Tell me in Spanish some English short stories,
Algernon!
Despite being an online and free
initiative, Cuentos para Algernon
has no second intentions. You heard that right. It is a public web and it is for
free, with no subscriptions or monthly quotas in order to enjoy its content. It
offers careful Spanish translations of science fiction, fantasy, weird and
horror short stories by very renowned authors.
They are not only the works of award winning
writers, who have been acclaimed by critics and applauded by readers, but also
high quality literature, despite being genre’s stories. Apart from maximizing
availability posting the stories in ePub, MOBI, Fb2, PFD o DOC, this web page
offers high quality translations by its administrator and founder, a mysterious
entity called Marcheto, from whom little
is known. By the nature of their responses, one can sense there is a woman
behind that name, although I am merely speculating because it could just be a
concealing maneuver.
I had the opportunity to have a long and
very interesting conversation with this entity, in which we spoke about the
genre’s health, about their work at the head of the page, and about their hopes
for the future. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. By the way, Cuentos para Algernon
is an indispensable web in the blogosphere. Period.
CJ: I would love you to introduce yourself to our readers. Everybody
knows you as Marcheto, and many don’t
know who hides behind this name. It’s true that your blog speaks loudly, and we
know you are a translator, but I would like to learn more about your bio, from
your education to your professional experience.
Marcheto: The vast majority of the blog readers’ don’t know my other
identity, but this is totally premeditated, and I have the intention to leave
it like that for as long as I can. Because, for everything related to Cuentos para Algernon, I’m Marcheto, and that’s my true identity.
The other identity, the one who hides behind, it’s the false one.
I’m afraid, my bio isn’t that interesting.
As a curiosity, I can tell you that I was born many years ago in an almost
non-existing province. From there, maybe I gathered some existential
insecurity, and that’s perhaps the explanation of wanting more than one
identity, because only one is not enough. I don’t know. Anyhow, my family moved
to a neighboring province, one more convinced of its own existence. I lived
there many years and, when I realized I was Science and not Arts oriented, I
studied Mathematics. I guess I’m a mathematician by education, even though I
have never worked as such. Until now, my professional carrier has been in
computing, at least that’s what feeds me. Some years ago, in an attempt to keep
alive my English with something more appealing than just regular courses, I
enlisted in a translation course. There, I discovered something I liked a lot and
I was good at. After a couple of courses learning translation, I heard that La Factoría de las Ideas needed translators. I wrote to them, and a
little later I was translating role playing books. From that I transitioned into
other books for the same publishing company, and later, I started working for
others, always translating fantasy works. Right now I combine my work in
computing with translating and with more courses.
CJ: It’s interesting all this about your secret identity. In the
beginning, when I joined Twitter, I played with the ambiguity of
@dnazproject.com and used to write my twits using the masculine genre in
Spanish… sometimes I catch myself doing it, but now everybody knows me, and
doesn’t serve any purpose. In my case, it came from the need to be taken
seriously. I thought that, as a male, I would encounter fewer difficulties.
Your hidden personality is a similar move or it’s part of a strategy for world
domination? A brief answer will do J. You have mentioned La
Factoría de Ideas, a publishing company you have worked for. In the last
few months, there has been some controversy in social media about the mediocre
quality of some of its releases. What do you think about it?
M: I never thought about it like that, but it could be really that
all this (the blog, the hidden personality, the answering to this questions) is
part of an unconscious maneuver, directed to world domination. Now that I think
about it, if I could dominate the world, I could translate and post all the
stories I like, without crossing my fingers when I ask the authors for their permission.
Everybody will agree, wouldn’t they? It sounds really interesting… When I say
to somebody that I translate fantasy and science fiction literature, the most
common reaction is surprise and an ironic smirk, as if they didn’t take it very
seriously.
About La
Factoría, I stopped working for them some years ago, and my feelings towards
them are a bit ambivalent. On the one hand, I care a lot about them and I’m
really grateful, because I’m convinced that if they hadn’t given me my first
opportunity, I wouldn’t work as a professional translator and Cuentos para Algernon would not exist. On
the other hand, it’s true that -when I collaborated with them- I realized they
were sometimes relaxed in that sense, so I’m not surprised if there are
occasions on which their translations leave a lot to be desired.
CJ: Why science fiction, fantasy and horror? What those genres have that
catches so many people’s attention?
M: In my case, my love for the genre is due to the science fiction
club of my high school, organized by a really passionate teacher. In that time
I already was a voracious reader, so I enlisted in the club, although I suspect
I would have done it even if it was about detective literature and, maybe, now
I would be translating those types of stories. Club members got together
periodically, and we had a very big science fiction library available to our
needs. Thanks to that library I discovered many interesting titles, mainly the
classics. For example, my welcome present to the club was a Bruguera edition of
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
by Kate Wilhelm, which I still have.
