 Jerry Portwood interviews Carlos
Mayor and Eduardo Iriarte, the two Spanish
translators of Tom Wolfe’s latest doorstop, the 676-page I
Am Charlotte Simmons (which is expected to run to well over a thousand pages when
Ediciones B publishes the Spanish translation in April). The English version of the
septuagenarian Southerner’s novel — centered around college life in an elite
university — has already had its share of panning by the critics and was most
recently awarded the dubious honor of the Bad Sex Award by the British Literary Review.
Mayor and Iriarte reveal for The Barcelona Review their guidelines on how to
properly translate "cum dumpsters" and "froshtitutes" into a foreign
idiom as well as the secrets of how the Fuck Patois will function in Spanish.
TBR: So, when the book comes out here in Spain, I guess Tom Wolfe’s name will be
pretty big on the cover.
Carlos Mayor: Oh, yeah.
TBR: Are your names going to be on the cover at all or hidden somewhere inside?
Eduardo Iriarte: They’re usually on the first page inside.
TBR: Often translators are kept in the background; you’re supposed to be
invisible. And I wonder if in this process, you have tried to be invisible or . . .
CM: It depends on how big you are. Sometimes you get your name on the title page or on
the cover, but not very often. Probably we’ll get our name on the title page but
usually it’s in small print. I guess that’s something we should have discussed
beforehand.
TBR: How do you feel about that? When you’re dealing with a process like this,
when there’s so much work, you’re creating words and crafting dialogues that are
clearly different from the English version . . . what is your opinion on how visible you
should be?
EI: You have to be invisible, but you can’t always be. I mean, there’s
always a certain sense of style, I suppose. You can’t hide that, even if you aim to.
CM: Right. Sometimes – I don’t really like translator’s notes – but
sometimes, you have to include them. What I really don’t like is to open a book and
get a long translator’s note talking about the process because most readers
don’t want to know that; they don’t even allow the translator to be in the
process.
TBR: But the process of translation is a completely different art form: you’re rewriting
the book. I’m interested in how you are both dealing with Wolfe’s way of writing
and in the process adding to Spanish. The fact is you both have to come up with
words that have never been written before in Spanish. I mean, not only are you trying to
take something from English and translate it into Spanish, but you’re ultimately
changing Spanish in the process.
EI: That’s what’s more difficult in Spanish. English is more malleable?
CM: It’s more flexible.
TBR: Yeah, more malleable.
EI: For example, this always comes up in my work: Maybe in Spanish you have another
technique to say something, but you can’t decontextualize. Or maybe you can use a
word that makes sense in another context, but if you subtly put it in other ways that
aren’t correct, then it sounds too strange.
TBR: You were given a very short time to translate such a weighty book, only a few
months. Is that why you worked together, to share the burden? What kind of stresses come
along with that?
CM: There was no other way. I had to find someone to split the job with. When I was
approached and read the book, I knew I couldn’t get it done in time for the April
publication date.
EI: We split it so that Carlos focused on Charlotte and I focused on
the other three main characters.
CM: I’ve never actually worked jointly on a book before, and I always thought it was
a bad idea because it shows. We wanted to make it look like the same translator all the
way through. Chapters that are viewed through Jojo’s eyes have a different style, for
example, and they have references to other events. So, those are the types of things that
we have had to double-check. The book is all in the third person, but events are
seen through the perspective of several characters. We tried to keep
the style consistent and respect the different points of view despite having two people translating it.
EI: There are certain words, certain motives, for the individual characters, and if
you’re focusing on one character, it’s easier to recognize them.
TBR: I recently read some translations of Cuban short stories from Spanish into
English, and they were so bad. They were all translated by different people and you
could see faults particular to different translators - the grammar, word choice, syntax,
sometimes even the spelling. You really can tell when there’s a translator who is
translating literally or doesn’t have the skills to make it work.
CM: That reminds me, my mother and my sister have been giving me all these books
because I wanted to read more translations of books into Spanish. Sometimes I can hardly
read them because they’re so badly translated. And I asked them, "Didn’t
you notice?" And they said, "No." And I don’t think most people would.
