1. How did you become a literary translator?
By accident, actually. I was an undergraduate at NYU, trying to write an honors thesis on detective fiction, and the thing just wasn’t coming together the way I wanted it to. I mentioned this to one of the professors in the department, an extraordinary translator of French and German named Richard Sieburth, and he suggested that I do a translation instead. With the blind exuberance of the novice, I picked an impossible text for myself: a play in verse by Federico García Lorca called Mariana Pineda. All record of that first foray has mercifully been lost, but I was completely hooked.
2. In your opinion, what would it take for there to be more available Spanish translations in the US?
Over the last several years important groundwork has been laid for more translations to appear in English, particularly through the growth of independent houses focused on publishing literary translations, and greater emphasis among reviewers on books in translation (there is, of course, still a long way to go here). But I think we should be asking ourselves qualitative, not just quantitative, questions—not only how many books are appearing in English, but also which voices are being amplified, and how they are being presented.
3. Who are some of your favorite Spanish authors?
From Spain, I’m a fan of Andrés Barba (Such Small Hands absolutely blew my mind and I give it as a gift or teach it, in Spanish or English, every chance I get) and Elvira Navarro. It doesn’t hurt that they’re translated by two of the best in the business: Lisa Dillman and Christina MacSweeney, respectively. From the rest of the Spanish-speaking world… I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve been obsessed with Christina Rivera Garza for the past few years, and have loved revisiting Juan José Saer. Of course, I’m immediately going to think of five more names I wish I’d mentioned.
4. Is it necessary for a literary translator to also be a writer?
All translators are writers, we’re just writers who work with a set of constraints. We many not create characters or map out narrative arcs, but our purview is everything that has to do with creating images and generating emotional effects through language, which is most definitely writing. Making a book work, having it produce a similar experience for the reader across languages and cultures, always requires a creative (writerly) intervention. Many of us do also write in our “own” voices, though when it comes to translation, I think it’s much more important to be a reader than a writer, in the conventional sense. To know the landscape a text is coming from, and to have the largest pool of resources possible in the language that text will be translated into. Conversely, though, I think more writers should try their hand at translation.
5. Is there fair recognition of literary translators?
Well, my requests for an international bank holiday and parade have gone unanswered, so I’d say not. But seriously, thanks to the work (in the U.S. specifically) of organizations like Words Without Borders and the Center for the Art of Translation (which hosts events, publishes a literary magazine dedicated to translation, and has its own imprint, Two Lines Press), and publishing houses like Open Letter (whose publisher, Chad Post, has been tireless in his advocacy of translation, from founding the Best Translated Book Award to running the Three Percent blog and podcast, and more), there are ever more spaces for reflecting on, and appreciating, the work of literary translators. That said, there is still no shortage of #namethetranslator faceplants among well-intentioned media outlets, and—despite all nods to translation as a creative practice—there is still some reluctance to put the translator out there as a representative of a book when the time comes to launch and promote it. We can help! We know these books inside and out, and on average we’re no more antisocial than the authors themselves.
6. Are all books translatable?
All books are translatable in the same sense that none are. At one end of the spectrum are those books that are so grounded in linguistic or cultural specificities that their transmission in another language requires pushing what we think of as translation toward the place where it overlaps with adaptation. But these extreme cases of so-called “untranslatables” only underscore what is inherently true about translation: it is a creative practice because no two languages will ever match up perfectly. Even the simplest of images, like glass of milk or a loaf of bread, carries with it very different connotations depending on the cultural context in which it appears, and the translator can only try to compensate for those differences in other subtle ways. And then there is the music of a text, and the relationship it establishes to standard usage in the original language. So, the second part to this answer is that, yes, every book is translatable, but not every book finds a translator—or translators, with different approaches or at different moments in time—who can capture it.
7. What are the creative requirements of literary translation?
Above all, I think a good translator has to be a good reader: a good close reader of the text itself, who can understand its voice and identify those elements that will be most important to carry over; and also a good broad reader, knowledgeable in the tradition a work is coming out of or responding to, and also well versed in the resources and resonances of the language into which it will be translated. And also something of a performer willing to take risks, when necessary.
8. What makes Spanish literary translation unique?
Every language pair has its own idiosyncrasies, whether it’s a difference in the way verb tenses are set up, for example, or different stylistic conventions. Aside from these syntactical differences, one of the most striking things about the Spanish language is its multiplicity: as is true of any language tied to a history of colonialism, there is not one Spanish, but many. As a result, translating two books from just a few hundred miles apart can involve significant research into linguistic particularities, cultural and geographic references (explicit or implicit in the text), and so on. For this, many translators rely on the generosity of friends, acquaintances, and sometimes the unsuspecting stranger.
9. What work have you enjoyed the most translating?
Ha! You’re going to get me in trouble. I’ve had the good fortune of translating many books that I’ve loved for vastly different reasons. I enjoy the complex layering of Sergio Chejfec’s prose, the way it moves between abstract philosophical reflection and the immediacy of his characters’ experience (and the balancing act of rendering all those nested clauses); I loved the pacing and the dark humor of Roque Larraquy’s La Comemadre. Right now, I’m working on two books that I also adore: María Ospina Pizano’s Azares del cuerpo, a collection of short stories in which each has its own formal conceit, and Betina González’s América alucinada, a dystopian novel written in three voices.
10. Who has been the most challenging author to translate?
Challenges come in different forms. One answer to that question is simply see list of enjoyable translations, above. Challenges like translating humor, finding ways to distinguish between different narrative voices, or maintaining syntactical complexity without veering into unintelligibility, are precisely the reason I fell in love with literary translation. The other take on challenging translations is that the less careful an author (or their editor) is with language, the more difficult they are to translate. People often talk about the trust an author places in their translator, but it’s crucial that a translator be able to trust what the author is doing on the page. When things like typos and logical inconsistencies begin to break that trust down, it can complicate the process immensely. I’ve been lucky in that most of the challenges I’ve encountered in my work have been of the delightful kind.
11. What would you recommend to Spanish publishers in order to encourage translations?
Most publishers probably already do this, but it’s a good idea to know the landscape of the target market well, to avoid trying to sell rights to vastly different projects to the same handful of big houses. An independent press with a focus on translation will often do a better job of finding the book a readership in English, anyway.
12. Is there demand for Spanish literature in the American market?
Yes! The more, the merrier.
Lily Meyer is a writer, translator, and critic. Her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso’s story collections Little Bird and Ice for Martians. Her ...
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Lisa Dillman, Literary Translator, Professor of Pedagogy at Emory University, selected by...
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