Little by little I got hooked on science fiction and, by proxy, on fantasy and
horror. In my opinion, this kind of literature has an advantage in comparison
to the realistic one. Not only it can offer all what realism can offer (deep
analysis of the characters and the relationships between them, literary
quality, etc.…), but also it gives away much more. It doesn’t have to accept
the impositions of our reality, so the range of ideas and possibilities that
can be used is infinite. Focusing on science fiction, maybe my favorite genre
of all three, the mix of literary quality, speculative capacity and sense of
wonder existing in its great works is something that you can find rarely
outside. And that’s the combination that I expect to find every time I start a
new science fiction novel o short story.
CJ: A good translator is a person who has read a lot, with a vast
knowledge of the language he or she is working on. Any translation implies more
than just transcribe a text from one language to another. It means that you must
make choices all the time, choices that will add nuisances, depth, references,
sensations and feelings. I would like to know about your working process; from
the moment you get an assignment until the time you deliver it. I also would
like to learn about those “choices” I already mentioned, how you face them,
what it’s easier or more difficult for you, etc.
M: If you allow me, instead of focusing on my working process when I
get an assignment, I would like to talk about how I face the translations of
the short stories in my blog. Right now, it’s this what keeps me busy most of
the time.
Before I start translating a story, I
reread it, because normally a few months have passed since the last time I read
it. From there, I throw myself into it. I translate short stories from the
beginning to the end, and leave for a second round many decisions. Once I
finish the first version, and with a deeper knowledge of the text, I normally
have a more defined idea of the style, and usually many of the dark points left
to be decided get clarified, at least partially. Then, I review the translation
comparing it very carefully with the original. It’s in this revision where I
try to detect mistakes and solve many of the pending problems. I also try to
adjust the style, so it reflects more accurately the original style, and correct
many details that I think can be improved.
Once I finish this first revision, I focus
on all those points marked as problematic and I work on them one by one. In
this phase, sometimes I have to talk to the author, asking for clarification or
even advice (for example, Zen Cho suggested me in the story “Prudence and the Dragon” the Malaysian words and expressions I needed to keep in Malaysian, and
the ones in need of translation or, simply, that I could eliminate). Once all
those problems are solved, I leave the text to rest for a day or so and then I
reread it without having the original in front of me. I try to tackle
everything that bothers me, anything that doesn’t flow naturally in Spanish and
all the mistakes I can find, of course. I flag all those points and I come back
to them after that reading. When I finish, I pass the text to my particular
reviewer, who indicates mistakes and all the details that, as a reader, did not
convinced him. I correct all those, and I read the text one more time, in which
I don’t really touch anything else, and the story is ready to be published.
About the choices, a translator makes them
all the time and, in most cases, in an involuntarily fashion. It’s very rare
the word or expression that only admits one translation. “Table” is not going
to be always “mesa”. Although it’s been said that there is nothing, which
cannot be translated, I have dismissed some wonderful stories because, after
reading them in English, I thought I could not guarantee a Spanish version up
to the standards of the original.
In my case, there are three things that I
consider difficult to translate: Titles, neologisms and humor. Original English
titles are usually very synthetic, are full of cultural references, gerunds
–incorrect in Spanish-, word games, set phrases… To sum up, very frequently a
literal translation is not possible, or in not the best choice. In the
professional translating world, the final title is a decision made by the
publishing company. In my case, if I don’t see things clearly, I like to talk
it out with the author. For example “Caída
de una mariposa”, the title of the story by Aliete de Bodard, was her choice, among the different possibilities
that I was working on.
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Neologisms
are the other most common problem in translating genre stories. When I face
one, I first try to search if the same has appeared in some other title and, if
that’s the case, I see if it’s been already translated. If the translation
exists and convinces me, I use it. In other case, I have to use my imagination
to discover all there is behind the term and I try to invent a word in Spanish
that carries and reflects the same meaning. In this instance, it’s also very useful
to ask the writer for some clarification -a luxury which I have been able to
enjoy so far.
It’s well know how difficult is to
translate humor. But I prefer not to go on. I expect to translate shortly a few
comic stories, and if I start thinking about the difficulties, maybe I will
realize in how much trouble I’m going to get into and I’ll regret it before
starting.
About Cristina Jurado:
Cristina Jurado Marcos writes the sci-fi blog Más ficción que ciencia. Having a degree in Advertising and Public Relations by Universidad de Seville and a Masters in Rhetoric by Northwestern University (USA), she currently studies Philosophy for fun. She considers herself a globetrotter after living in Edinburgh, Chicago, Paris or Dubai. Her short stories have appeared in several sci-fi online magazines and anthologies. Her first novel From Orange to Blue was published in 2012.
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