They just think it’s the author’s style. He just writes these weird words and
strange sentences. [Laughs]
TBR: Yeah, that’s true. I could see someone thinking it’s just some strange
stylistic choice, and had nothing to do with the translator.
ED: There are some translators who want to shine too much. You read several
translations by them and you can see their similarities even if there are no similarities
in the original work. I don’t think that’s desirable.
CM: Yeah, while we were translating the book we read one of the essays that Wolfe wrote in
the 70s. It was translated into Spanish a few years later and it was dreadful. The essay
was useful because it talks about his style and a lot of the choices that he makes and
about why he uses punctuation the way he does – he thinks it’s a trait of his
character. The translation was full of footnotes. The translator was a cinema critic and
whenever there’s any reference to a film there would be a note: This film was shown
in Spain with this title, this year. So annoying.
TBR: Where did you study English, Carlos? In England, right?
CM: I studied translation, but afterwards I went back to university and studied
journalism. I had an Erasmus scholarship, so I went to Leeds for a few months. Then I
lived in London for a couple of years. I’ve also lived in New York.
TBR: And you Eduardo?
EI: I went to high school my senior year in the States. Believe it or not it was
Topeka, Kansas. And I went back a few times to spend a summer in New Jersey and was in
Maryland working.
TBR: So you’ve had this more "authentic" American experience than most
people. Not just New York or San Francisco.
EI: I went to New York from Kansas by bus.
CM: And how long did it take?
EI: Well, I stopped a few places, but . . . but three or four weeks?
TBR: That’s something that most Americans wouldn’t do.
EI: Well, I wouldn’t do it now. It was fun then.
TBR: I ask this because when translating you go back and forth between British English
and American English. I notice when you speak, Carlos, you sometimes use British slang or
terms, and I wonder how that influences, if at all?
CM: Well, the more you know about any use of the source language, the better, really.
Also, translating implies a completely different level of knowledge.
EI: I agree. I think the reading that you do is more important. I think apart from visits
to the States or Britain, it is what you have read that really matters.
TBR: I’m assuming the people who are going to want to read the book are doing so
because it’s set in America. Were there problems with cultural references?
EI: American culture is so . . . um [laughs] omnipresent.
CM: We get so much American culture every day. It’s no problem.
EI: We almost always get the references, there are just certain words that don’t
exist, didn’t exist at least in Spanish, and aren’t always common to Americans.
There’s the Fuck Patois, the Shit Patois.
TBR: The what?
EI: Fuck Patois? That comes from the main character Charlotte who thinks . . . what
did we translate that as?
CM: Yeah, the Fuck Patois. Hah. El putañés. Charlotte is shocked when she first
gets to the campus because she’s a prude, I suppose. Well, they say fuck all
the time, which she’s not used to. So, she thinks they are speaking in this dialect
which Wolfe calls "Fuck Patois."
EI: Do you know where that is in the book? [He begins thumbing through the 600+ pages and
it’s obvious they are both familiar with every single page and its content.]
CM: Yeah, there’s also the Shit Patois, el mierdés.
TBR: So she’s supposed to be thinking and using this word "patois" which
isn’t a word most English speakers would normally use.
CM: Well, she’s really pedantic. She’s 18 and she’s just finished high
school, and she’s the brightest in her school.
TBR: The valedictorian, or what?
CM: Two students out of every state are singled out as the best students and they go
to meet the president because that’s so important, of course [he smiles ironically],
and they shake the president’s hand. And she’s one of them from North Carolina.
She’s always thinking about etymology and words in Greek and Latin and thinks no one
else there knows the plural of this or that Greek word. Because, to be correct, you have
to know Greek and no one knows Greek, and, well, she has a really high opinion of herself
which is why she keeps repeating "I am Charlotte Simmons." And she’s
obviously not as clever as she thinks she is.
TBR: How do you go about dealing with something as essential as swear words to the
original language?
