Translating myself #3: The river flows both ways
“Translation is a disturbing craft because there is precious little certainty about what we are doing..."
Gregory Rabassa, Cuban-American literary translator
Hello again.
I wondered, in yesterday's newletter, whether being born in Britain but growing up in Mexico seeded a sensitivity to the questions that come from moving between languages and cultures. The predisposition may have been there all along, but I needed a nudge.
Not long after I finished university in Mexico City, I walked into the light-filled offices of Artes de México to ask for work.
Artes de México was -- and remains -- one of the finest Latin American magazines and publishing houses, devoted to the celebration of Mexican art in all its forms: the visual arts, folk art, film, architecture, photography.
I had published some book reviews, and knew I wanted to write (or, at least, to be employed in something that was writing-adjacent). Armed with a reference letter from a university lecturer, I introduced myself to the founders and editors: husband-and-wife duo, novelist Alberto Ruy-Sánchez and historian Margarita (Magui) de Orellana.
The magazine had a small team, and there were no vacancies. It was disappointing, but the chance to meet them had, in itself, been worth the effort.
As I was leaving, Magui said: "We've commissioned some articles on traditional tin-work from an American art historian. Maybe you could help us translate them into Spanish?"
By the time I got home, she had alrady sent by fax dozens of pages of text in need of coaxing from one linguistic pasture to another -- my first paid translation.
*
Even after I moved to Cambridge a year later, translating from English into Spanish seemed the natural thing to do. Spanish was, after all, my family language. When I came across something of interest -- a new essay by a British author I admired, for instance -- I re-wrote it in Spanish and offered it to newspaper and magazine editors in Mexico and Spain.
The process was haphazard. But I was soon confident (or foolish) enough to propose book-length translations to Spanish-language publishers.
It amuses me to say that I translated into Spanish one of the great epic poems written in Sanskrit -- the more prosaic truth is that I translated into Spanish R.K. Narayan's extremely abbreviated version of The Mahabharata.
And though I can lay claim to the translation of Martin Amis' collection of criticism, The War Against Cliché, I still shudder when I remember the process of putting into Spanish* his essay about Cockney rhyming slang.
(*Spanish, in this instance, meaning Castillian Spanish, as I was writing for a Barcelona-based publisher who needed to be persuaded that I could shed my Mexican skin.)
*
Today I translate not from, but into, English. Yet my early experiences were formative. Even now, when I remember those books, I still think about the different choices I might have made. All these years later, for instance, I regret not having found the precise Spanish term for "tumbleweed".
Similar doubts plague most translators. But -- putting accuracy aside -- can translators' choices be right or wrong? Or is it simply that some of those choices mirror more faithfully the soul of the original work?
To faithfully reflect the soul of her novels is what I have tried to do with Dulce Maria Cardoso. But the story of how we met, and how I ended up translating her works from Portuguese, requires a little detour -- via Brazil. Let me take you there tomorrow.
*
Before signing off, here is a question from a reader (a dear friend and mentor) in response to yesterday's post:
"Do you ever fear that, living in this way, your first language will deteriorate? I remember Mario Vargas Llosa saying somewhere that living outside Peru was impoverishing his knowledge of local colloquialisms."
The simple answer to this is, regrettably, yes. Even as I sharpen my linguistic tools in one language I can feel them become rustier in the other. Not only am I not immersed in, or up-to-date with, the colloquialisms, but I sometimes (more and more frequently) find myself grasping for the right words. This is troubling in many ways, not least as I try to make sure my own children can grow up fluent in the original family language.
To translate oneself is certainly enriching. But as Rui, the protagonist of Dulce's The Return knows only too well, it can also mean leaving a part of ourselves behind.