Catching fire, p.8
Catching Fire, page 8
I should say one last thing, in general terms, about ambiguity, because this book is full of it. (The back-cover blurb of the Spanish edition makes great play of this fact.) I mentioned very early in this diary that ambiguity can be the hardest thing to translate. I think some people imagine ambiguity as a kind of vagueness, but to my mind you might better consider it exactly the opposite, as an extreme sort of precision, and that’s what makes it hard. When it’s meaningful and deliberate, it doesn’t open up your options, it narrows them. The word or phrase you’re after doesn’t only have to mean x, it has to mean x and also y. The Spanish word historia means both history and story, whereas English splits those meanings over two common words – in an ideal world, I’d find one English word that did precisely both; in practice, I probably have to choose for each occurrence which one I’m going to plump for. (This is a book about telling stories about history, so the choice won’t always be as obvious as it might seem.) I’m lucky that English uses the word “cells” for units of a militant group as well as for the building blocks of an organism, just as Spanish uses células, but more often than not, the ambiguity in the original has no equivalent in my translation language.
Oh, and turns out – complicating things further – the characters in this book even have a conversation about ambiguity. Who the hell thought translating this was a good idea?
On the plus side, by the next time you hear from me (Thursday, I reckon), I should be able to report having finished this somewhat-longer-than-expected first draft. Then I’ll have only the really difficult parts of the process left. Can’t wait.
* * *
25 The piece in question was David Aliaga’s “Insomnia of the Statues”, from Granta’s Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists 2.
15 March
Hmm, I’ve just come across the opposite problem to the gender-specifying one described on 8 February. In today’s text, a chapter begins with a character saying “[X] isn’t eating”, followed by a conversation about why the person in question isn’t eating – where [X] in my English sentence is standing in for the pronoun. The conversation at this point could in theory refer to a number of different characters, male or female, but Spanish can be ambiguous because it can dispense with pronouns in sentences like these altogether. It becomes clear further down the page that it’s one of the female characters who’s being discussed, so I probably have to open the chapter with “She”, but that means the reader’s provisional doubt in the original won’t be there in the translation. Not sure how to get around it yet.
16 March
Where I Went Wrong
With reference to last week’s entry, Sue has written to ask how the word count came to be so wildly wrong. This does not seem an unreasonable question. And the answer is, well, there’s no mysterious reason, just usual human folly. (Mostly mine, in this case, as so often.) I was guided in my planning by the estimate we put in the contract I signed with the publishers; what I’d forgotten (since the contract was signed a really long time ago) was that neither the publisher nor I actually knew the word count of the book at the moment when we signed – we hadn’t even had sight of the pdf at that point – but we knew it was very short (148 printed pages in the Spanish), so just put some quite small number there as a placeholder. And then when we got hold of the pdf of the book, we never went back to it.
Because the fee is defined “per word”, and thus flexes with the word count, it doesn’t necessarily matter in practical terms what word count the contract cites – unless the translator foolishly uses it to plan his schedule. And when I was some way into the book, I had a glance at the contract to help to calibrate my progress a bit in order to describe it in this diary, and forgot just how vague that estimate had been! (Certainly helps to explain why I felt like I was progressing really slowly…) The problem only became clear when I was approaching the 30k mark in my translation and seemed to have a strangely large numbers of pages left, at which point I checked the pdf and discovered why this was. Not a mistake I intend to repeat.
18 March
End of Part One
I often use a pdf of the original text to translate from, and I’ll have a working version of that file on my desktop and delete the pages as I go – the working pdf, then, is not of the whole original book but of however much of the original book remains to be translated. (I have a friend who numbers the book’s pages in reverse order, which has a similar effect: you’re always aware not only of how far you’ve gone – the regular page numbers – but how far is left to go.) Deleting the pages I’ve just translated at the end of a session is satisfying. Even more satisfying is that point when you’re finally approaching the end of the book and you can look at the scroll bar and see the thumb increase proportionately as the number of outstanding pages dwindles. Small pleasures.
Anyway, today I reached the last page of the original, the scroll bar disappeared, and shortly afterwards I had arrived at the last line – …because, after all, we have nothing left to lose. – and the pages-left-to-do pdf could be dragged and dropped into the trash.
My first draft is done. It took me rather longer than planned (for a range of reasons I shared on February 14, March 3 and March 11), but we’re there at last. Very pleased to have made it, in some form, to the final line.
(Also: what a great book, by the way.)
The word count of my current Word doc – “Diamela EN live draft” – stands at 48,954, but that tally includes countless little queries and notes to myself, multiple options for some words etc., so by the time I’ve removed those extraneous things and tightened up the whole lot, the final count should be rather shorter. (I don’t have the Spanish book as a Word doc so I don’t know how many words make up the original novel, but in my experience, my translations tend to come out very slightly longer than their sources.)
I’ll be spending the next few days basically looking things up. Multiple dictionaries, Wikipedia, and whatever else I might need. I’ll let you know how it goes.
