translatingⁿ salamanca

TRANSLATING²

EVER WONDERED HOW A TRANSLATION COMES TO BE? LIFT THE VEIL AND TAKE A LOOK AT OUR TRANSLATION IN THE MAKING. IN ORDER TO BE MAXIMALLY TRANSPARENT, ALL OF OUR REFLECTIONS WERE MINIMALLY EDITED.

DRAFTS¹

GLOSS: [R]

(kicking myself for this now...)

After my first translation check-in with J, my mind was racing (excited), but I was frustrated at myself. If only I hadn’t deleted all the things I’d considered...or rather, if only I’d kept a more formal “gloss” (i.e. literal, word-for-word translation with different options/considerations listed). A record. A collection of artifacts. The normal path of translation (for me) prioritizes the more-finalized, more-shareable version of the poem at the end of my revision tunnel. I don’t believe in “definitive” translations, and I’m not attached to my own translations staying the same forever. That said, in practice, I rarely share iterations of my translations unless I’m consulting with a friend or the author to clarify questions/talk through options/etc. In this current collaboration with J, the process, the discarded choices, the “noise” feels more interesting. It’s nudging its way into the foreground. Sure, I want to arrive at some translation to share, but I also want to find ways to share how I(we) got there. All this to say, seeing J’s gloss made me wish I had made (and kept) one of my own.

GLOSS: [J]

About the myth of St Tecla

A man will ask [for] my hand
and I will cut it. [sever]
Another will grow
and again I will cut it.

The man will think:
what a perfect woman, she is a tree of hands:
she can milk the goats,
make cheese,
cook the chickpeas,
go for water to the river,
weave my underwear.

But I will continue cutting my hands
when he says to me:
Woman, I have asked you,
and you must milk the goats.
Woman, you are mine,
bring water from the river,
serve me the cheese,
go to the village for wine.

My hands will fall like the flowers fall
and they will move across the countryside,
stubborn:
They will not milk the goats,
they will not go for wine to the village,
No more will they mend his underwear
and never,
much less, [even less/let alone]
will they caress his testicles.

The man will say:
What a bad woman,
it is a curse of the hands.

She will go for a hatchet,
and cut my arms. [chop]
New ones will grow.
Then she will think
that the beginning of life is [can be found in] the navel
and will cut my body in two. [cleave]

My thousands of cut hands
will turn blue
and move.
They will dry the wheat,
play with the water,
dry the river,
pull up the roots of the grass,
poison the goats,
the cheese.

And the man will think:
How great is this curse:
forbidden it should be to ask [for [the hand of]] a woman who has will.

>>[free will, willing, determination, own will, self-will]

DRAFT¹: [R]

Concerning the myth of Santa Tecla

A man will ask for my hand
and I will cut it off.
Another will be born
and I’ll cut it off again.

The man will think:
what a perfect woman, she’s a tree of hands:
she will be able to milk the goats,
make cheese,
cook the chickpeas,
go to the river for water,
knit my socks.

But I will keep cutting my hands
when he tells me:
Woman, I’ve proposed to you,
and you must milk the goats.
Woman, you are mine,
bring water from the river,
serve me cheese,
go into town for wine.

My hands will fall like flowers fall
and they will move around the field,
stupid, stubborn:
They will not milk the goats,
they will not go into town for wine,
they will never darn his socks
and never,
need I say,
will they cradle his testicles.

The man will say:
What a wicked woman,
she is a curse of hands.

He will fetch an axe,
he will cut off my arms.
New ones will be born.
Then he will think
that the navel is where the origin of life is found
and he will cut my body in two.

My thousands of cut hands
will turn blue
and they will move.
They will dry the wheat,
they will play with the water,
they will dry the river,
they will uproot the pasture,
they will poison the goats,
the cheese.

And the man will think:
What a terrible curse:
it must be forbidden to propose to a woman with a will of her own.

DRAFT¹: [J]

On the myth of St. Tecla

A man will ask for my hand
and I will cut it off.
Another will grow,
and I will cut it again.

The man will think:
what a perfect woman, she is a tree of hands:
she can milk the goats,
make cheese,
cook the garbanzos,
get water from the river,
weave my underwear.

But I will keep cutting my hands off
when he says:
Woman, I have asked,
so you must milk the goats.
Woman, you are mine,
fetch the river water,
serve the cheese,
go to the village for wine.

My hands will fall as the flowers do
and roam the countryside,
stubborn:
They will not milk the goats,
or go to the village for wine,
they will never again mend his underwear,
and never,
least of all,
caress his testicles.

The man will say:
What an evil woman,
there is a curse on her hands.

