{"id":299716,"date":"2014-10-21T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/10\/21\/a-corner-of-the-world-interview-with-author-mylene-fernandez-pintado-part-ii\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:12:31","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T15:12:31","slug":"a-corner-of-the-world-interview-with-author-mylene-fernandez-pintado-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/10\/21\/a-corner-of-the-world-interview-with-author-mylene-fernandez-pintado-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"A Corner of the World: Interview with Author Mylene Fern\u00e1ndez Pintado [Part II]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we ran Part I<\/a> of an interview between author Mylene Fern\u00e1ndez Pintado and translator Dick Cluster. Part I left off with Mylene going over a little background information on their work together on<\/em> A Corner of the World to be. This here is Part II of that interview.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mylene Fern\u00e1ndez Pintado has been writing and publishing in Cuba, winning prizes and readers, since 1994. Her latest novel, La esquina del mundo, has just been published by City Lights as<\/em> A Corner of the World, translated by Dick Cluster. Cluster\u2019s other new Cuban translation is Pedro de Jes\u00fas\u2019s<\/em> Vital Signs, released this month by Di\u00e1logos Press in New Orleans. During Mylene\u2019s recent visit to San Francisco, author and translator put together the following mutual interview about her work, their translation process, and more. Mylene\u2019s responses, which were in Spanish, are translated by Dick.<\/em><\/p>\n

MF<\/strong>: But of course the main thing we are discussing here is the translation. Could you describe some of the choices you had to make\u2014and we had to make\u2014in this book? <\/p>\n

DC<\/strong>: First let me make some observations about the general issue of \u201ctranslating Cuba\u201d for U.S. readers. Sometimes the translator will need to subtly \u201cun-teach\u201d U.S. readers what they think they know about Cuba, un-teach notions that can get in the way of their understanding of what the writer means to say. Sometimes the translator will need to help clue in the U.S. reader to subtleties (or not-so-subtleties) that the Cuban reader understands but the one here will not. In A Corner of the World<\/em>, with its many small touches of Havana life and context, it was mostly the latter. Some of these have to do with economics and social structure and customs, some with the Cuban language itself.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite examples in terms of Cuban language also presents the eternal challenge facing translators when we have to deal with puns. Here\u2019s what the translation says: \u201cWhen I was a kid, and I read The Arabian Nights<\/em> for the first time, that\u2019s where I discovered the word peddler. Ever since, I\u2019ve associated it with bicycles, because I imagined it must be a guy pedaling along while hawking his wares. Later I found out what the word actually meant. So simple, but now, I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t want to give up on the guy who bikes through Baghdad with a basketful of plantains and boniatos teetering on top of his turban.\u201d In the original, the pun is not \u201cpeddle\u201d and \u201cpedal,\u201d but \u201cviandante<\/em>\u201d and \u201cvianda<\/em>.\u201d A viandante<\/em> is someone who goes by on a road, a passerby. Viandas in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world are any kind of foodstuffs, but in Cuba they are specifically tropical root vegetables (such as yuca<\/em>, boniato<\/em>, malanga<\/em>) and plantains. So it\u2019s a play on words, but at the same time it shows how Cubans cubanize things, and I wanted to maintain both aspects. I hope it works.
\nA related problem of language and culture has to do with the Malec\u00f3n, Havana\u2019s curving seaside drive which you\u2019ve already talked about, which really becomes one of the characters in your novel. But the word denotes not just the drive or boulevard\u2014it\u2019s also the seawall that protects the shore, and the wide sidewalk in between the wall and the drive, and more metaphorically it\u2019s the place where the sea and land meet, which in Cuba is always tied up\u2014again this issue\u2014with the sense of being an island. All of this comes into play in a paragraph toward the end of the book, where the female protagonist and narrator, Marian, goes out to the Malec\u00f3n, thinking about the male protagonist, Daniel. The translation reads: <\/p>\n

\n

London is gruff and has no seacoast. I looked at Havana, bordered by miles of ocean, but for the first time I felt the water was besieging us. What we have is a wall where sea meets land, not a beach that one can walk from end to end, setting foot simultaneously in city and sea. What we can do is to look out over the waves, which exist as a promise of the rest of the world. But the promise is unreliable. Like Daniel\u2019s return.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s probably the place where, after besieging you with questions about the passage, I added the most words\u2014words that were implied but not explicit in the original. If I hadn\u2019t, the middle two sentences would have said only: \u201c. . . felt the water was besieging us. The Malec\u00f3n is not a beach, we can\u2019t walk it. Only look at it from here. It exists as a promise. . .\u201d That would have made some sense, but not much, and I think the poignancy and contradictions would have been lost.<\/p>\n

In terms of the \u201cun-teaching\u201d I mentioned before, there\u2019s a passage about how Cubans requesting visas to go abroad are met by suspicion in the embassies of the most-requested countries, embassies whose staff are:<\/p>\n

\n

. . . fed up with Cubans, people who were not from the First World yet not from the Third, who were neither citizens nor immigrants. People who traveled out of their own country so as to tell everyone where they went about the great charms of their home. Who lectured anyone who would listen and some who would not, drawing on their endless storehouses of nostalgia, taking full advantage of their new surroundings but always with disdainful expressions of melancholic superiority.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The meaning there is a hundred percent clear, the words are straightforward, and getting from the Spanish to the English was not hard. But I worried that to American readers it would make no sense, or would provoke some vague feeling of disbelief, since as far as we are concerned the most-requested country is ours, Cubans here are deemed political refugees by mere virtue of being Cuban, and they are always described as having \u201cfled,\u201d and never quoted about any charms of their homeland or its superiorities to the U.S. So I proposed the addition of, \u201cThe embassies of the most-requested countries, in many parts of Europe, for instance. . .\u201d which is indeed the embassies the passage was about, as Cuban readers know without this being stated. You agreed about \u201cin many parts of Europe\u201d and said no to \u201cfor instance\u201d as being unnecessarily didactic, so that\u2019s what we did.<\/p>\n

MF<\/strong>: Often when it comes to explaining something that\u2019s unknown to the foreign reader, there\u2019s the problem of how to clarify this while maintaining the literary level, explaining without getting at all didactic and damaging any of the lyricism in the prose. In this case, and in others, you found a way of not leaving the North Americans \u201cin China\u201d (as we say in Cuba), nor making them feel they are reading footnotes or endnotes\u2014the things that readers in any case avoid because they don\u2019t want to lose the thread of the story. That\u2019s another of the merits of this translation, the way the necessary clarifications for the reader are always done in a literary manner, as if I\u2019d written them in the original too.<\/p>\n

Similarly I think the translations of what in Spanish we call gui\u00f1os<\/em>, winks, are also very well done. These are allusions to other works whether literary or artworks but without citing them explicitly. So I like the way in which you handled these \u201cwinks\u201d originally directed at Spanish-speaking readers, sometimes replacing them with others closer to the Anglo reader, so you keep the book\u2019s spirit intact without confronting the Anglo reader with things that are unnecessarily unfamiliar.<\/p>\n

DC<\/strong>: I remember there was one where you had an allusion to a Lorca poem that I couldn\u2019t figure out any way to handle, but a page later, when Marian says \u201cno hay nada m\u00e1s<\/em>,\u201d I asked you, what about dropping in a substitute by having her say \u201cOnly that and nothing more,” which is the kind of thing she would do. And you wrote back, \u201cPoe is great, I\u2019m so happy you\u2019ve managed to give him a place in the novel, it\u2019s perfect for winding up the internal monologue there.\u201d <\/p>\n

There are also some moments of Cuban history. There\u2019s a flashback about the parents of Marian\u2019s ex-mother-in-law\u2019s mother, who thought they would be exempt from the social revolution of the early \u201960s, because they \u201cknew people in the new government and had even bought some bonds to finance a plan for university autonomy.\u201d The part about the bonds was likely to say nothing to U.S. readers. So, in the translation, they \u201cknew some people in the new government, and had even once bought some underground bonds, during the previous one, to finance a plan for university autonomy.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Marian gives an exam to her university students, she thinks about \u201clas mil brujer\u00edas que hab\u00edan hecho<\/em>\u201d (the thousands of pieces of witchcraft they\u2019d undertaken), \u201cen que mi nombre estaba en todos los congeladores o en tazas llena de miel<\/em>\u201d (with my name in every freezer or glass full of honey), and that \u201cmuchos tendr\u00edan ropa interior roja<\/em>\u201d (many must be wearing red underwear). Again without saying so much as to hit a false note for Marian\u2019s voice, it seemed possible to help out by naming the belief systems involved, of which U.S. readers might have heard, and to specify at least the purpose of the red: \u201c. . . the thousand charms of spiritism and Santer\u00eda that must be at work, with my name inside every freezer or every cupful of honey they employed. I tried to guess how many were wearing red underwear in honor of Chang\u00f3.\u201d <\/p>\n