19 March
Ooh, given that I get paid by the word, I wonder if I should invoice the publishers now, at the point at which the book is at its absolute longest? Normally I’d draw up my invoice with the delivered manuscript, but this does seem like a missed opportunity – so many unnecessary words I could be billing for! I mean, there are only so many extra adjectives I can scatter about at the last minute to bump the numbers up.
(Don’t tell them I do this, obviously.)
21 March
Things are Looking Up!
Having got through the initial slog, and put that first draft down on paper – it’s all in a shocking state, obviously, but at least it’s no longer just 178 blank pages – I’ve spent much of the last 48 hours looking words up in the dictionary.
My first pass at the text left several thousand of the most troublesome words in Spanish, and because Charco probably won’t want to publish the book if I’ve just ignored all the difficult bits (publishers always make such unreasonable demands…), this next stage is unavoidable. Fortunately, in many cases, checking a word in the dictionary or some other reference source and dropping the answer into the English text is a simple enough matter. These simple lookings-up at this stage fall into a few general categories:
Spanish words I just don’t know at all. Of course, there are loads of words I sort of half-know, and/or words I can half-intuit from context, and fortunately there aren’t a lot of words that are totally, entirely mysterious to me, but even those do show up occasionally. The Spanish words for retching, tarnish, cramp, and a few others are completely new to my vocabulary as of this weekend. I looked up the respective Spanish words, and duly slotted these English words into the text. I almost certainly won’t remember these bits of Spanish vocab by this time next week, incidentally. (The only words I do actually seem to learn are the ones that recur many times in a text. I know that the Portuguese word bisturi means scalpel, and also which book I picked it up from, because it cropped up there over and over again, and even I am bound to learn something eventually.)
Words the author uses that I think I know, but want to be sure. I don’t remember having used escrutinio, exasperarse or deviacionismo before, and while I’d guess they probably mean scrutiny, to become exasperated and deviationism, I’ll always check this kind of thing. Too tempting to assume and be wrong. (Note to self: because it appears several times, at some point I really must learn what deviationism means in English.) I’m pretty sure zapatillas can be used to refer to slippers as well as other common types of footwear, but I wanted to check this, too. Oh, and medical references to calcificaciones are surely calcifications, but it can’t hurt to look it up. (Though in fact my draft has the words calificaciones rather than calcificaciones. One of the things my first draft teaches me is how sloppy my typing is when I can’t depend on autocorrect. I presume my norotia is meant to be notoria, and so on and on and on. These things send me back repeatedly to the original at this stage just to check that this peculiar word copied into my draft, pretending to be Spanish, really is just a typo for something much more obvious.)
English words I’m not sure about. The draft is also littered with notes to myself saying [En?] or similar. My problem in these cases is either a doubt about English usage, or a prompt to hunt down a word that for some reason just didn’t come immediately to mind when I was drafting. I know that the word impostergable is an adjective meaning unable-to-be-postponed; but I have no idea whether unpostponable is a word or whether I just made it up. The draft says “unpostponable [En?]” and I’m checking that this weekend, too. Likewise unconcealable, and a use of hang as a noun to refer to the appearance of a piece of clothing, and many more. (I think equanimity can mean what I want it to mean in this context, but that’s one to check, too.) Sometimes these are phrases where even in the drafting process, even without thinking about it, I knew already that there was something wrong and that a bit of gentle rephrasing would be called for. (Would we say “The feeling that opens up a path [En?] in my mind is…”? We would not.)
The other part of this looking-up stage is the non-linguistic research, checking actual information rather than dictionary meanings or language use. In the case of this book, that includes checking eight quotations that the narrator drops into discussion at various points. The first to appear is “The workers have no homeland. It is not possible to take away from them what they do not possess.” It’s not hard to guess that this is from The Communist Manifesto. As it turns out, that’s where all eight quotations come from. Their appearances in the novel aren’t all quite accurate as per the Manifesto itself, which I suspect is intentional, but I’ll have to confirm that, too.
Even after two days, I’m nowhere near done with this looking-up process. I’d guess I’m about half-way? Though the truth is, I don’t know exactly what proportion I’ve done, because I don’t start at the beginning and work through in sequence, but jump around. This isn’t just for morale, though, it’s also practical, because so many words recur multiply in a text – once I’ve found out what one of these troublesome words/phrases means, I’ll search through and often end up plugging it into several places over the course of the book; then I’ll just find the next problem to solve wherever I’ve happened to end up.
