Translating myself #1: A pop-up newsletter about translation (mostly)
“Without translation, we would be living in provinces bordering on silence.”
-- George Steiner, French-American literary critic
Hello.
To begin at the beginning: thank you for signing up to this month-long project.
Something exciting is happening soon -- only ten days from now, in fact. This limited series of pop-up newsletters is one of the ways in which I am sharing my excitement.
"More newsletters?" I hear you say.
Yes, but these will be different. To start with, they are written by me.
"Remind me: who are you?" I hear you ask. So let me recap:
I'm a Yorkshire-born, Cambridge-based Mexican.
I'm a lapsed historian.
I used to write Spanish-language subtitles for the BBC. (Imagine, if you can, rendering Jeremy Clarkson's "Top Gear" banter into Latin American Spanish.)
For years I worked primarily as a freelance book journalist -- I still review books for a big international newspaper.
I have a day-job at a well-known British university. Sometimes the job involves writing speeches for others.
I have spent a lot of time working for literary festivals, chairing conversations and interviewing authors on stage.
I take words and sentences written in other languages (usually Spanish and Portuguese), and I replace them with English words and sentences to convey similar thoughts, emotions and images in the minds of English-language readers.
All these facts are somehow linked to the exciting thing that is happening soon. I will try to explain how in future issues.
"OK, fine, but why should I continue reading these newsletters?" I hear you ask.
You might want to read them because I'll be sharing some thoughts (mine, and also some by others) on the pleasures and perils of living in between languages and in between cultures.
You might want to read them to find out things you may not know about me (for instance, that I once translated John Milton's Paradise Lost... into English. More on that later.)
You might want to read them because I'll be writing about one of the most wonderful European authors currently at work -- an author that I hope will find the English-language (and indeed the global) readership that she deserves.
Thank you for reading this far. I hope you'll want to join me for future issues. And please do share your thoughts as we go along.
In tomorrow's installment:
More about that very exciting thing happening soon. (Did I mention there are only ten days to go?)