She’ll go for a hatchet,
and chop off my arms.
New ones will grow.
Then she’ll think that life begins in the navel
and cleave my body in two.

My thousands of cut hands
will turn blue
and begin to move.
They will wither the wheat,
play with the water,
dry up the river,
pull up the grassroots,
poison the goats,
the cheese.

And the man will think:
What a powerful curse:
it should be forbidden to propose to a woman with a will.

Reflections¹

REFLECTIONS¹: [J]

Notes:

R - cortar, cortejar - he is courting, she is cutting
Having choices and choosing not to use them
Defaults - contractions, implied subjects made explicit or no
Should vs must: I was thinking of must as a stronger version of should, didn’t think about “ahh that must be what happened”
I mean, what does the man think at the end? Does he have room to grow? Depends on how much the speaker cares to look to see if he is growing, maybe.
Words for propose that are less mutual
Placing a speaker’s tone within an implied time; contrasting implied time with the feeling of the tone
Vulnerability of seeing into each other’s thought processes
Things that are probably wrong, but fun
Wordplay with will

Didn’t talk about:

Hand curse and what it means to think that there is a curse afoot (ahand)?
We had poems containing “pasto” twice now, but have done different things [we previously played around with translating this poem by Elsa Cross]
We got so caught up in the nuances that we didn’t talk about how the poem made us feel (!) or how we interpreted it more broadly - that would be a fun conversation of its own
What actually is each of our process? Would be interesting to hear
Is it okay to do things without knowing why? Can we eventually know why?
I didn’t know that debe ser and debe estar both mean “must be” in the sense of “ohh, that must be it” - what does it mean that estar was used here, especially given that it would usually be talking about something temporary?

REFLECTIONS¹: [R]

We talked from 2,500+ miles away. On my computer screen, I had Elena’s poem + my translation + J’s translation + her gloss. We each read our “translation” out loud to each other. Then we bounced through our reactions. The places of convergence and divergence. The map of our decision points and the resulting consequences. Even the places where we caught our own “oversights” or “mistakes” served as fertile ground for more exploration. For instance, I had written “socks,” which just simply is not “calzoncillos.” I didn’t even look it up when I was translating...I just read it as “socks,” and my “misreading” was supported by the “darning” I saw in “zurcirán.” But then, after laughing a bit with J, the question became, well...was the speaker going to hypothetically knit or weave the socks/underwear for this man? Which would be more laborious? More fitting with the time period and setting? Wait, what was the time period and setting? Rural, for sure. Seemingly old-fashioned-ish. A modern-ish voice, though. But isn’t a modern voice in an “old-fashioned-ish” time/setting/context part of the effect? Elena is a historian as well as a poet, after all. Plus, she’s mining old religious texts/stories -- her eye set on Santa Tecla. By the way, St. or Saint or Santa...who are we appealing to here -- status quo English legibility? If we keep Santa, does that point more toward the town in El Salvador rather than the St./Saint herself? If we don’t keep Santa, are we missing out on a chance to stretch English while preserving Elena’s voice? Elena’s Spanish? etc. etc. Also, is this a myth vs. legend. vs. story vs. etc.? Myth keeps the sound of “mito”, but connotatively diminishes the factuality (at least to our ears...how does this compare to the connotations in Elena’s Spanish? Also, does factuality have much to do with the poem...probably not...). Also, what to do with that “Sobre” in the title -- “About,” “Concerning,” “On,” “With regard to,” etc…

Anyway, there were a lot of small things to consider and play around with. Not to mention the bigger differences in our translations (in mine, the man hypothetically cuts off the woman’s arms. In J’s, the man foresees that the woman will chop off his arms.) Some of these questions are resolvable by a collective, close reading of the Spanish original, but other questions remain. Were the arms going to be “cut” off, or “chopped” off? The body “cut in two” or “cleaved”? This brought us to an interesting discussion. Elena, like us, had many choices for her verbs. But she kept “cortar” throughout. Simple, non-flashy, unadorned, “cortar.” This pointed us to the English verb “cut.” But why had Elena made this choice? For its blunt, matter-of-fact violence? Or maybe, I began to think, for the sound? “Cortar” sounds a lot like “cortejar,” which means to “court romantically.” What if the appropriate response to a suitor is not to act with “cortesía” (courtesy), but rather to cut (“cortar”) the very hand he has asked for in marriage. Especially when “asking for a woman’s hand” relies on the verb “pedir,” which also means to “demand.” As we see in the poem, the man’s marriage proposal quickly transforms into a claim staked to ownership (“Mujer, eres mía” [Woman, you are mine]) and power (a list of demands [or “pedidas”] to milk the goats, make cheese, fetch water, etc.). With all of this in mind, the question becomes, can this same sonic resonance carry over into the English with “cut”? The short answer is, not really. But maybe that’s ok. The imagery is still strong, the language still blunt. And, as J noticed, there’s another avenue for sonic play that English affords us which didn’t appear in the Spanish original. The “punchline” of the poem, so-to-speak, comes at the very end with the man musing (in my first translation) “it must be forbidden to propose to a woman with a will of her own.” Thus, at the center of the poem is the question of autonomy and “will” (“voluntad”). Because the poem is written in the future tense, in English, we are able to translate the verbs as “will…” from the very first stanza onward and, if we don’t contract to “I’ll” or “he’ll,” we end up with a cascade of “will”s populating the lines. This allows for a sonic foreshadowing of the final “punchline” while pointing toward the core nucleus of the domestic power struggle explored in Elena’s poem. This is a gift I am happy to accept.

