The experience of
translating the six books that make up the Houghton Miflin Harcourt Carver Elementary series by Karen English
and illustrated by Laura Freeman was one of our best co-translation journeys
ever.
On top of all the great
things about the translation project as such (translating for HMH is always an
honor and a pleasure), we also had the best possible editor (Jeff Evatt) to make sure that
the stories selected would be the most suitable for a ten year old child living
in the United States. That suitability factor needed to be the same whether the
reader was a Spanish-speaking child reading in his or her native language, or an
English-speaking child learning Spanish). This exchange was consistently
enriching throughout the six months that the project lasted. We enjoyed (and
learned) a great deal. And we ended up welcoming 99.99 % of our editor’s
suggestions. His proposals always served to improve the finished
product.
As with all documents
that “live” in one language and then have to “move to a new town,” The Carver Chronicles posed several of the
more normal difficulties, and an additional one as well: Hispanic Spanish is an
elusive variety and there are not many resources to help translators deal with
this factor. How many Hispanic Spanishes are there? Three, perhaps? Off hand we
can think of the California area (made up mostly of Mexican speakers), the New
York area (made up predominately of Puerto Ricans), and the Florida area (made
up of Spanish-speakers from the Caribbean region, and also of those coming from
South America, such as Chileans, Colombians, Argentines, Uruguayans, etc.).
Translating into a variety that will sound appealing to such a broad umbrella of
dialects is a major challenge in itself.
Translation is an eternal
approximation, an “almost.” Even when there are inevitable losses in any process
of moving from one language to another, it is a translator’s job to compensate
for those inevitable losses, as Umberto Eco taught us in his book called,
precisely, Saying Almost the Same
Thing.
We would like to share
with you a couple of the many exchanges we had with the editor regarding
difficulties and challenges of all sorts that we encountered on the journey from
English into Spanish. Throughout the process, we enjoyed a veritable feast. Our
heroes and heroines were ordinary kids naturally tempted to pay more attention
to their videogames than to their homework. They were interesting, colorful
characters, and it was not difficult to relate to them, or even to fall in love
with some of them (specially the ones who evolved as the story itself evolved).
These kids taught us many a lesson.
We have to admit that we
felt genuinely sad when we translated the last word of the series. Carver
Elementary had become part of our daily lives, and the farewell was full of
nostalgia.
1 -
DOG DAYS
The main character is
called Gavin, but his bossy elder sister enjoys calling him Gavmeister instead.
We decided that the best possible translation would be “Gavincín” a good way (in
our opinion) to embarrass Gavin. The meister part (maestro, s/he who masters)
kept us busy researching and discussing with native English-speakers (We even
ended up reading about Stephen King and the 70s, which clearly would make no
sense to our future readers, but, hey, it was so interesting!) We decided that
it made no sense to focus on the ‘meister’ element and agreed that Gavincín was
the best choice. The diminutive often serves in Spanish to look down on
others.
2 –
SKATEBOARD PARTY
A lot of brainstorming
to find a translation as spicy as the author’s “to mind one’s Ps and Qs!”Our
first idea was just to undertranslate (using “comportarse”, thus losing the
reference to the fact that Richard is naughty AND is not good at spelling). But
translator epiphanies do exist. Booya! Yes. Obedecer las órdenes al pie de la letra was
a great choice, translating the first meaning as well as the reference to
letters.
3 -
DON’T FEED THE GECKOS
Because of the Spanish
roots of some of the characters, they use Spanish words when speaking English,
mostly to refer to relatives (tía
Emilia), food, or for intimate exchanges (“mi hijo”). The mirror situation makes no
sense. A mother would have no “need” to say “my son”, just because she lived in
an English-speaking country. We just left the original Spanish (without
italics). We did consider the possibility of including words in English to show
this biculturalism, but only did so in a very few cases. An example: “nothing”
(Chapter 10, page 41).
4 -
TROUBLE NEXT DOOR
Neck rolls were a
really interesting challenge. Daniell makes this gesture which is mostly typical
of African-Americans. Should we add a Translators’ Note to “properly” explain
the translation? That would make sense in the case of a technical document, when
accuracy is of the essence, but we considered that a note would add nothing. On
the contrary. No verb in Spanish conveys the idea. Google if you want to see
videos or gifs with "neck roll"! This is described as a typical gesture of
African-Americans (not necessarily exclusive, but typical), like Italians making
huge gestures with their hands. So unfortunately, something was lost in translation in this case. We
used the verb “mover”, and though tempted to use the verb “girar” (spin), it
might have sounded a little like The Exorcist, and Danielle is not that diabolical! Besides, what does “gira
el cuello” mean in this case? Nothing, so we chose “mueve el cuello con un gesto
desafiante” (the “desafiante” element is a compensation that we figured might
get Umberto Eco’s blessing).
5 -
THE NEW KID
So the new friend is
called Khufu, which could have been left as it was in the original. However, it
is the Hellenized name (Keops) that is most widely used in
Spanish.
6 -
PIZZA PARTY
Emotions, gestures,
usually anticipate difficulties for the translators as great as those posed by
words that are utterly untranslatable. This
was an interesting part: “Rosario rolls her eyes at Keisha. Keisha sucks her
teeth just as the sub turns in her direction.“
Spanish speakers
understand this gesture, and (in fact) do it, but we have no idiom for it, so we
resorted to: Keisha pone cara de “estamos en problemas” which, we feel, Karen
English would have loved if she had written the story in Spanish. There is no
noise involved, but the eyes grow bigger and the meaning is really
clear.
Goodbye, dear kids,
friends from Carver Elementary! Your Spanish-language translators thank you for
this excellent opportunity to reflect on communication, language, and, why not?,
life. Many more children can now enjoy and enrich their lives with these great
stories, full of adventures and thought-provoking
situations.
Aurora Humarán &
Leticia Monge (your translators)
