Interview with Carys Evans-Corrales (translator of Aquilino Iglesia Alvariño)

You were born in London, raised in Singapore and Malaysia and currently live in the States. Do you consider that you have a nationality?
In some way moving to the States, where so many people cherish bits and pieces of their family’s heritage from other parts of the world, finally settled for me the nagging feeling of wishing I had a nationality that suited who I was. I realized finally that it didn’t really matter, that I would be who I was regardless of what my passport said. But when I was younger the nationality issue was huge. As a teenager in Kuala Lumpur, for example, I felt completely identified with my Malaysian neighbors and schoolmates, much more so than with any British youngsters I happened to meet, mainly because they were usually either people who were growing up in UK boarding schools and happened to be visiting their parents for the holidays, or they were the children of the British Armed Forces who had a school of their own and a milieu very much to themselves. So I tagged the Brits as a very practical, down-to-earth people who spoke in a very direct idiom, so unlike the Malay that I was learning at school, a language that seemed so very cool and elegant. And as a teenager at the time I did so want to be cool and elegant!

The same sort of thing happened in Seville, where I first lived as a student in Spain. I was already bowled over by the sounds and flexibility of Spanish at school in Jamaica, and when this combined with the flair and wit of Andalusian Spanish I was totally seduced by it. Later, of course, after I moved to Santiago de Compostela, Galician played various notes in myself that were waiting to develop.

You were in Santiago at the end of Franco’s dictatorship. What do you remember most about those years?
Goodness! I hardly know where to start! People had expected that an explosion of long-repressed freedom in every arena of life (and perhaps a harsh corresponding backlash) would occur immediately after Franco’s death, and this liberation did in fact occur despite the variety, strength and complexity of reactions to the dictator’s demise. But any significant, lasting backlash was averted owing in part to the fact that a few years of rule by Franco’s party continued before democracy could be officially established. Some brave individuals and organizations had for a long time and at great personal risk been working to bring about a political and linguistic rebirth that reflected the wishes of the Galician people more closely, and their plans were therefore already partially established when democracy finally arrived and continued to develop thereafter.

But now that one would not necessarily be seen as a separatist agitator for supporting Galician culture, life in Santiago was like a cross between a kaleidoscope and a jack-in-the box. You never knew which previously reclusive neighbor would announce a run for office under the auspices of a bright, new and outspoken political group, or what previous pillar of society who had never spoken in public in anything but good, conservative Castilian would suddenly surprise the city with political speeches in faultless Galician. Schoolbooks began to be written in the language, with vocabulary that reflected – and gave value to – the world of the children who used them, and there was a blossoming of academic, literary, artistic and musical life at all levels. Above all, people were no longer afraid to implement new ideas, and a certain shame that I had often heard expressed regarding being a nation subjected to a dictatorship seemed to melt away. It was as if people now felt they could truly be considered part of Europe. I remember it all as a time of heady adventure and great hope for the future, and it played a very important part in my personal development.

Which are the Galician poets you have come into contact with? Whose work have you enjoyed most?
The first Galician poet I read was, not surprisingly, Rosalía de Castro, but I was so immediately overwhelmed by the sense of nostalgia and suffering that emanated from her work that I decided to put the poems back on the shelf for another time. Years later, as a graduate student, I began to read them again and have gone back to them at intervals ever since. I also like the work of Miguel-Anxo Murado very much. I found his Bestiario dos descontentos struck a familiar chord – perhaps because it evoked the Welsh hiraeth, a particular sense of loss found in much of traditional Welsh poetry. There have been many Galician poets whose work I am attracted to, but perhaps I should mention above all Pilar Pallarés and Blanca Andreu (for very different reasons), and more recently Álvaro Cunqueiro and Manuel Rivas.

