Tag: publication

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New translation! WHEN YOU GET TO THE OTHER SIDE by Mariana Osorio Gumá

This fall, my first book-length translation was published: When You Get To The Other Side, a novel originally written in Spanish by Mariana Osorio Gumá. It’s a story of familial love, perseverance, and generational wisdom that’s lush with detail and care. I’m particularly pleased that it was published by the Cinco Puntos imprint of Lee & Low Books—and that, while the project started before Cinco Puntos made its move from El Paso to NYC, its editor Stephanie Frescas Macias was able to stand beside it the whole time.

To learn a bit about how the book came to be—in its original version and in its English translation—you can read this conversation between me and the author Mariana Osorio Gumá. You can get also get taste of the book—again, in Spanish and in English—by watching and/or listening to this virtual bilingual reading we did:

Get your copy of When You Get To The Other Side from your local bookstore or library today! If they don’t have it yet, ask if they can get it for you! If they can’t, get it from Lee & Low or Bookshop.org. And thanks for reading.

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New translation! A short story by Rodrigo Fresán

“Years ago the man got married and years ago the man became unhappy in his marriage. The man lives in Buenos Aires and he passes his time, or tries to make time pass, thinking about the Aztec Empire . . .”

I have a new translation out! A very short story by Rodrigo Fresán, in my English, is part of World Literature Today‘s May 2018 speculative fiction feature. The story is “Ancient History,” and it continues my short streak of translating stories about Mexico by non-Mexican writers! You can read the story online or in print; World Literature Today is sold at my local independent bookstore (as well as Barnes & Noble), so it’s probably sold at your nearest bookstore too. I hope you’ll read the full issue, whether in print or online, as it’s full of great works translated from many languages, and has a super-strong book review section, too.

I translated this story for no real reason last summer—I was reading Blanco Móvil on my laptop in a coffee shop, and stumbled across the original story, “Historia Antigua.” I liked it lots, and it was quite short, so I translated it on the spot just for fun. After that, I didn’t revisit it for several months, until I heard about WLT‘s upcoming speculative fiction special feature and realized I had something just right for it, hiding out in my computer files. A happy coincidence.

Rodrigo Fresán is an incredible and prolific Argentinean writer, who already has a few books out in English translation. Will Vanderhyden’s latest translation of Fresán, The Bottom of the Sky, will be published by Open Letter Books in just a couple weeks! So if you like this short story in World Literature Today, you should definitely get yourself a copy of the book as soon as it’s out.

Hope you enjoy reading Rodrigo Fresán, in English or in Spanish!

Read my translation of Rodrigo Fresán, “Ancient History,” in World Literature Today.

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New translation! A short story by Pedro Novoa

I’m excited to share my latest translation with you all! For Latin American Literature Today‘s fourth issue, I translated the Peruvian writer Pedro Novoa’s short story “Carne de subasta,” or “Flesh for Auction.”

LALT is an awesome magazine, an offshoot of World Literature Today that publishes all its pieces in English and Spanish. Because of this, the story in its original Spanish is available to read in this issue. There’s also a fantastic interview with Pedro Novoa in which he talks about the story I translated:

Gabriel T. Saxton-Ruiz: In the short story “Carne de subasta”  … you incorporate Mexican slang in the words of the protagonist Jalisco Méndez. What is your relationship with Mexico? How did this story originate?

Pedro Novoa: I have relatives in Sonora, Mexico. Herbert Ávila, a cousin of mine, went in the 80s to cross the border to the US and live as an undocumented immigrant over there. He was a “wet back,” was able to enter American soil and to not get deported back to Peru, he took out his Mexican passport. He’d get expelled from the country closer to the border and would attempt to cross again. And that’s what he did three times until they almost killed him. Because of that he stayed in Sonora where he raised a family and has found that stability that he’d longed for in the US. He’s the one who used to say we were “auction meat,” something to be offered up to the highest bidder. It’s a terrible image depicting the condition of many Latinos, and I racked my brain to recall the Mexican slang that my cousin had already made his own. And because it also seemed to me to be an interesting metaphor for the current situation of the Latino man. Someone who is sold to the highest bidder in our neoliberal, commodified and inhumane world.

On the other hand, I’m constantly on the lookout for terms with popular origins, and it seems to me that Peruvians and Mexicans have a rather vast inventory of colorful, symbolic and rhythmic words. This lexicon of Mexicanness also came to me through film and music. Just to mention the most important examples, the film Amores perros and a few songs by Control Machete and Cypress Hill.

(Read the full interview here.)

Moving this from Spanish to English was fun, with its snappy pace and Mexican slang everywhere! Originally, I was a little nervous (and excited) for the challenge of translating Peruvian Spanish for the first time—and then I was given a Mexican narrator to work with! A funny coincidence. I guess that challenge will have to wait a little longer.

I hope you enjoy reading Pedro Novoa’s story, in English or in Spanish!

Read my translation of Pedro Novoa, “Flesh for Auction,” in Latin American Literature Today.