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"REACHING A POTENTIALLY BROADER AUDIENCE FOR ONE’S POETRY THROUGH COTRANSLATION"
Independent Writer and Translator
Scholar and Translator
Moderator:
Independent Scholar and Translator
PART 1. BUILDING UP TRUST IN THE POET-TRANSLATOR RELATIONSHIP
Dr. Kathleen McNerney and I first met in 1989. She was then working in Double Minorities of Spain (1) and had contacted me as one of the living Catalan female authors she was to include in her book. I still remember the place: a nice old apartment full of books on Muntaner Street –seven minutes away from the University of Barcelona's old building... I felt she was very friendly right away and, after a couple of minutes talking about poetry, I told her I had just been awarded a mobility grant for young creators to write a novel in Berlin, and she immediately shared her experience in the divided city with me. I was like "Wow, she's already been there!" Well, Kathleen, Berlin and me, that's a long story I'm not going to unveil here. I’ll just say that Berlin Zoo, is only available in Catalan now, but a little birdie told me he’s certain you'll be able to read Kathleen's translation into English soon. (Sorry, not a cotranslation this time...)
The truth is that on that very early stage of our friendship, she already invited me to contribute writing a couple of entries of Catalan collegues for Double Minorities of Spain, and that I accepted right away. I must confess that when the book was published and I read the introduction seeing that my name was among those of our greatest women writers (2) … I was like: “Gosh!, how bold I was to accept Kathleen's invitation! Too late, though...since the "damage" had already been done.
2013 was again another turning point in the process of building up personal and professional trust. In April she told me she was about to edit a "Mini-anthology of Catalan Poetry" for Malpaís Review (3) and she asked me to send her a couple of my poems together with translations into English. Did she mean I was to translate them myself? I didn't know, I just did the job and prayed to all the Celtic deities that the resulting translations weren't just junk! She selected "Amsterdam" and the fact that she wondered whether I was the actual translator (she asked me twice --emailing me in Catalan first, and later on in English)...
Well, I took it as a compliment and I was overjoyed! On that very first attempt of self-translating my poetry into English she didn’t have to correct anything -–needless to say it was a strike of beginner's luck!– and this built an atmosphere of trust between us right away. She knew I would step up to almost any intellectual challenges, and I knew I would be able to it as far as I had her –the wisest guide– by my side: one with a sound background in both languages (English and Catalan), a broad scope and an awesome capability to wrestle with my “creativity” in English –i. e. not discarding unusual linguistic choices just because I was not a native speaker and not accepting “anything” just because I was the author.
“The purpose of this guide is to recover the work of writers doubly marginalized –by the prejudice against their sex and against their choice of literary language.”Double Minorities of Spain. A Bio-bibliographic guide to Women Writers of the Catalan, Galician and Basque Countries, Modern Language Association, New York 1994. p. 1.
“The completion of the entries would not have been possible without the generous efforts of the contributors [...]. Some of the writers themselves --Maria Antònia Oliver, Isabel Clara Simó, Maria Àngels Anglada, Sílvia Aymerich and Renada Laura Portet-- helped us to locate other women writers” p. 12.
“Amsterdam” [Translated by Sílvia Aymerich] in "Mini-Antology of Catalan Poetry" by Kathleen McNerney [editor], Malpaís Review, Spring, 2013: 98-99.
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PART 2. FROM PROOFREADING TO COTRANSLATING
In 2016, Elizabeth Csicsery-Ronáy asked me to contribute a poem to the bilingual Polish/English Anthology of antiwar poems The Tree of Peace Turns Green, and guess who I sent my translation of "Passiflora edulis" first😉 ? It's a poem I dedicated to my mum, who was only eight years old when the Nazis bombarded Barcelona in 1938.
Later, it was she who suggested me to send a couple of poems for the Catalan Poetry Issue that Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, translations editor of Loch Raven Review, was preparing for 2017. And here, we started cotranslating strictly speaking since to the seven unpublished translations of poems I sent to Kathleen, she not only corrected them, but improved them suggesting new linguistic options.
That's why, with this collaborative spirit, we engaged in the cotranslation of a whole poetry volume back in 2020. Since all the work went back and forth via emails (questions, suggestions, arguments pro and con, improvements, corrections…) we can trace back the changes from the earliest version to the latest1. Our common office being the Internet, it was coworking at its most, since we exchanged software, ideas and knowledge without limits: an experience worth sharing at IMCWC.
And earlier this year, that is in spring 2024, it was leading Welsh author Menna Elfyn who suggested that we repeat the experience with the British Journal Modern Poetry in Translation (coming up this month).
"Mburukuyá, Passiflora edulis" by Sílvia Aymerich-Lemos, in The Tree of Peace Turns Green, Sulechów, Zielona Góra, 2016, p. 53-54.
"Alnus glutinosa" and "Arnica montana" in "Twelve Catalan Poets" The Loch Raven Review, Kosk-Kosicka, Danuta [ed.] 2017 [online], The Loch Raven Review, 2019. ISSN 1559-6494.
Bàlsams/Balms, by Sílvia Aymerich-Lemos, Prologue and cotranslations with the author by Kathleen McNerney, Harbour Lights Press, Cork, 2022
"Alghero" [cotranslated with the author] The Modern Poetry in Translation, November 2024 issue.* Two other poems translated by Matthew Geden in BE will appear in the same issue.
PART 3. BEYOND COTRANSLATION: THE MULTIPLE VERSIONS PROJECT
Indeed, cotranslating is but one of the literary activities we both share. In 2013 she joined Multiple Versions, the collaborative project of literary activism I had started on December 2012, intended to promote the works of those authors writing in minoritized languages through all forms of translation (self-translation, cotranslation…). A special part of our task is to pay tribute to our eldest poets by translating one of their most iconic poems into 21 languages in recognition to their longlife careers.
The project has been presented so far in 12 European universities, and in 2021 in a bimodal event on Catalan Women Writers at the CUA co-lead by Elena Gutiérrez, Kathleen McNerney already gave a brief 10' rundown of what we are to present in full during the third part of the panel.
Let's start by having a look at the 10 years in 10 clicks Page of the Multiple Versions website...✈️
During those almost 12 years now, we've been paying tribute to our elder poets by organising or participating in the homages rendered to them by third parties. The list includes the following poets: Bernat Lesfargas, Lidia Kosk (contributing translations to the homage organised by Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka), Renada-Laura Portet (contributing 21 translations to the homage organised by the Institution of Catalan Letters), Gilabèrt Narioo and Rotland Pecot. (on-going in collaboration with the Occitan Pen Club).
Let's end up recalling the tribute paid to Occitan poet Bernat Lesfargas by reading "Autre epitafi", one of his most iconic poems in OC > FR (a self-translation) > CA > EN from the homage published in the Valencian Literary Review L'Aiguadolç edited by Elija Lutze. And to Polish poet Lidia Kosk by reading "Szklana góra" [Glass Mountain], one of her most iconic poems in PL > EN > CA > OC. Find here the link to the homage published by Komograf and edited by Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka.
Oh, and one very last thing I would like to share with you: the message I got nine days ago from Liza Walther, a Ukrainian colleague, professor at the University of Leipzig: a blessing! And I would like to observe a minute's silence for the victims of nonsense, corruption and mismanagement of natural disasters.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Visit Valencian artist Ignasi Chilet's making-of video here.
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