chile

Well, after a very slow January (see previous post), this week I finally rediscovered my mojo and managed to finish off my first draft translation of De bosque y cenizas, the book I’ll be translating for my thesis.

That probably sounds quite a lot more impressive than it actually is, because the first draft is really just a gist translation, to get the text into some sort of passable English and establish where the problems are going to lie – I don’t make much of an attempt to resolve those problems at this stage, just make a note of what and where they are. There is a lot of highlighting, caps, bold type and slashes at this stage, so it’s not exactly print worthy.

But the great news is it’s got me THINKING about those thorny issues… being a literary translator often feels like being in a perennial state of having a word on the tip of your tongue, and the longer you can give yourself to find that word, the better. It almost never comes to you when you’re actually translating, it’ll be when you’re on the bus, or picking the kids up from school, or queuing at the supermarket checkout, and you have to physically stop yourself from shouting it out loud and elliciting uncomfortable looks from the people around you. And then there are the times when you’ve finished the translation, sent it off, complete with the word you weren’t quite sure about but decided would have to do, and THEN it comes to you.

As I may have mentioned before, I am in the particularly privileged position, with this translation, of having four years to get it right (there is the small matter of the actual thesis, of course). And that means I’m able to give considerably more attention to each word than I might if I had to get it to the publisher in three months’ time. I’m also devoting the first part of my literature review to Camila Valenzuela (the author)’s work, which means I’ve been reading everything she’s ever written, alongside doing this first draft. And I can tell you, if you ever find yourself with a spare four years to devote to translating one book, reading the author’s entire back catalogue makes quite the difference!

For example, I started by reading Valenzuela’s own doctoral thesis, which happened to be on gender representation in fairy tales. De bosque y cenizas is a feminist retelling of Cinderella, so I think you can see how her academic work might have been an influence, and reading her thesis gave me an insight into what she was trying to do – or avoid doing – in her literary writing, and why. More recently, as I was working on the first draft, I was also reading Valenzuela’s earliest novels – the Zahorí saga, which is an epic fantasy trilogy, set in both Ancient Ireland and modern-day Chile. The story focuses on the Azancott sisters, who have to move from Santiago to their grandmother’s house in the south of Chile, after their parents are brutally murdered. When they get there, strange things start to happen, and they gradually discover that they come from a long line of “elementals”, originally descended from druids in Ancient Ireland.

So far, so nothing-remotely-like Cinderella, you might think. But, in Valenzuela’s version of Cinderella, Prince Charming is replaced by the witches of the woods, who meet with the changing of the moon to perform ancient rituals. And because I happened to be alternating reading Zahorí with translating De bosque y cenizas I was able to recognise that a) a lot of the rites performed by the witches were based on druid tradition and b) Valenzuela clearly both revisited some of her research from the former when writing the latter, and is heavily influenced by these ancient European traditions, as well as those of the Mapuche and other Indigenous peoples of Chile. And I don’t know exactly how that knowledge is going to help me with my translation, but I am confident it will.

So there you have it, another deep dive into what’s been going on inside my head this week. More fascinating (!) insights soon…

A well-thumbed copy of Camila Valenzuela León's YA novel, De bosque y cenizas

Translating a book for an academic project allows for a bit of luxuriating in the text. If you’re trying to make a living out of literary translation (emphasis on the “trying” there!), then chances are you haven’t got time to sit down and read the book several times before you start. In which case, you might do a quick skim to get a taste for the narrative voice etc, or you might go straight into your first draft and read as you go – I have a feeling that’s what Daniel Hahn said he does, in Catching Fire, but I’ve lent the book to someone so don’t quote me on that because I can’t verify.

Anyway, in this particular instance I’ve got three years, possibly even four, to translate a relatively short book – it comes in at 141 pages total and is written in diary form (and a bit of verse-prose) so many of those aren’t even full pages. I’ve also only got a paperback of the original to work from, and although I have a good relationship with the author and could doubtless ask her to send me a PDF version, I decided to copy the text out into a Word document. I realise that sounds like a monumental waste of time, but actually, if you’ve got that time, I find it offers a really good opportunity for a close reading of the source text, and I noticed several things I hadn’t picked up on my initial reading, such as:

The word “desaparecidos” is used to describe the people whose bodies have never been found (the story is set in the aftermath of the Chillán earthquake in Chile, in 1939). Obviously this is a perfectly reasonable word choice that I didn’t even think about first time round, but I’ve also just noticed that they’ve used the town stadium to house all the people whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake, and those two things combined are making me wonder if there’s some veiled reference to the Pinochet dictatorship happening… it could of course just be a coincidence, but worth checking with Camila.
Trees! Specifically the willow, or “sauce” – this was a key feature in Las Durmientes, which I translated for my MA project, and actually – now I think about it – there’s a willow that plays a major role in the Zahorí saga (Camila’s earlier novels), too… does the willow hold some particular place in Chilean folklore, or is it something personal to Camila? Another one to check.
Black thread (hilo negro) – this is another one that crops up in all her books, and actually I’ve noticed it (or “hilo” at least, I might want to check whether colour is referenced) in the work of other Chilean women writers too… does that warrant further investigation? I have a feeling that in Camila’s work, at least, it has something to do with the embroidery that women in Chile traditionally did and its links to storytelling – both stories told within the embroidery itself and orally, to children by the fire while the mother/grandmother embroiders
Barely any characters have a name… this was the case in Las Durmientes, too, but doesn’t apply to Zahorí, so I suspect it is because this is a fairy tale, and characters in traditional stories are often nameless. But was it also a deliberate decision related to the objectification of women, and girls, and particularly indigenous/mestiza women? Another one to check with Camila…

And that’s all just from the first few pages. The funny thing is, when I read it through the first time, I was a bit worried there wasn’t as much to unpack as there had been in Las Durmientes, and this time I’m trying to get a whole doctoral thesis out of it. Now, of course, I’m worried there’s too much and I won’t have room to do it all justice and fit in the reflections on the workshops I plan to do once I’ve got my translation to a half-decent standard. Still, better to have too much to write than too little!

ruth donnelly

Literary translator, Spanish to English

First draft complete!

Stage 1: Getting close to the source text