translation – Page 17 – don't confuse the narrator

time flies

And there are too many things need doing for me to write much, so I’ll settle for a picture of this rather splendid creature I found in the garden this morning.

I suppose it’s a kind of tiger moth. (I should have stuck a ruler in the picture as an indication of scale, of course, but it must have been something over an inch long.) Its impressive camouflage would have been marginally more effective if it had chosen the cream painted wall for its morning siesta.
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carry on shopping

Living in Spain, there are times when I feel as if I am looking at life through linguistic bi-focals: one lens is my mother tongue, English, the other is the local language, Spanish (Castellano).

So, when I see signs like the one in the picture (taken in a small town in the province of Cáceres), I understand perfectly that it’s a village grocery store – indicated by “alimentación” – but I also notice that it appears to be selling “carrion”. Such vignettes add a touch of the surreal to life.

vicarious fame

Ellen Datlow, the editor of the Best Horror of the Year anthology, has posted a list of “Honorable Mentions” – the unpublished runners up for the 2009 anthology – on her blog.

My name isn’t on the list, but in third place (it’s alphabetical by author) is Poe a poem by Alfredo Álamo that won Spain’s Ignotus Award for poetry in 2007. It was published in The Magazine of Speculative Poetry in spring 2009, along with a translation into English by Sue Burke and me.

I don’t recognise many names on the list, but the second part (again, alphabetical), is headed by “King, Stephen” for his story Morality, published in Esquire magazine in July 2009.

I’d like to thank Sue for inviting me to assist her with a translation that has led me, albeit vicariously, into such august company.

found wanting

Poster (text - Yes, we want) — And apparently, we need (to), too

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reviewing the translation of a novel with the author. Time and again, we’ve come up against what she sees as limitations in the English language.

One of the biggest problem has been with words that are gender non-specific. With a word like “saint”, “patient” or “teacher” it’s unclear whether it refers to male or female, whereas in Spanish you have the pairs santa/santo, profesor/profesora, and with words like paciente it’s simply a question of changing the gender of the article: el paciente/la paciente.
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not my own words

I had a dream a while back where I was telling someone that I earned my living from writing – “But not my own words.”

No, it wasn’t an admission of plagiarism. I think it was a subconscious recognition of the fact that I am too busy translating to do very much original writing.
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