don't confuse the narrator

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Ellen Datlow, the editor of the Best Horror of the Year anthology, has posted a list of “Honorable Mentions” – the unpublished runners up for the 2009 anthology – on her blog.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

light and hope

Now that the weather’s improved and the council workers have managed to get out to do some jobs around the village, they’ve finally put in new lamp posts down by the river. Proper wrought iron ones that cast soft yellow light quite unlike the unnaturally white blare from the UFO-type double-headed farolas they put along by the polideportivo during a lull in the storms a month or so back.

Set against the snow-pocked backdrop of the Sierra de Gredos, the new Narnia-style lamp posts make me think of the Pevensie children helping Aslan banish the White Witch and release Narnia from the long winter.

They’ve also brought to mind a poem from a few years back:
Continue reading “light and hope”

concrete imagery

No, I’m afraid it’s not a post about problems with abstractions in poetry, although that’s a subject dear to my heart. This is literally about images and concrete. Or, to be more precise, images and cement.

I used to think cement was a fairly uninspiring grey powder that came in tough brown paper sacks with nothing of any interest written on them.

I imagined that the packaging was designed to appeal to no-nonsense men who deal in practical information like quality codes or weights and measures. A bit like the empty sack in the photo.

But then I caught sight of un saco de cemento with the slogan: