martes, 15 de julio de 2025

Poetry. More almost than ever.

Literary translation has a certain sneaky way of cornering us translators.

Translating the text (the content) into another language is only part of the job —we also have to preserve the author’s voice and stylistic choices.

The author used his/her magic wand to create the original, and now it’s our turn to wave ours so the translation can move, provoke, inform, make readers think, stir up nostalgia or awareness... or just (just!) tell the story the way the original does.

Or almost.

Because our job is almost always an “almost” (just like Umberto Eco’s book “Saying Almost the Same”, my translation Bible).

When it comes to poetry, the challenge gets even trickier. Suddenly, our color palette gets smaller.

Sometimes it’s about the rhythm/the music of words, but mostly it’s rhyme, of course.

I do  not simply need the Spanish equivalent of “nostalgic” —I need something that rhymes with... let’s say, “impreciso,” which is already in Spanish. one or two lines above, looking at me, challenging me.

You rarely nail it on the first try, the line often requires reconstruction (“I’m gonna move you, “impreciso”), and at times, it comes at the expense of meaning. Ouch.

While the standard output for translators averages around 2,000 words per day, this does not apply to literary translation. And in the case of poetry, timelines need to be totally different —as does the pricing (forgive the pragmatism... but you know me. You know my advocacy).


Just to give you an idea: the children’s adaptation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night’s Dream” —by Lois Burdett and published by QWILL Media & Education— had about 4,000 words. Did I deliver in two days, then? No.

It took me seven months just to get close to Burdett’s rhyming couplets.

Poetry —whether we enjoy it as readers in our native language or in translation— poses a unique and formidable challenge when it comes to translating it.

Over days, weeks, even months, we carry words that feel stuck in our… souls/throats/minds/hearts/brains.

Sometimes we approve potential candidates —consolation prize words— hoping for that elusive epiphany. Sometimes the epiphany never comes. But when the magic does happen… oh. That’s when beauty is born.

I want to share a few bits from a story-poem I translated for Albert Whitman, aimed at Spanish-speaking children in the U.S.

This year, I had the honor of translating three books for them. Triple debut.
This poem, Brock, Rock and the Savings Rock, was written by Sheila Bair, an American former government official who was the Chair of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) from 2006 to 2011. It was a huge and beautiful challenge. Just like poetry.

Aurora Matilde Humarán 






Note: The original and the translation aren’t available in Argentina, but if you're in the U.S. and want to get a copy, you can send an email to orders@albertwhitman.com

lunes, 22 de julio de 2024

Mi primera traducción para una editorial argentina: NO PODÍA HABER SIDO MEJOR. TODO.

 

✍🏼🇨🇳🇺🇸🎩🪄💫✍🏼🇦🇷
Les presento a mi nuevo hijo.

Nunca había traducido para una editorial argentina. Por esas cosas de la vida, (y gracias a una palabrera gloriosa y mágica) traduzco literatura para EE. UU.
Como muchaaaacha fan de todo lo argento, quiero resaltar este debut. Además, ¡debutar con una editorial como Selva Canela! Ha sido un placer desde el primer llamado de Iván hasta el último intercambio con Agustín.
Me emociona que dos jóvenes sean emprendedores de la cultura, de la magia que significa que muchas palabritas puestas sobre una página te saquen de paseo por quién sabe una qué lugares. ¡Animarse a emprender algo en tiempos tan jodidos es triplemente festejable y elogiable y todos los ables lindos de la lengua española!
Entiendo que la semana que viene ya se puede comprar ¡en mi país! Qué raro. Qué lindo.
Este libro fue un blast. Me tocó confirmar las palabras del sexo de los mileniales (¿usan las mismas palabras que los babyboomers?, interesting, ja!), las palabras de los insultos y tantas decisiones más.
Iván Saporosi y Agustín Avenali

Por sobre todas las cosas, amé de este libro acordar con Agustín e Iván ciertos autopermisos para decir mejor lo que es tan lejano, en todo sentido. Durante todo el proceso de la traducción pensé en Schleiermacher para decidir si traer a mis personajes a estas pampas o llevar a los argentos en vuelo directo a esa China milenaria y apasionante y compleja... y luego al hogar que tantos eligieron, en Chinatown, New York. ¿Y cuánto tofu, jade, Mao? He ahí uno de los desafíos de la traducción.
Gracias. 🙏
Wang Ping, la autora de The Last Communist Virgin


Manos de autora + Manos de traductora = MAGIA



martes, 2 de julio de 2024

Sueño de una noche de verano (Cuento infantil de Shakespeare / Burdett / Humarán) interpretado por la Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional (México)

I’m thrilled and honored to have had a small role in this production, along with my colleagues Andrew Lester of QWILL Media & Education, Inc., and award-winning translator Aurora Humarán. The open rehearsal presented this morning by Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional OSN México in Palacio de Bellas Artes under the direction of Maestro David Pérez Olmedo to an audience of some 1,300 people of all ages left me feeling overwhelmed, in no small part due to the expert and artful narrating by Olivia Lagunas of Compañía Nacional de Teatro as much as the astonishingly beautiful costuming and choreography presented by the talented dancers of Escuela Nacional de Danza Clásica y Contemporánea INBA. Thank you Maestro Ludwig Carrasco for the opportunity to collaborate on this meaningful project. I really can’t wait to see how audiences will react to the performances this Sunday.

Jeremy Brimhall
San Antonio Symphony





🙏🏼🎶

"Los cuerpos son geniales" one of the Best Children's Picture Books of 2024 in Spanish (Bank Street College of Education)

💓

I am so happy that my translation of Tyler Feder's "Bodies are cool"/"Los cuerpos son geniales" (Puffin Books, Penguin Random House) has been included in this prestigious list! (The Best Children's Picture Books of the Year in Spanish - 2024 Edition. Books published or translated in 2023. Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education)

Translating Tyler was a real honor! 






jueves, 16 de noviembre de 2023

Like it or not, inclusive language is already on the agenda for publishers, the media and a number of institutions (Humarán / Cosenza)

 


 

 

Like it or not, inclusive language is already on the agenda for publishers, the media and a number of institutions

 

(As language professionals, we have to know it)  

 

Anyone who undertakes the beautiful work of recounting the history of languages will emphasize that major changes have taken place in tandem with profound transitions (just think of the journey of Latin into the Romance languages), that such changes are imperceptible and we have scant record of them.   As is obvious, this latter point has been modified by new technology.   We live in a time when everything that happens to us is recorded, and accordingly, we have an up-to-date awareness of new developments like the one we are addressing now. Indeed, I would like to draw upon this latter consideration to point out that it would be most interesting (and enriching for the study of our language) if scholars in academia were to conduct qualitative and quantitative research on inclusive language.

Surely many of us have had to put up with teasing about inclusive language (IL).  In Argentina, it’s common to hear that people who talk with an “e” (the “latest scream of fashion” after previous attempts like “@” or “x”) are just a bunch of “woke” teenagers. It’s also commonly associated with a certain political ideology.   

And surely we will agree that these groundless comments about language and its behavior are understandable, let’s say,  in one way of reckoning, and yet those of us who are language professionals can and must inform ourselves about it, even if we wish to reject it. 

Our role as translators goes beyond mere linguistic counseling. It’s a kind of cultural counseling. We have to be able to provide our clients (who are inquiring about the subject more and more each day) with solid arguments that sometimes IL is required, sometimes optional and other times required. A very good example of its required use appears in the character Pollution which the author Neil Gaiman includes in his series Good omens.  Pollution is neither male nor female, which is how the name must be translated because that’s the way the author created it. Allow me to share with you a text I translated for Penguin (with the publisher’s permission). The text is from the book Bodies are cool (Los cuerpos son geniales) by Tyler Feder, and in it there is a non-binary character (they) in the original, and so it was translated (as elle).  

It should be noted, on the other hand, that in the various other fields people work in, these issues are not as important as they are in the domain of language. When you go through profiles on the internet you can see that it’s rare for an engineer to include her pronouns in her profile, but common for those who work for publishers to choose to identify themselves as he, she or they.   In other words, even for our own interactions on the job, it’s useful for us – both as a matter of courtesy as well as business sense – to pay attention to such things, given that in our professional lives we appear to be more sensitive to people’s different ways of addressing each other.  If someone decides to tell the world that she is a cis woman or that they are a non-binary person, then that is how such people should be addressed.

In defense of the masculine “o” that renders women and diversity invisible, it is argued that, “The use of the masculine ‘o’ to include both men and women is fully assimilated in standard usage and plainly understood.” Okay, but … when I was a girl, insults like ‘faggot’ and ‘retard’ that were fully assimilated and plainly understood, nowadays … make our hair stand on end.

A lot of people ask what difference does it make if a woman is called a jueza (“judgess”) instead of a juez (“judge”). It makes a big difference because it renders the feminine a visible, which in Spanish tells us that the person is a woman, and using the a underscores the fact that the position is occupied by a woman (given the importance that such a presence has in and of itself, the language should reflect this). Let us recall that many English-speakers choose to insert the honorific Madame before the word president (which is itself neuter and would create no problems) to emphasize that there is a woman serving as president.

It’s perfectly clear to us what the relationship is between a thing and the word that refers to it. One invents something, then gives it a name that expresses that something (digital native, for instance). And yet, going the other way is not clear to us: when a word modifies a particular something.  

In one of their functions, words illuminate reality with stark clarity: in the performative function. Just seconds after a president announces that Mr. So-and-So shall henceforth assume the duties of the Minister of Health, that So-and-So IS the Minister of Health. Words have such great weight that even in our technological civilization, the ancestral custom of swearing oaths persists.  This is a ceremony in which words solemnly uttered before an expectant audience will inscribe a particular fact on marble in our minds. We speak of artificial intelligence, yet we keep relying on words to express what it will become. That’s how important words are.  

On a more mundane level, let us recall the power that advertising has over people. How does that deodorant make me feel? Cleaner? More in synch with the times? Sexier?  All of this is analyzed among the three pillars of the advertising tripod (advertising company, ad agency and media), and is validated in focus groups exploring the (sought-after) target’s reaction to these words. (And to refer to them as Targets… it almost seems that someone is shooting at them, and they’re victims, doesn’t it?). Essentially, goals will be achieved by the words that are used. Think of other examples from other domains and periods that are just as effective: I had a dream. Just do it.  Women don’t cry any more, they make money.   

The words of erotic literature stir things up in our bodies.  No one can deny it.

When we hear the word “lemon” repeated again and again, our mouth waters.

In this connection, we recommend that you read the New York Times article cited in the sources because it takes up this sort of influence (the effect that words have on reality). Through an examination of the word “pudendum” it was shown that in order “not to say certain words” (due to shame), many women do not look after their own health. According to a survey conducted by the NGO The Eve Appeal in 2014, 65% of the women surveyed avoid getting gynecological checkups in order not to have to say the word vagina.

In particular, because we are word professionals, we can, and indeed, must understand how powerful they are. Time will tell whether the letter “e” will become assimilated in Spanish usage as an inclusive morpheme for women, men and diverse identities, or whether new ways of “speaking more justly” will arise.  But the main thing is that the debate is now under way.  

It is vital to bear in mind that this movement to make language “speak more justly to all people” is not only taking place in the Spanish language. Language specialists, as well as speakers simply interested in linguistic fairness are looking for ways to indicate diversity: in French with an asterisk, in Italian with the schwa, in Swedish with the creation of a neuter personal pronoun (hen), and the same can be seen in other languages like Portuguese, Turkish, Catalan and others.  

As we have been saying, words modify reality. They can make us want things and consume them. They can say things justly or reproduce hate speech. They empower or they wound. And fundamentally, words tell us who we are as we use them: our geographic origin, perhaps our professional training, our political affiliation, our ideology, our vision of the cosmos – even if we’d rather they didn’t. Our words say us.  

What does the use of the masculine gender as a generic communicate about a person (whether real or fictitious)? What is revealed by the use of expressions like “cuerpa” instead of “cuerpo” (body), “miembra” instead of “miembro” (member) or “yuta madre” instead of “puta madre” (a substitute for whore mother, colloquially often meaning something like bloody hell)? And doubling up with “todas y todos” (all females and all males) or “todas, todes y todos” (all females, all non-binaries and all males).  Or if instead of the neomorpheme “-e”, one resorts to “x” or “-@”?    

It is clear that there is an underlying vision of gender, and of what constitutes sexism in language. 

 

What is gender?

Gender is a social and cultural construction that is traditionally binary; this means that societies attribute to individuals certain values, thoughts, feelings and behaviors based on whether they are men or women. Simone de Beauvoir (2016, p. 269) once said “one is not born a woman: rather, one becomes a woman.” Drawing on queer theory, Judith Butler (1988) goes deeper and maintains that gender is not an internal reality, it is not something given, but rather a phenomenon that is constantly produced and reproduced. It is performative because we are not only performing a role, we are constructing it as we act it out, through our behavior, our attire, our way of speaking. And here the two-way process that we’ve been discussing of mutual influence between language and reality comes into play once again.   

Gender identity is defined as the internal and individual experience of gender as each person feels it, which may or may not match up with the sex assigned at birth (Law 26743). If the two coincide, we speak of people who are cisgender; if not, of people who are transgender. This latter term is an umbrella term that encompasses many gender identities; some sources speak of as many as 94 (Sexual Diversity, 2023).

We can distinguish two paradigms around the concept of gender, with their respective communication strategies and convictions on what constitutes a sexist use of language.  It should be noted that these two points of view overlap and coexist at present.  

The first paradigm is based on a fixed and restrictive conception of gender (the man/woman distinction), which treats gender (or sex) and genitality as the same thing.

The first feminisms and women’s movements struggled against the privileged position of men over women, but did not question the binary division (and there are those who still uphold this view). Accordingly, in many societies and languages, there appeared guides and recommendations seeking an egalitarian language that would include and respect women.  Among the most common suggestions are avoiding the generic masculine, lexical gaps, apparent-duals and other sexist usage.

The strategies used are:

     doubling up

     the @ (because it looks like a feminine “a” combined with a masculine “o”);  

     the generic feminine (used by a minority)

   a series of stratagems for avoiding marks of gender: abstract nouns, paraphrasis, periphrasis, impersonal constructions and so on.  

It should be noted that this view of gender is also shared by those who think these approaches are unnecessary because the masculine includes women as well.  

The second paradigm calls into question the categories of “man” and “woman,” and recognizes a vast diversity of gender identities, as we have already noted.  

It is within this paradigm that what is popularly known as “inclusive language” has arisen, and that we, following the translator and researcher Ártemis López (2019), refer to as “direct non-binary language.”  

 

Non-binary language

López distinguishes two strategies for writing outside of binary categories, which they call direct non-binary language (DNL), and indirect non-binary language (INL).   

DNL consists of using a new gender morpheme: “-e” and “-x” are the most commonly used variants, though not the only ones. The suffix “-e” took hold not only because it’s easier to pronounce, but also because the other options are incompatible with screen readers used by people who are blind or vision-impaired, which would thereby create another kind of exclusion.  

DNL has two contexts for its use: 

1. As generic (the use that is most resisted, even by certain feminisms)  

2. To designate people who are non-binary, of fluid gender or other gender identity who expressly choose not to use either the masculine or feminine to describe themselves.

On the other hand, INL is the same strategy suggested in the first paradigm: to avoid the marks of gender through impersonal constructions, abstract nouns, etc.

 

Our role and professional ethics

To those of us who work with translation, interpretation and editing, why should these questions matter? If our work is to build bridges of communication and enable that particular voice to express itself and convey exactly what it wants to convey, both denotatively and connotatively, then it behooves us to be able to discern the underlying gender vision and implement the appropriate linguistic and communication strategies.  

Just as we are giving the finishing touches to this text the controversy over rewriting the works of Roald Dahl has broken out, which we cannot fail to mention. Dahl – like any other person – chose to construct a reality with his words, both in his literature as well as in his own life.  We do a great disservice to today’s children if we conceal the fact that these realities also exist.  

So it is not a matter of using the morpheme “-e” indiscriminately. We’re not going to put it in the mouth of the protagonist of American Psycho, of Bret Easton Ellis, or of any infamously macho or transphobic public figure.  

But we do have to know when and how to use it: for instance, it’s mandatory for the character Morgan in the acclaimed novel Girl, woman, other by Bernardine Evaristo, or for artists like Sam Smith, who expressly and publicly declared that they were non-binary.  

Over and above any controversy, and regardless of our own stance on the matter, in our capacity as intermediaries and advisors, we who are engaged in the language professions must rise to the occasion.

After all, as Margaret Atwood said: “A word after a word after a word is power.” 

 

 


 

Aurora Humarán / Erika Cosenza

Third Congress of the North American Academy of Spanish Language (ANLE)

Coral Gables (Miami, USA)

May 2023

 

domingo, 16 de octubre de 2022

Transculturización nivel Dios



Para mi sorpresa, el enorme chileno también ¡tradujo! Y nada más y nada menos que al Bardo. Ahora bien... nótese la intervención extrema del traductor que se nota incluso sin leer el libro: 1) se intervino el nombre de la obra 2) en la tapa del libro está el gran Parra (foto y nombre) y ni mu del autor. Veré qué pasó con la obra, pero una rápida recorrida me dice que esta no es una traducción ni siquiera parecida a otras de "The Tragedy of King Lear". Sobre este libro, dice Harold Bloom en la contratapa: "Nicanor Parra es, incuestionablemente, uno de los mejores poetas de Occidente". (¡Claro que sí!) El especialista Chris Fassnidge afirma que el resultado hubiera contado con la total aprobación de Shakespeare.

 


Un pedacito del prólogo:

Jóvenes acostumbrados
A las tragedias que terminan bien
Esta no puede terminar peor.
En un mundo desprovisto de racionalidad
La poesía no puede ser otra cosa
Que la mala conciencia de la época.



Hablando de traer o llevar al Inglés Enorme (gracias, Schleiermacher y Venuti), leí un libro de la Universidad de Salamanca ("Traducción y representaciones del conflicto de España y América", Araguás, Rodríguez y Sastre) que analiza la reacción de los traductores americanos (a partir del siglo XX) con respecto a las traducciones españolas de Shakespeare (en especial, con respecto a la vulgata, como la llama Pablo Ingberg, es decir, las traducciones del español Astrana Marín). Al eterno dilema que enfrentamos al traducir, los traductores americanos (Emir Monagal, Whitelow, Idea Villariño, Pablo Neruda, Patricio Canto, Mujica Lainez, el propio Pablo Ingberg, entre otros grandes) sumaron (en distinta medida) el dilema de si despeninsulizar o no a Shakespeare. Quienes traducimos a español ya sabemos bien qué es el español neutro (que no existe, pero sí existe) y las dificultades que nos agrega a la labor traductora. Ahora, sumado a ese y otros tantos desafíos que nos plantea la traducción... ¿cómo tocar los corazones de casi 600 millones de hispanohablantes y, a la vez, no privarlos de las muchísimas magias de Shakespeare?

That is the question.

Aurora Matilde Humarán



jueves, 8 de septiembre de 2022

Alimento para traductores (food for thought)

Leyendo y releyendo como ando en estos días (el texto que estoy traduciendo necesita de mucho snorkeling antes de que pueda ponerme el tanque y zambullirme), encuentro un tesoro. Por suerte para les ansiosites como esta traductora, existe Mercado Libre. En horas lo tuve en mis manos. Las dos primeras palabras del libro (el título de uno de los capítulos) dicen esto: TRADUCTOR TRAEDOR. Decido en ese momento que me acabo de enamorar del autor. Irreversiblemente.

Digo en el párrafo anterior que estoy traduciendo, pero en realidad todavía no estoy traduciendo, pero en realidad, sí estoy traduciendo. Si bien el texto que me ha regalado la vida (y van…) sigue en inglés en una carpeta que se llama (surprise, surprise!) ORIGINAL y no hay nada en la carpeta que se llama TRANSLATION, yo ya estoy traduciendo. Estoy traduciendo porque ya estoy reflexionando sobre yambos, sobre los endecasílabos de Mujica Lainez (y aquellos sonetos que "tradujimos" [ponele] en Language II en la facultad), sobre esa cosa lisérgica, esa menesunda que es la vidaamormagiasueño, porque ya elegí palabras para decir a varios de los personajes, porque ya me puse el traje que este texto necesita y se merece. La traducción ya empezó, y sé que libros como este afilarán la varita mágica de mi poesía. La traducción ya empezó. Words will follow.

Escribir palabras ajenas de Pablo Ingberg (editorial EDUVIM) ha llegado a mi vida. Paren las rotativas. Decido poner en pausa los otros libros que estoy leyendo para devorar esto que se despliega ante mis ojos voraces.

Peligro. Es demasiado BELLO. Nada es bueno en exceso. Ni siquiera la hermosura.

Me juro leerlo de a poquito. Un capítulo por vez. Oj-Alá pueda.

Traductores: ¿qué están esperando? Compren este libro ya mismo. Confíen en mi consejo. El propio índice te levanta de la silla y te rocía gotitas de felicidad. La reseña tardará porque, contra mi forma habitual de leer, este será un día a día nutritivo. El gran Ingberg ha hablado. Necesito aprender de él.

Aurora Matilde Humarán