MF<\/strong>: Religion is always a problem to deal with in translations or simply in languages that are tied to doctrines different from our own. In the book all the tone is ironic, Marian\u2019s professor-narrator voice is skeptical, but she\u2019s talking about beliefs or superstitions that are common in Cuba. So the honey and the freezer have to do with charms that are supposed to sweeten someone\u2019s disposition or paralyze their evil intentions, and for the red underwear you need to know something about our religious syncretism and how Cubans have a much more informal and less ceremonious relationship with the African figures who are linked to Catholic ones. Cubans talk to them, get mad at them, it\u2019s like when the Greek gods in the Iliad<\/em> have their preferred mortals whom they defend and talk to. So in doing the translation you had to make use of your years of Havana daily life and knowledge of popular beliefs, and your feeling for how we can be believers in many things, many mixtures, which for Cubans does not imply any contradiction.<\/p>\n

DC<\/strong>: I\u2019ll end with the way the way two different characters address Marian, which presented the problem of finding American English equivalents for the terms and what they imply. Her department chair calls her \u201cMarian querida<\/em>,\u201d while her ex-mother-in-law calls her \u201cMarian bonita<\/em>.\u201d This presented dilemmas I batted around both with my literary translators\u2019 workshop group and with you. \u201cMarian querida<\/em>\u201d might be either \u201choney\u201d or \u201csweetie.\u201d After some discussion we agreed that \u201cMarian, honey,\u201d would sound more like the Cuban \u201cMarian, mi amor<\/em>,\u201d which (in both countries and languages) a waitress might use to address a customer, or in similar situations where the people don\u2019t know each other and where the language is less rarified than in a university. \u201cMarian, sweetie\u201d was more the ticket for this. \u201cMarian, bonita<\/em>,\u201d on the hand, was\u2014in Cuba\u2014something completely affected and out of place. It was peninsular Spanish, and the mother-in-law was putting on airs based on once having lived there as a diplomat\u2019s wife. We settled on \u201cMarian, my lovely,\u201d for that.<\/p>\n

MF<\/strong>: This was an interesting point\u2014because \u201cbonita<\/em>\u201d in the daily Spanish of Cubans means \u201cpretty,\u201d but in Spain, and especially in Madrid, it\u2019s an adjective placed after a proper name as a signifier of trust, though it can also be used when calling a spade a spade as in \u201cSorry, bonita<\/em>, that\u2019s not the way it is.\u201d But in Cuba this usage simply does not exist, and I only know it because I lived in Madrid for two years. Whereas \u201cMarian querida<\/em>\u201d is used in a maternal way by her department head. I thought it was fantastic when you told me about the debate in your translators\u2019 group around choosing the best word for that. I thought how fantastic it must be to work in that kind of collective way, which reminded me of the days when I worked in ICAIC<\/span> and we wrote articles about film and had these heated discussion that were very productive both intellectually and socially.<\/p>\n

Anyway, all the examples you\u2019ve given reinforce what I always say, which is that translating a book is rewriting it in new words while keeping even the subtlest of its \u201csoul breaths\u201d intact.<\/p>\n

And right now, while I\u2019m giving these responses, sitting on your back deck in Oakland which I imagine is for you like my sea-view balcony, I think about the whole chain of coincidences that have brought us here. Maybe we do have a corner of the world on that Calle 17 we both feel is the \u201cmost charming and saddest street\u201d\u2014which, if you follow it to its end, takes you to the Malec\u00f3n, which I call the anteroom of the rest of the world. So, thanks to you for your faith like Quijote\u2019s in this book of ours, and to City Lights for its confidence in us, and to everyone who has inspired it, and to the Havana I always carry with me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we ran Part I of an interview between author Mylene Fern\u00e1ndez Pintado and translator Dick Cluster. Part I left off with Mylene going over a little background information on their work together on A Corner of the World to be. This here is Part II of that interview. Mylene Fern\u00e1ndez Pintado has been writing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[58366,26926,42816,58356],"class_list":["post-299716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-a-corner-of-the-world","tag-city-lights","tag-dick-cluster","tag-mylene-fernandez-pintado"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336936,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299716\/revisions\/336936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}