When talking with J, a lot of our excitement seemed to stem from moments of divergence and convergence in our translations. Honing in on these instants gave us a chance to compare our readings of the original poem, the choices we wavered between, and our reasoning (and the principles/ethics behind our reasoning) that led us to our eventual translations. The (seemingly inevitable) next question became how to map (or translate) these convergences/divergences. Were there visual ways to do this? Graphic representations? Animations? Sound-based approaches? Neither of us had explored this type of translation/mapping before, and so we set ourselves the task of experimenting with a few divergence/convergence maps for our translations. For me, this idea of mapping made me think of Caroline Bergvall’s VIA-48 Dante Variations, Eliot Weinberger’s 19 Ways of Looking at a Wang Wei, and bpNichol’s Translating Translating Apollinaire: A Preliminary Report, all of which incorporate an accumulation of juxtaposed alternatives that, through an alchemical triangulation, bring the original poem to life, and then some. For J and me, the goal was not to be grand or academic, but to play, and to hopefully find joy, and art, and connection in the process.

VISUAL TRIPTYCH [R]: This triptych shows the view from my end of the computer screen. Translation (and collaborative translation especially) invites new types of reading. It is hard to get three columns of text on a physical book. On my screen, they are snug, but comfortable. Eyes darting.

Textual Triptych Santa Tecla.pdf

TEXTUAL TRIPTYCH [R]: This color-coded representation of our first-draft translations is a different type of triptych. One that’s vertically integrated and hard on the old eyes! Helpful though (maybe?)!

DRAFT²

DRAFT²: [R]

Concerning the myth of Santa Tecla

A man will ask for my hand
and I will cut it off.
Another will be born
and I will cut it off again.

The man will think:
what a perfect woman, she is a tree of hands:
she will be able to milk the goats,
make cheese,
cook the garbanzos,
fetch water from the river,
weave my underwear.

But I will keep cutting off my hands
when he tells me:
Woman, I’ve proposed to you,
and you must milk the goats.
Woman, you are mine,
bring water from the river,
serve me cheese,
go into town for wine.

My hands will fall like flowers fall
and they will move across the fields,
stupid, stubborn:
They will not milk the goats,
they will not go into town for wine,
they will never mend his underwear
and never,
much less,
will they cradle his testicles.

The man will say:
What a wicked woman,
she is a curse of hands.

He will fetch an axe,
he will cut off my arms.
New ones will be born.
Then he will think
that the origin of life is found in the navel
and he will cut my body in two.

And the man will think:
What a terrible curse:
it must be forbidden to propose to a woman with a will of her own.

DRAFT²: [J]

On the myth of Santa Tecla

A man will ask for my hand
and I will cut it off.
Another will grow,
and I will cut it again.

The man will think:
what a perfect woman, she is a tree of hands:
she can milk the goats,
make cheese,
cook the chickpeas,
get water from the river,
weave my underwear.

But I will keep cutting my hands off
when he says:
Woman, I have asked you,
so you must milk the goats.
Woman, you are mine,
bring the water,
serve the cheese,
go to town for wine.

My hands will fall as the flowers do
and roam the countryside,
stubborn:
They will not milk the goats,
or go into town for wine,
they will never mend his underwear,
and never,
least of all,
caress his testicles.

The man will say:
What an evil woman,
she is a curse of hands.

He will go for a hatchet,
and cut off my arms.
New ones will grow.
Then he will think that life begins in the navel
and cut my body in two.

My thousands of cut hands
will turn blue
and start moving.
They will wither the wheat,
play with the water,
dry up the river,
pull up the pasture,
poison the goats,
the cheese.