How do you succeed in making an English poem out of a foreign poem? Is it necessary, when translating a poem, to stay close to the poem you are translating from (I avoid the word ‘original’)?
I find I can’t stray very far from my source poem because I am always trying to keep my mind within a funny kind of telepathic communication with it. My first draft is always strictly literal, in order to retain as much of the poem’s thematic and linguistic intent as I possibly can, and after that I work away at key pieces of it until I feel they reflect as much as possible of what the poet is saying. Then I work on the whole translation as a poem within a style that corresponds as much as possible to the poet’s. This part calls for the most drafts, which I reread constantly until I am satisfied that the translation does as much justice to the poet as I am personally capable of. Although I understand that a good translated poem is in itself an original work of art produced by another poet, I feel that a translated poem ‘inspired’ by a work by a foreign author does not help the reader in the second language all that much. If someone acquires a translation of a foreign poet, it is because he or she wants to discover in some way the impact of the work on its first readers – to capture at second hand, if you like, the intent of the first author, to whatever degree may be possible. A version even further removed than that interposes another wall – no matter how well wrought – between the reader and the first poet’s work.

Thank you for talking to us!
It was a pleasure, Jonathan!

Carys Evans-Corrales to translate Aquilino Iglesia Alvariño

Carys Evans-Corrales has agreed to translate the poem by Aquilino Iglesia Alvariño for the bilingual Anthology of Galician Literature to be published by Edicións Xerais in spring 2010. The poem was chosen for the anthology by Basilio Losada.

Carys Evans-Corrales translates from Galician and Spanish. Her translation of A Bestiary of Discontent by the Galician poet Miguel-Anxo Murado was published by Edwin Mellen in 1993 and is one of 32 books of Galician literature published in English. Born in London, she was raised in Singapore and Malaysia and spent three years in Jamaica, developing a lifelong fascination with language. After taking a degree in Linguistics at the University of York in England, she moved to Galicia in the early 1970s to begin a position as English language assistant at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Moved by the beauty of the language and spurred by the excitement of the post-Franco flowering of Galician identity and letters, it was there she took her first steps in translating from Galician to English. In 1985 she left Galicia for the United States, where she received a doctorate in Spanish Literature from Rutgers University. She currently teaches Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

Interview with Margaret Jull Costa (translator of Eduardo Blanco-Amor)

What are the different stages involved in translating a short story?
It’s not really any different from translating a novel – just shorter! I do a good first draft, then a second draft – again reading my translation against the original – and then I keep rereading and editing until the whole thing feels as if it has a life and a voice of its own, going back and forth from translation to original. En route, there are often facts or names I need to check and, with this particular story, there were often Galician expressions I didn’t understand, which sent me running to the Internet, to online dictionaries, to Jonathan and, through Jonathan, to other Galician experts.

What, in your opinion, makes for a good short story?
The very best short stories encapsulate a whole world or a whole life in a few pages. That’s why they’re so difficult to write, so much has to be condensed, so much left unsaid. There’s no room for excess information.

Who would you say are the great short-story writers of the last 100 years?
Well, Chekhov (who just scrapes into the last 100 years) was, I think, the master of the short story, but others on my list would (in no particular order) be Kafka, Flannery O’Connor, Herman Melville, Henry James, Katherine Mansfield, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Isaac Bashevis Singer, D. H. Lawrence, Alice Munro, P. G. Wodehouse (especially the Mr Mulliner stories), Richmal Crompton (her early William stories are comic masterpieces), William Trevor (to be taken in small doses), Garrison Keillor, Lorrie Moore… and two of ‘my’ writers – Bernardo Atxaga and Teolinda Gersão.

And your favourite short story?
Can I have two? The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad and The Little Shoemakers by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Why do you think a country such as Galicia has such a strong tradition of story-telling?
My impression is that story-telling thrives in cultures where the oral tradition is very strong, like Galicia, Russia, the southern states of America, Ireland, in Jewish and Yiddish culture, perhaps in cultures that are marginalised in some way, particularly by poverty. Stories are a way of shoring up your identity and having something of your own.

Thank you for talking to us!

Margaret Jull Costa to translate Eduardo Blanco-Amor

The celebrated translator Margaret Jull Costa has agreed to translate the story by Eduardo Blanco-Amor for the bilingual Anthology of Galician Literature to be published by Edicións Xerais next year.