CM: Well, one of the problems with "bad language" – as you all call it
in English – is that in Spanish you have so many options for what in English can
usually work with just fuck or shit. But in Spanish there are more words and
combinations of words that would be used in the same context. You can’t just
translate fuck as joder although it’s just one word repeated in so many
different ways, because you have joder, coño, hostia. So you have
many words that you have to use to mean fuck.
EI: In English you can use fuck as an adjective, verb, noun, whatever. Not in
Spanish.
A short
excerpt from Chapter 2: "The Whole Black Player Thing" which introduces the idea
of the "Fuck Patois" and gives a preview of the Spanish translation. |
Without even realizing what it was, Jojo spoke in this year’s prevailing college
creole: Fuck Patois. In Fuck Patois, the word fuck was used as an interjection
("What the fuck" or plain "Fuck," with or without an exclamation
point) expressing unhappy surprise; as a participial adjective ("fucking guy,"
"fucking tree," fucking elbows") expressing disparagement or discontent; as
an adverb modifying and intensifying an adjective ("pretty fucking obvious") or
a verb ("I’m gonna fucking kick his ass"); as a noun ("That stupid
fuck," "don’t give a good fuck"); as a verb meaning Go away ("Fuck
off"), beat – physically, financially, or politically ("really
fucked him over") or beaten ("I’m fucked"), botch
("really fucked that up"), drunk ("You are so fucked
up"); as an imperative expressing contempt ("Fuck you," "Fuck
that"). Rarely – the usage had become somewhat archaic – but every now and
then it referred to sexual intercourse ("He fucked her on the carpet in front of the
TV"). |
Sin ser consciente siquiera de ello, Jojo hablaba el dialecto universitario en boga: el
putañés, en el que las palabras «puta», «joder» y «hostia» se utilizaban, por
separado, combinadas y, por supuesto, aderezadas también con otros muchos tacos, como
interjección («qué hostias» o sencillamente «joder», con exclamaciones o sin ellas)
para expresar una sorpresa desagradable; como adjetivo («puto árbol», «putos codos»)
para expresar menosprecio o contrariedad; como locución adverbial para modificar y
recalcar un adjetivo («es obvio de la hostia»); como verbo («ahostiar», «putear»);
como sustantivo («mecagüen la puta», «no sabes ni hostias»); como expresión
destinada a librarse de alguien («vete a hacer hostias»), a menoscabar en el aspecto
físico, económico o político («lo putearon»), a subrayar el cansancio («estoy
jodido»), a indicar que alguien la ha pifiado («la jodió de medio a medio») o que
está borracho («anda que no estás jodido»), o como imperativo para expresar desdén
(«que te jodan», «no me jodas»). Era poco común (se había convertido en un uso más
bien arcaico), pero de vez en cuando la palabra «joder» también hacía referencia a las
relaciones sexuales («se pusieron a joder en la alfombra delante de la tele»). |
|
TBR: Have you found words that are just not translatable?
EI: Usually you can explain them in the context with a short sentence. You can find a
way around them.
CM: Eduardo was trying to translate "God’s yuccas." We asked several people
to find out what they thought it was. No idea. We eventually realised that the characters
were just shouting something to sound like "cocksuckers." With the internet and
all the research materials available, it sometimes appears as if everything had to have a
background and a purpose. If it’s not in Google, it doesn’t exist. [Smiles.]
While I was translating this, I went to the country one weekend. I was spending all this
time on the translation and I mentioned to a couple of friends that we just couldn’t
figure something out. There was a song in the book that we couldn’t get, and I asked
my friend Richard, who is from Louisiana, if he knew anything about it. He explained that
it is an old song from the South, but a few lines had been changed to make it funnier.
It’s just one of those things that, unless you know it, you’re not going to get.
EI: Most readers won’t understand all the references, but you can explain it or hint
at it somehow.
CM: Normally I read it, try to understand what is meant, then sit down and write it down.
It’s quite important with Tom Wolfe. It’s not always as difficult in this book
as in A Man in Full. You have to decide how you’re going to reflect the
dialect. Are you going to make them speak like they do in English? We decided not to do
that. We didn’t create a new, different dialect.
EI: For the last book the translator created several new dialects in Spanish.
