realiza un acción lingüistica similar en general al escolar ambicioso que me saluda con un tono ascendente en la última sílaba del «Good morning, sir.» Y si esas acciónes sean comunicaciones, entonces necesitamos redefinir la comunicación: no como la transmisión entre A y B de estados mentales, menos aún como la transmisión de «informaciones», sino como la establecimiento, el refuerzo, la modificación de relaciones interpersonales del momento. Y sería mejor decir, no es comunicación, sino lenguaje. El lenguaje es una manera humana de relacionar a otros seres humanos.

...

El cuento de Babel se equivoca: el uso primordial del discurso humano fue más probable ser diferente, no el mismo.

-- D. Bellos
¿Es un pez en tu oreja?

posted evening of February second, 2012: Respond
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Wednesday, February first, 2012

🦋 Elegías del principiante

Ninguna palabra contiene el Biblio en todo caso, ninguna broma,
no tenga tanto miedo de traducirlo,
de dejarte arrastrado por su blanco vacío
deslizarte sin fricción y lúcido a través de la página.
Ellos quienes te precedían ninguno rastro han dejado,
ninguno que se puede observar, pero conoces
íntimamente este huela que retrazas.

There aren't any words in the Bible anyways, let alone jokes,
I wouldn't worry so much about translating it,
about being swept into its blank void,
slipping frictionless and lucid across its empty page.
Those who have preceded you have left no spoor, no trace,
that you can make out anyways, and yet you know
full well their journey and retrace it.

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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