Margaret is best known for her translations of José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, Javier Marías and Bernardo Atxaga. She won the 1997 International IMPAC Award for her translation of A Heart So White by Marías, while her translation of Saramago’s All the Names won the 2000 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, a prize she won again last year for her translation of The Maias by Queiroz. This translation, which also won the 2008 PEN Translation Prize, forms part of a project to translate or re-translate all the major works of the 19th-century Portuguese novelist.

Other authors Margaret has translated include Paulo Coelho, Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Juan José Saer and Ramón del Valle-Inclán. She co-edited with Annella McDermott The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy.

Margaret brings huge experience to the anthology and we are delighted she will translate a story by Eduardo Blanco-Amor chosen for the anthology by Anxo Tarrío Varela.

Interview with Erín Moure (translator of Rosalía de Castro and Luis Pimentel)

Erín Moure is an unusual name. Is there a story?
Everyone’s name is a story! I think I’m the only one in the universe with my name… it’s simply the product, as I am, of 19th century European hunger and emigration. I’m half Polish/Ukrainian on my mom’s side and Galician/French/Irish/English on my Dad’s… my family name is that of my great grandfather who left Crecente, Pontevedra province (near the Miño… he was already a border dweller) in 1848. All ties were lost with Galicia when that fellow died in 1874 or so. My grandfather, his son, was very young when his widowed English (we think) mother brought her small children to Canada where her brother could help them. When I first went to Galicia in 1994 I decided to learn the language.

You’ve worked with poets from all around the world. What makes the Galician voice particular?
Not quite all around the world! In parts. I don’t believe in a singular Galician voice; for me that would be essentializing a multitude of voices, registers, patterns, movements in poetry. Galician poetry to me is very full, very dense in its imagery… it’s a poetry, overall, that has no problem spanning urban and rural worlds at once, and no problem in leaping borders, though it is, oh yes, grounded in the particularities of its place, of its time, of the history of the poetry that precedes it and on which it builds… it is intriguing to help it leap borders where it can dialogue with (in my case) other poetries in English.

What makes it universal?
I don’t know that I believe in ‘the universal’ as it usually co-opts one version of what is truly universal (that we share a species, that we are animals, we are born and die and affect each other in the space between) in order to browbeat other versions of this struggle. Galician poetry is as various as any other. In it, there are voices that could profitably affect, change, create foment in my own language’s poetry… it is amazing how poetry can leap borders… leaving behind some particularities and gaining others in the crossing.

What was the first text you translated?
From any language? Oh I don’t remember! I think it was trying to figure out what my parents were saying in English, to explain to my brother, 11 months younger than me, in our private language. From a recognized language into English, probably it was in my head, while in France or Spain, and trying to find the sign for the way to the toilet! In poetry, a poem of Neruda’s, before I could read Spanish, actually. I just translated what arose for me when I read what I could not read.

My introduction to the idea of translation was through Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes, as at the end of it, there was my first bilingual dictionary: Ape-English (but not the reverse). It was utterly unusable, though I tried. I showed it once to Manuel Rivas, and it makes an appearance, slantwise, in Os Libros Arden Mal… if you recall.

What has translation taught you?
Que somos seres multiples… Je ne sais pas. I translate all the time as I think in three languages, all badly mastered. Temos que deixar entrar o que non somos, para ser, e estar. We have to let what is not us enter us, in order to be, and be present.

What’s your favourite poem by a Galician author, and have you translated it?
Ah I have many favourites. I love the medieval lyric and have made crazy wondrous quiet versions out of parts of Sedia-m’eu na ermida de San Simión by Meendinho, in my own O Cadoiro. And I love the ‘chronology of practice: synopsis’ of Chus Pato from her Charenton, which is on pp. 82-83 of the English… which later I reset in the form of the floor plan for the Dia:Beacon sculpture museum north of New York City… I followed the same floor plan to map my own chronology of practice, and these floor plan maps were published last year in the Canadian journal West Coast Line. Following that, the idea was taken up by Canadian poet Margaret Christakos in Toronto, who runs a poetry salon called Influency… in the most recent Influency program, 36 people were enrolled, and they all made maps of influence after being introduced to Chus’s and mine… Other Canadian poets have made such maps too (I know this by fact and rumour)… Thus something Chus made in Galician, and I got excited about and brought into English, both conventionally and with a leap, makes its way in English as a force field for change and beauty in Canadian literature.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, I think… what moves me later moves someone else, across the boundaries of a given language, and the literature itself changes.

Thank you for talking to us!

Erín Moure to translate Rosalía de Castro and Luis Pimentel

The Canadian poet and translator Erín Moure has agreed to translate two poems for the bilingual Anthology of Galician Literature to be published by Edicións Xerais next year. She will translate the poem from Follas novas by Rosalía de Castro and the poem by Luis Pimentel.

Erín Moure’s 1988 poetry collection Furious won the Governor General’s Award, and she has twice won the A M Klein Prize for Poetry: in 1990 for WSW and in 2005 for Little Theatres. She has three times been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize worth $50,000: in 2002 for Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person (a translation of Fernando Pessoa’s O Guardador de Rebanhos), in 2006 for Little Theatres and in 2008 for her co-translation of Notebook of Roses and Civilization by Nicole Brossard. Little Theatres was published as Teatriños by Editorial Galaxia in 2007.

Erín translates from French, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish. In addition to Pessoa and Brossard, she has translated two books by Chus Pato for Shearsman Books in England and BuschekBooks in Canada: Charenton and m-Talá. She was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from Brandon University in recognition of her contributions to poetry.

It is an honour to be able to count on Erín’s presence in the anthology, translating poems chosen for the anthology by Carmen Blanco (from Follas novas) and by Luz Pozo Garza (by Luis Pimentel).

m-Talá published in English

Spring is in the air and, with it, the second book of Galician poetry published in English this month! Following the publication of From Unknown to Unknown by Manuel Rivas, Shearsman Books in the southwest of England today bring out Chus Pato’s seminal work m-Talá in Erín Moure’s translation, published simultaneously by BuschekBooks in Canada. Shearsman Books brought out the later title Charenton in 2007.

Helena González defines m-Talá on the publisher’s website as ‘a model for all Galician poetry’. ‘The poetics of chaos is an inalienable characteristic of the work of Chus Pato. But in m-Talá she wipes out the borders of literary conventions. The multiple discourses and languages around us erupt into, and construct, the poem. Reading this book is a challenge and play from which humour is never far.’

Erín Moure is the accomplished translator and a poet in her own right with a dozen books of poetry. There will be an interview with her next month on this blog.

You will find a full list of books of Galician literature published in English here.

Interview with Michael Smith (translator of Ramón Cabanillas)

You both write and translate poetry. How similar are the two experiences? Is writing a form of translation, or is it the other way round?
Writing my own work and translating that of others are two quite different experiences for me. How generally true this is I can’t say. For many, Roy Campbell was a very fine translator of Spanish poetry but for me all his translations from the Spanish have a similar rhythm as if they were all written by the same poet. When I am writing my own poetry, I am drawing on my own life. When I am translating, I am drawing on the life of someone else. I am not a literalist nor am I an imitator in Lowell’s sense of that word. When I translate I put whatever language skills I have at the service of another. I see myself as the servant but not the slave of the work I am translating. A good deal of modesty and self-effacement are needed to be a good translator.

A lot of the poets you translate are classical poets. What do they have to tell us that contemporary poets can’t?
In the increasingly dehumanised world of global consumerism, they remind us of what it means to be human in the sense that Shakespeare was human, and Dante and Quevedo and so many others. Of course, contemporary poets may very well do this, poets like Geoffrey Hill and the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella, to mention just two poets whose names come to mind. But there is something deeply human for me, as I translate, in listening to the voices of the dead across the centuries. Translation can be seen as a kind of resurrection of the dead in the case of poets who have not yet been given a hearing in English. Of course, I am speaking metaphorically.

Classical poets often make use of metre and rhyme. How important is it to keep these in the translation, or do they make the translation sound artificial?
It’s my own personal view that poetry essentially dependent on the effects of metre and rhyme , such as Pushkin’s or Eliot’s Possum poems or Edward Lear’s Nonsense Verse, to give extreme examples, cannot be translated into an English that attempts to replicate the prosody of the original. That’s literary taxidermy. What a translator can do, however, is suggest the prosodic regularity of the original without resorting to paraphrase, which is not translation.