But while there’s a lot still to do, this part of the process is strangely satisfying. A bit boring, but satisfying. Plugging the gaps makes what looked like sheer linguistic carnage begin to resemble a piece of continuous text. A piece of continuous text that still requires huge amounts of editorial work, of course, but substantially more like a finished thing. Look at these two paragraphs – you don’t even need to read the words, just glance at their appearance. What was previously
I pass unnoticed, my studied* insignificance, that can save us, oh no, no, never save us, not even RESGUARDO us my deep OPACIDAD [opacity/opaqueness – En?]. The light comes in DE MANERA CAUTA, a light that is altogether* OBTURADA. The time is approaching. Yes, remember that I told you. We should make a decision. I was crying because I was ATERRORIZADA, I knew what was going to happen. We must hurry, take him to the hospital. Either you take him or I will. No, no, no, it’s impossible, impossible. Soon I’m going to go out and it’s cloudy [nublado – overcast?], with that grey that ACHATA the landscape, LO PONE EN a level of INCOMODO realism, a landscape that isn’t worth it. Doesn’t mean anything. The grey.
is now, somewhat less stressfully,
I pass unnoticed, my studied insignificance, that can save us, oh no, no, never save us, not even my deep opacity shielded us. The light comes in cautiously, a light that is altogether* blocked. The time is approaching. Yes, remember I told you. We should make a decision. I was crying because I was terrified, I knew what was going to happen. We must hurry, take him to the hospital. Either you take him or I will. No, no, no, it’s impossible, impossible. Soon I’m going to go out and it’s overcast, with that grey that flattens the landscape, LO PONE EN a level of uncomfortable/tiresome realism, a landscape that isn’t worth it. Doesn’t mean anything. The grey.
This is still very far from being anything I’d be happy to share with readers (remind me why I’m giving you access to this diary again?), but you can see it does at least look like, well, something. (The word count of the first draft, as described on March 18, was 48,954, and it’s already lost about 400 words just from tidying up some of the mess.)
As I said above, very many cases in this looking-up stage are simple enough. Find out what a word means, or check an English usage, or a quote, and just plug the gap. But – and isn’t there always one of those? – the others are not as straightforward. I’ll be inflicting those more problematic ones on you tomorrow.
(I’ll also try to remember to say a little about which reference sources I’m using, because, well, there’s no telling what weird things people will find interesting…)
22 March
Minding the Gaps
If you’ve read yesterday’s entry, you’ll know that I’m currently spending a few days plugging gaps in the draft. I gave some examples of the sorts of things I was doing – looking up words I didn’t know in the dictionary, stuff like that. Nothing massively strenuous, it must be said. But today’s problems are trickier. Because often the challenge is not figuring out what the original means, it’s figuring out how to replicate whatever it’s doing in this new language. I’ll share some examples of these pending problems today. Here’s one:
My draft still has the words comprender, pared, década, esperar and cara in Spanish. Why? After all, they’re pretty common words: understand, wall, decade, wait and face. Nice and easy.
Other words currently still in Spanish include entender, muro, decenio, aguardar and rostro. These mean… understand, wall, decade, wait and face.
I need to figure out how to differentiate between understanding and understanding, walls and walls, decades and decades, waiting and waiting, and faces and faces. Sometimes it’s easy (sometimes, for example, a character’s face is really their expression), usually it is not. The problem, however, is entirely the English, I have no trouble understanding the Spanish. Nor, for that matter, understanding it.
It would matter less if it weren’t for the fact that these pairs of words – defaulting to the same English translation – often appear in quick succession. (I believe that this is because the author apparently hates me. I can’t think of any other reason at this point.) So I need to find a workaround to avoid adding a repetition that isn’t there in the original. Lines currently in my draft include:
“I do understand [comprendo], I understand [entiendo] your need to…”
“I watch your migraine-stricken, dark face [cara], the years on our faces [rostros]…”
“She sits there with her head tilted, waiting [esperando]. She waits [aguarda] while I…”
(You’ll remember the pair of non-identical nevers that bedevilled the title, too, of course.)
Spanish also usually differentiates between internal corners (the corner in a room, say), and external corners (like the corner of a street). The former is rincón, the latter esquina. Except for the moment on page 108 where the narrator refers to something happening in the esquina of the room. In other words, perhaps, on the corner of the room rather than in the corner of the room? Or…? No, me neither.26
Where words split the other way – i.e., one Spanish word with at least two markedly different English meanings – that creates trouble, too, of course. How do I know which eficaz is efficient and which is effective? Context sometimes helps, but not always.
(At least context can usually tell me whether a character sits down on a bed or sits up in bed. The Spanish reveals nothing, so I need to know what position they were previously in if I’m to deduce what this action is. Likewise when the narrator is sitting on a chair and when she’s sitting in a chair – Spanish uses the same prepositions for both, while in English I’d differentiate based on, among other things, what sort of chair I imagine it is. The more spacious and comfortable and enveloping and armchairy the piece of furniture is, the more in it the sitter will be, I think.)
Then there are other words whose meaning I do know, but that are just very hard to convey economically in English – so these remain pending problems. I don’t need to look them up, I just need a brainwave that at this point I’m not sure will ever happen. Spanish has the word auscultar for the verb to sound, specifically in the sense of a doctor sounding a patient’s chest; I know we have the word auscultate in English, but it’s preposterous in comparison – how commonly do we English-speakers really use that word figuratively? A bulto is a shape, but a three-dimensional one, a sort of lump, some solid object, a bulky, voluminous thing – and perhaps my most hated word of all to translate. In this book, the wretched thing appears four times in the space of one page.
