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Blog shift, format, wine & word
So much at once, right? For a couple of years now, I’ve been blogging at ¿Se enseña aquí? — a blog begun partly in the hopes of encouraging students to study abroad (in particular in the program in Rosario, Argentina, where I was about to teach) and continued as a way to talk about translation, language…
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Still Noticing, Collecting (Detour 13)
We spent the third weekend in January at the coast, an extended family tradition–long walks, seafood, puzzles, wine. Walks remembered and compared; stones retrieved from tide pools, examined, mulled, returned– dropped gently, perhaps, or absentmindedly; or flung full-armed into the further surf, that pitcher’s arc none of us ever truly mastered. Remembered others’ beach traditions…
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Wine and Word Tasting, 3rd. edition
The third edition of Wine and Word Tasting at Winter’s Hill Vineyard will take place on Saturday, February 16, 11:00-5:00. I’ll be reading from Detours and from my translation of Angélica Gorodischer’s Trafalgar, which should be hot off the Small Beer Press. We have a great line-up of readers and writers this year, with something for…
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11 Odd Things Learned in the Course of Translation
–tidbits picked up in translating Beyond the Islands (Alicia Yánez Cossío) and Trafalgar (Angélica Gorodischer)– Some days, translation is like a treasure hunt, a sanctioned scavenge after curious words and unfamiliar allusions. (Happily, I’m a fan of dictionaries and reference books; my dictionary stand is a prized possession.) When the project’s finished, some of those definitions and…
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Proofreading and Second Chances
It has never yet happened that, reading proofs, I haven’t found some dreadful if trifling error–often after 20 or 30 error-free pages, when I was beginning to wonder whether the task was, indeed, worthwhile. But there it will be, the third i in the middle of a word, the second however in a row. No…
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Translation Detours (more signposts)
Treman State Park Earlier this month, I was in Ithaca to give a translation talk in the Latin American Studies Program seminar series and a reading from Detours at the Cornell Store. Naturally, I visited the waterfalls and photographed a few detour signs. Then up to Rochester for the ALTA conference and even more translation…
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A Blog Post About Nothing
Or maybe it’s something. Anything. ¿No van a hacer nada? ¿No te dijo nada? No te voy a decir nada. Spanish loves a double negative. None of these sentences are unusual, nor are they hard to render in English. But I’ve been playing with the subtle differences, weighing the alternatives even when there’s not much…
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Juxtaposition (compare and contrast)
When the program excursion to Buenos Aires (several weeks ago now) visited the Recoleta Cemetery, I was struck by the “Make a Wish” billboard framed at the end of one of the narrow paths–streets, in a sense–that crisscross the cemetery. Well off hallowed ground, but present in its visibility, a foil to the wishes expressed…
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Birdwatching for Translators
I was asked recently when on this trip I had particularly felt I was somewhere else. Well, running, last Friday. It was a gray, cold, drizzly morning with a strong wind, easily run-in-a-fleece weather; a day worthy of Michigan at the end of March (remember, we just celebrated the first day of spring). The wind…
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Bored as an oyster?
Razor clam, boredom long past The translation I’m working on includes the phrase, aburrirse como pingüinos— become bored as penguins? A little sleuthing around turned up the phrase, aburrirse como una ostra or una almeja— bored as an oyster, or bored as a clam. Bivalves likely lead pretty dull lives (though a razor clam can…