And the man will think:
What an awful curse:
it must be forbidden to propose to a woman with a will.

REFLECTIONS²

REFLECTIONS²: [J]

I’m wondering why I felt such an urgent need to dive into translation during a global pandemic, as my work and living situation grew unpredictable. I’ve been missing long conversations with elbows on the table and a cup of tea, when our words grow into a world and immediate needs recede.

Maybe it’s because translation is a type of conversation, doubly so when there are multiple people participating. It feels very vulnerable to expose my thought process to another person when every word represents decisions, assumptions, relationships between my world, the author’s world, and the world at large. But no word is everything, and no word is permanent. I can get feedback, I can change words, I can change interpretations, I can change.¹

I’ve been grateful for the roughness that I’ve been able to embrace in this process. Something has stripped me down, allowing me to prioritize aliveness before correctness. For a translation to become its own being, it must become alive in me first. So here I am, precarious, trying to sustain life.²

***

¹ [R] "this has been an important lesson to me too re: perfectionism -- I think one of the reasons I gravitate toward translation is that it asks me to be good and laughs at the idea of me being perfect. I need that laughter in other parts of my life. here is a place where I can find it."

² [R] -- "YES!!!!!!"

REFLECTIONS²: [R]

our conversation, this time, felt full (again). questions about how to take a snapshot of a thing in motion. a series of snapshots, i guess. sharing our “translation mapping” was exhilarating.¹ it was like trying to explain a joke, except the humor ramped up instead of deflating. I loved how we both tried to find ways to represent and/or respond to “overlapping.” j explored rhythms and moods/vibes. I explored visual (aka shape-based and text-based) approaches. at some point, I found myself thinking about how we would map the convergences and divergences of our maps. too much (for now)!

as to our translations...there were some places we "stuck to our guns,” some where we swapped (we traded garbanzos and chickpeas), and other places where we came together. we each read the other person’s translation out loud, over the phone to each other. it was great to feel another person’s rhythms in my mouth and to hear my own sounds from thousands of miles away. more than ever, I felt that there is no “right” way to do this. there are translations that do different things. the question is what do I want mine to do? and now, how do we combine our translations into one?

as we were going over our blog post, we decided to collaboratively edit it in real time over google docs. this way we could both look at the document, talk about our changes, and watch each other’s cursors flitting across the page. the fluidity of this process led us to the idea of screen recording the real-time, collaborative creation of our “final” translation. this is just one more way to expose and explore the hesitations, the second-guessing, the wavering, and the final commitments we make.

I remember us talking about our goals with this translation. more or less, we’re both interested in doing a relatively standard, honest-to-the-original type of translation. while it’s exciting to imagine all of the left-field types of approaches we could take (thinking of Translating Translating Apollinaire again), it’s feeling more exciting to me to see some of the left-field things that emerge in the course of creating a standard translation. presumably we could send our final version somewhere, and, with some luck, we could have it published. it would say “translated by j gan and ryan greene” and all of this process would be invisible, unrecorded, forgotten. the excitement for me is in this visibilizing, recording, and remembering. like that C.P. Cavafy “Ithaka” poem, I’m hoping our road home is “a long one.”

***

¹ [J] "I'm glad you put words to this - it felt to me like being at the top of a hill before a scary drop, or like dropping the facade of being a child in front of your parents, or... i don't know! I don't know why those are the comparisons that come to mind. So often it feels safer to let others assume the nuances of what we think. To tell others, these are my decisions, and this is how I made them - it requires an ownership of the good and the messy. and indirectly, of our whole histories."

DRAFTS³

MAKING OUR FINAL(?) TRANSLATION

To create the final(?) version of our translation we drew inspiration from the visual triptych above. We decided to create a document with three columns. In the left column, we put Ryan's DRAFT². In the right column, we put J's DRAFT². Then, talking over speakerphone from the southwest and northeast of the US, we simultaneously edited the middle column to write our final(?), combined translation. Sometimes we borrowed lines from one of our translations, sometimes we came up with new solutions, and sometimes we went back to something we'd considered in our first drafts but had since abandoned. While we edited, we decided to reference only our DRAFT² English translations rather than looking at Elena's original poem in Spanish. We wanted to trust that her poem was inside of us, and that our translation would do honor to that version that lived within. It took us ~45 minutes to complete the translation, and once we were satisfied with where we'd landed, J read the poem out loud and we both agreed we were done (for now)! In the spirit of transparency, we made a screen recording of the whole process and then sped it up. You can read our final(?) translation HERE and you can watch the accelerated screen recording below.

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