You have joined a distinguished list of translators who have worked with Rosalía. How did the Selected Poems (published by Shearsman Books in 2007) come about?
I have admired the poetry of Rosalía for years. If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you’re wrong about there being a distinguished list of translators. Most of what I’ve come across in English is of poor quality and badly dated. Edwin Morgan’s translations are an exception. He has done some faithful and lively versions. The Shearsman Selected Poems was prompted by what I saw as a need to give Rosalía a voice in English. She has been written about by feminists but my primary concern was Rosalía the poet. As I can only access Galician with the help of Spanish cribs, I was lucky to be given great help with the Galician by two Galician friends, José Manuel Estévez Saá and Margarita Estévez Saá.

Do you have plans to translate any other Galician poets (apart from Ramón Cabanillas for the anthology)?
Not at present. But now that I have discovered Galician poetry through Rosalía, I may find some other Galician poet whose work interests me enough to tempt me to try translating it.

Thank you for talking to us!

Manuel Rivas’ poetry in English

Small Stations Press has just brought out an anthology of eighty poems by Manuel Rivas, From Unknown to Unknown, selected and translated into English by Jonathan Dunne (who translates his prose for Harvill Secker in London and Overlook Press in New York).

The anthology has an introduction by John Burnside, the talented and prolific Scottish writer, which is available to read on the publisher’s website.

Small Stations Press, which publishes in both English and Bulgarian, plans a Bulgarian edition of Rivas’ best-selling novel The Carpenter’s Pencil for this autumn 2009.

Michael Smith to translate Ramón Cabanillas

The Irish poet and translator Michael Smith has agreed to translate the poem by Ramón Cabanillas for the bilingual Anthology of Galician Literature to be published by Edicións Xerais next year.

Michael Smith is best known for his translations of classic Spanish poets, including Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Góngora. He also recently translated a Selected Poems of Rosalía de Castro for Shearsman Books in Exeter. His work as a translator was recognized when in 2001 he received the European Academy Medal.

Born in Dublin in 1942, Michael founded New Writers Press in 1967, publishing over 70 titles, and was founding editor of the influential literary magazine The Lace Curtain.

His own poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies of Irish poetry, including The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry.

It is a privilege to be able to count on Michael’s presence in the anthology, translating a poem by Ramón Cabanillas that was chosen for this anthology by Arcadio López Casanova.

Next week, there will be a short interview with Michael on this blog!

Galician Literature in English Translation

What books of Galician literature have already been published in English? How many of them are individual titles and how many are anthologies by a single or multiple authors?

The number of books being translated into and out of a language is a sign of how much that language is in dialogue with other cultures and languages, so it’s important to keep track of the books in translation that have been published. The Consello da Cultura Galega produced a list in 2003, and Olga Castro of Vigo University produced another list as an appendix to her paper at the Congress on Plácido Castro and His Time held in November 2005. Vigo University also has a database of literary translations published since 1980.

Here Jonathan Dunne has produced a list of books of Galician literature published in English translation, with links to pages of relevance to each individual publication! Something to celebrate, and also something to work towards…

Edicións Xerais agrees to publish bilingual Galician anthology

Edicións Xerais, the main commercial publisher in Galicia, has agreed to publish a bilingual Galician-English anthology of Galician literature covering 800 years in 50 texts.

The anthology will cover the period from 1196, the date of the earliest written text, to 1980, passing through the Middle Ages (the medieval cantigas or songs), folk literature, the 19th-century Galician revival and the prose and poetry of the 20th century either side of the Spanish Civil War.

The purpose of the anthology is to introduce the general reader to the history of Galician literature, literature written in Galician and (during the Middle Ages) Galician-Portuguese, by means of parallel Galician-English texts.

The editor is Jonathan Dunne. All fifty texts that make up the anthology are chosen by Galician writers and academics from an author (such as Ánxel Fole), from a book (such as Cousas or Follas novas) or from a genre (such as the famous cantigas de amigo or songs for a friend).

The anthology is due for publication in the spring of 2010!