Musings in the process of translating Manual Para Enamorarse by Mónica Lavín, provisionally titled Handbook for Falling in Love

As in every translation project, many sentences want rearranging, and nice long ones need to be broken up. Syntax, syntax! If you don’t read Spanish, simply note that the following is a single sentence and move on. It doesn’t matter.

Así fue como me encerré durante las tardes de un mes con sus fines de semana aludiendo, cuando mis colegas o mi hermana me invitaban a comer algunos fines de semana preocupados por mi soltería, recrudecida a los cincuenta y cinco años, al texto de divulgación sobre historiadores notables que escribía para alumnos de bachillerato.

Ah, that fact-filled dependent clause loitering at length between alluding and the alluded to! Smooth in Spanish, but in plain English, the above becomes at least two sentences and puts Rodolfo’s alluding with his alluded to book for high school students.

Two problematic words reside in that one sentence as well. (Lavín has an extensive vocabulary, likes to exercise it.) Recrudecida also exists in English: recrudescent means to break out again after lying latent; to become harsh or raw. In Spanish, crudo, like crude, means raw. I remember its slang use back in the day here in Denver amongst Chicanos. A cruda was a hangover. The morning after, someone might groan, “going to get some menudo, man; gotta repair my crude.”

But fond as that memory is, it isn’t what’s needed here. Colleagues and sister are worried about Rodolfo’s singleness, about his regressing to behavior they’d all hoped never to see from him again. At his age.

The second problem is “divulgation.” Although it also exists in English, we chiefly use the verb “divulge:” to reveal, make public. Rodolfo is writing a texto de divulgación, a text revealing all about well-known historians. So should it be an exposé?

There are always words I get blocked on: in one case, “indispensability” is the literal translation and will not do. Necessity? Boring. Brain not firing. Go get coffee.

Some words or phrases I change immediately: “successfully published books” become bestsellers, “the tone of truth” becomes the ring of truth. Others require mulling over: “wherein I lowered the intelligence level”…should that be “I dumbed it down,” or is that too colloquial for Rodolfo?

Don’t buy strawberry jam, Rodolfo advices. Be imaginative: add cinnamon to orange marmalade. But isn’t grape our ubiquitous jelly? This requires research. Turns out strawberry is preferred by 48% of Americans, compared to 40% who buy grape, in data from 2011 – 2015. Who knew we had so much in common with Mexicans?

Carmela and Rafael are a singing duo of romantic ballads whose career spanned fifty years. They married and stayed married, and their album covers show them embraced or singing practically lip-to-lip, from their young and luscious years to the wrinkles and wattles of age.

American readers, even the tiny sliver of them who read literature in translation, are not going to know who Carmela and Rafael are, nor how perfect an example they make for the kind of photo Luisa wants on that book jacket.

This is one of those translation dilemmas that induce despair. Who have we got to fill that void? Sonny and Cher? Long ago divorced. Johnny Cash and June Carter? Who even sings those bolero kinds of songs? Compared to Carmela and Rafael, we seem jaded. And notice, how in English, we put the man’s name first?

Rodolfo is dressed like an intellectual when Luisa meets him. How is that? I wonder. Luisa gives me a clue by assessing him with a glance and saying she had imagined he wouldn’t dress like an executive, since he’s a writer. So he’s not in suit and tie.

Long ago, at the school where I taught, a rich couple were considering giving us a lot of money. I was one of the teachers selected to attend the meeting. Everyone cleaned up for it. I wore a nice dress and low sensible heels. The principal was in a suit. Our potential benefactors arrived in jeans and t-shirts. Expensive jeans and t-shirts, mind you, and glowing, expensive tans in the middle of winter among us pasty-faced workers, but still.

We have never liked intellectuals in America. So I don’t want to say, “dressed like an intellectual.” Rodolfo had just come from an academic presentation of some sort. We are acutely class conscious in this country, whether we admit it or not. If I say he’s wearing jeans and a tweed jacket, readers will know where to put it.

Jitomates are also featured. Those are just Mexican tomatoes. But in this story, they are more than tomatoes too. Luisa is a redhead, and she turns this thing around. You’ll have to read it. But I have at least two more drafts to go.

Oh, those rich people who visited our school? They gave their money to someone else.

 

 

 

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5 Responses to Musings in the process of translating Manual Para Enamorarse by Mónica Lavín, provisionally titled Handbook for Falling in Love

  1. C.M. Mayo says:

    Hola dear Pat, I am here in Mexico sharing the experience of multiple condundrums with my current translation in-progress. Here’s my favorite story from my recent book. In the letter Evaristo Madero wrote to his grandson, Francisco I. Madero, he chided him for his political activity: “te empeñas en echarle mocos al atole.” Most English language readers would not be familiar atole, so I translated it– quite a liberty, I know– as “chocolate” (you are busy flicking boogers in the chocolate). I console myself with the fact that sometimes in Mexico people add chocolate to their atole, though I know, that would be “champurrado” and don Evaristo did not say champurrado. But I was feeling very allergic to footnotes. Sometimes, however, footnotes are just what may be called for… ayyy… ¡¡Suerte!!

    • dubrava says:

      Catherine, wonderful! Is the sense of the idiom something like, “you’re putting flies in the ointment?” But I love flicking those mocos! Are you translating Madero letters? Another that has me stymied is when they see him “ojeroso” after a night of night, they say, “Ya asienta cabeza.” Your head’s drooping doesn’t work. Conundrums, indeed!

      • C.M. Mayo says:

        Am I translating the Madero letters? I would if the day had another 48 hours in it, but now that you mention it, that would be a worthy project. I am translating an Alberto Blanco poem right now, which has its conundrums… calling my Higher Poet… En solidaridad, may yours supply for you las palabras justas…

  2. Dorothy says:

    Envidio tu proceso, tu obstáculo, tu desafío. Yo también me he hundido en unas traducciones pequeñas de la obra de Lavín. Siempre requiere sobre todo una poética personal. Mi consejo (aunque es claro que tú, Pat, no lo necesitas) es que no lo pienses demasiado: siéntelo.

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