Translating myself #9: Titles in translation
Hello.
Today is publication day for Dulce Maria Cardoso's Violeta Among the Stars. I am looking forward to speaking to Dulce at the digital launch event this evening.
In the meantime, what better way to celebrate than to share some thoughts on this incredible novel -- beginning with its title?
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A book's title gives readers the earliest hint of its content -- it is the first window onto the imaginative universe between the covers.
Often a title tells us who we are going to meet: Robinson Crusoe or Emma; Pedro Páramo or Shuggie Bain.
Sometimes, the title tells us a bit of what will happen: Gulliver's Travels, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The End of the Affair.
Allusions to classical, biblical or poetic sources are common, and add layers of meaning -- think of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (from a line in the Bible), or Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (taken from The Odyssey), or Achebe's Things Fall Apart (from a poem by W.B. Yeats).
Titles can be an incitement and a challenge to the reader: you have to reach the closing sentence of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude to understand the book's title.
But the title of a book can pose a challenge for translators and publishers. Sometimes, an idiomatic expression does not have the same meaning or resonance in other languages.
I once met a Brazilian editor who despaired over what to call Ali Smith's four-part novel, There but for the. Readers of the original English were likely to know that the title is a truncated form of the phrase "There but for the grace of God go I".
This expression has no equivalent in Brazilian portuguese, so coming up with a title conveying a similar meaning was a thankless task. In the end, the novel's Brazilian publishers opted for a title that focused instead on the book's structure -- Suíte em quatro movimentos (or "A Suite in Four Movements").
As the calling card for a novel, choice of an appropriate title seems essential. What might have happened, one wonders, if the American publishers of García Márquez’s In Evil Hour had stuck with the original idea of calling it This Shitty Town?
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The Portuguese title of Violeta Among the Stars is Os Meus Sentimentos. In the most literal sense, this means "my feelings", or "my sentiments". In Portuguese, the phrase "os meus sentimentos" is commonly used to express condolences -- equivalent to saying "my sympathies".
There are scenes in the novel that revolve around a funeral and wake. There are, indeed, characters who express their condolences -- "os meus sentimentos" -- to Violeta, the narrator. But, this being a novel by Dulce, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. Repeated by Violeta, the clichéd expression of sympathy becomes a breathless riff on her inner life -- her darkest sentiments, her twisted feelings.
Discussions about the title came up early in my conversations with Elise, the book's thoughtful and infinitely patient editor (publishers must start making noise about a forthcoming book long before it has gone to the printers).
The novel's French publishers had called it Violeta et les anges ("Violeta and the angels") -- at once introducing the protagonist, obliquely referring to Violeta's thoughts about her daughter (who she frequently refers to as "the angel that saved me"), and perhaps even suggesting that Violeta finds herself at heaven's door. The novel's Dutch publishers used the same appraoch. Elise was not too keen on the religious undertones -- I agreed completely.
In Spain, publishers decided to use as the title a line from the novel that other characters use to berate Violeta: Vas siempre demasiado lejos ("You always go too far"). While this hints at Violeta's excessive, abusive and even predatory behaviour, the title seems to pass judgement on her even before we have read the first page.
In our conversations, Elise circled back to the novel's opening scene and its recurring image: Violeta, lying amid the wreckage of her car after it veered off the road. She is surrounded by twisted metal and shattered glass. The light of her headlamps is caught by the falling rain and the glinting shards. Despite the destruction around her, Violeta appears to be lying in a field of stars.
Encapsulated in that choice was both the visual beauty of the moment of stillness after a crash, and the otherworldliness of the thoughts -- and yes, the sentiments -- of a woman at death's door.
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Intrigued? Then I hope you are able to join Dulce and me in tonight's conversation with broadcaster and book journalist Rosie Goldsmith.
The digital launch (5:00-6:30 UK time) is hosted by the Portuguese Embassy. Information on registering and joining is available here.
So fire up the Zoom. Bring your own bottle. It will be wonderful.
Until tomorrow.