CM: We decided that we didn’t need to do that. We were already doing so much
research, and if you’re creating something new like that, you’re making it up
yourself. I’d rather not make something like that up. It’s not true to
[Wolfe’s] spirit and definitely not real.
EI: Let’s hope critics will like that decision. I’m anxious to see.
TBR: How do you decide on the translation of slang?
EI: I met with some college students, but what they ended up telling me . . . it
didn’t come out quite right, because they were trying to make new words that in a way
didn’t mean anything. And if you use them, then I don’t think they would be
understood.
TBR: What about some examples that you came up with on your own then?
CM: Novuta, that’s froshtitute, it’s only used a couple of times.
EI: Awfucks disease. [They both laugh.]
CM: Yeah, Awfucks disease. That’s when you wake up in the morning next to someone you
had sex with and say, "Oh fuck!"
TBR: What about having to deal with this American style of writing that usually entails
short sentences, a more journalistic style perhaps.
EI: It has to sound right. You read it and it feels that it’s right. It all comes
down to instinct. Sometimes you improvise, but it’s not an exact science.
CM: You want to reflect the meaning, not the words. You have to make it sound Spanish. And
a lot of times Spanish sentences are longer. But I don’t think Wolfe’s sentences
are actually that short. Sometimes he goes on for quite a long time. There are a couple of
pages where you have no punctuation at all and that takes about a whole morning to
translate – finding where things go, in what order.
ED: The reader knows what to expect of Tom Wolfe. I suppose we’ll see if people get
it or not.
C: If it’s something interesting or a specific trait of a writer, you try to keep it
in. There’s the passage where Charlotte has a drink for the first time. She storms
out of the room, out of the house, and there’s a long paragraph with no punctuation,
so that’s actually quite difficult. You have to read it very carefully to know
what’s going on.
EI: You just read it over and over again until it sounds right.
TBR: It sounds a lot like the process of the writer himself.
EI: Except within limitations, because you don’t have that much freedom.
TBR: How do you deal with that, Eduardo, since I know you are a fiction writer as well?
You’ve mentioned not having that freedom, does that make it difficult?
EI: Well, it’s more a matter of responsibility. You have to know your limits. You
always have someone who corrects the translation, and the editor or the publisher who
looks it over. You can’t change that much from the original. And I try to keep my
writing work separate from this, the translations. But it’s not always possible.
Somehow it affects what you write. I translated three books by Charles Bukowski in the
last three years and somehow it always, uh, there’s a … poso. ¿Cómo?
CM: Something like a sediment.
EI: Yes, a sediment. Anyway, it’s always positive, I think. I mean, you can always
learn something about an author even if you don’t like his writing. It’s the
best school for a writer. Everyone says so because you analyze writing so much. It’s
the best reading possible, and you learn what you can use from other writers.
TBR: You’ve mentioned that there’s a certain amount of research that you have
both done, reading of reviews and other background materials. I assume you are aware of
things about the book that certainly the reader isn’t. Is it strange rewriting the
book in Spanish but also with this great awareness of what critics have said? Do you
"correct" it? Do you make it better?
CM: We reread his other two novels [A Man in Full and Bonfire of the
Vanities], checking the translations of the Spanish because we knew that in
Wolfe’s case the translation stands out so . . . And we wanted to see what the other
two translators had done before.
EI: There are those who say the translator has more responsibility sometimes than the
author himself because he knows so much about the book after it’s been written. The
author just writes and then the critics study the book, but the translator already has so
much knowledge of the book, more than the author, and the translation itself carries so
much responsibility for that reason. I mean, when you write, you have all the freedom in
the world. You can choose any word that you want. And then, when you translate, you have
to come up with certain words, and you don’t have the freedom to change that.
TBR: And what about the repetition of things, how Wolfe uses the same words over and
over again?
CM: Right. Everyone smiles in the book. Everyone laughs. Everyone "says"
this or that.
TBR: Yeah, "he says" / "she says." That’s a very normal way of
writing in English because you want to get past those attributions as quickly as possible.
CM: But that’s not the case in Spanish. It was even more of an issue when you
have someone who laughs. Then someone else laughs. Then someone smiles. I mean, you have
other word choices in Spanish and in English. But Wolfe uses smiles, smiles,
smiles, smiles. He wants to make a point because he wants to show that the students are so
stupid. So another laugh, another smile.
TBR: I guess you’re afraid that readers would start thinking these people are
idiots, always smiling and laughing?
EI: The vocabulary is so, so reduced. I don’t think most university students
think like that. I think this is a caricature.
CM: He’s very judgmental in this book. I mean, he has his opinions about the
characters and he wants you to know that.
EI: I think there’s been too much focus on the sex and language. The book is much
more. It’s about education and maybe the future of the United States. And no one says
anything about that.
CM: I don’t think readers in Spain are going to be shocked by the language. Because
it just doesn’t shock people. And there’s really not that much sex.
EI: But there’s THE WORST SEX SCENE EVER.
TBR: What did you guys think of the Bad Sex Award?
CM: I didn’t think the scene was very good. He was trying to make a point, I
suppose. This is Charlotte, who is very prudish, and she has a boyfriend who’s
driving her home and they start kissing and then he goes a little further, not all the
way, and you’re getting what she feels so it’s all very technical and it makes
sense in the context because she’s very, umm . . . I don’t know. I think she
distances herself a lot from things. And she uses lots of words no one her age would use.
So, I think in this case it makes sense, even though it’s in the third person.
It’s seen through her eyes. The chapter’s called "The Hand."
EI: It’s about 30 pages long.
CM: She’s snogging him. She has this guilty pleasure. And she thinks the hand is . .
. it is a bit ridiculous.
TBR: I guess for you it doesn’t really matter about the award or what critics are
saying about it.
CM: It was funny for us because we were working on it. It’s just very clinical,
and he uses this word: otorhinolaryngological. I can’t even say it in English.
TBR: Neither can I. Maybe if you’re a gynecologist or scientist, yeah.
CM: Well, incidentally most Spanish speakers will be able to say
"otorrinolaringólogo". That’s your ear, nose and throat doctor. Anyway,
there’s also something else about the fact that he created words. I think that they
were based on research. He says they were. And he created an explanation for them.
EI: He said that maybe those words won’t be used in five or ten years from now.
TBR: But it took him almost that long to write it, so . . .
CM: True. There’s a note at the beginning to his two children to whom he
dedicated the book [he reads]: "hoping you might vet it for undergraduate
vocabulary," and then he goes on to say he learned from them that "students who
load conversations up with likes and totallys, as in ‘like totally
awesome’ are almost always females."
TBR: Unless it’s meant to be ironic.
CM: Yeah. Like totally.
TBR: I’m not sure how comfortable you’ll be with this question, Eduardo, but
it seems that translators could make the best critics. After being so knowledgeable about
the book’s characters, style and content, do you like it?
EI: [Laughs.] Well, I enjoy it. I enjoyed translating it very much. I think it’s
quite good, actually. But he’s somehow very . . . Somehow too distanced from what he
writes, from college life. I think sometimes it’s a caricature of college life. It
could have been better, I think. I mean, the book as a whole. It could have been more
realistic. Instead of making fun of college life and the students, he could have had a
little more sympathy. I suppose some students or some professors might feel insulted by
it, and maybe that’s what he wants.
TBR: And you, Carlos?
CM: I’m very fond of him. I liked the other two novels more. I really
enjoyed A Man in Full. I think most of the reviews have been based on the way he
looks; what he says. It’s very easy to make fun of him. I don’t think all the
critics are looking that closely at the book. But that’s probably all orchestrated.
It sells a lot more books.
EI: He’s a polemicist.
CM: Yeah. It’s an interesting study of American college life, American youth. He
tells a good story in the book, but doesn’t fully realize the potential in my
opinion. He tries to be detached, but he’s judging all the time. I don’t think
he intended to, but he seems shocked by what he found. He wants a passage to be objective,
but it doesn’t happen that way. And, well, it’s a little bit too long.
EI: Somehow, I thought it was going to be even longer.
[They both laugh.]
|
