Translations

Translation Tuesday: Two Sketches from Vicente Rama’s Portrait

July 12, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas

Why not separate a couple who always fight like cats and dogs? Even twins who stick together at the womb are separated at birth.

This Translation Tuesday, we are thrilled to bring to you two sketches from Vicente Rama translated from the Binisayâ by Alton Melvar M Dapanas. Join our Editor-at-large for the Philippines, as they show us through the literary and linguistic histories of a writer widely considered as the Father of Cebu City.

“The following dinalídalí (sketches or vignettes) are taken from Larawan [Portrait], a collection of sugilanon (short stories) and dinalídalí written by fictionist Vicente Rama (1887-1956) published in 1921 by The Cebu Press. In Portrait, realism and radio drama sentimentality, sometimes street humour, Christian didacticism, and folklore, backdropped with the ethos of working-class ruralscape, are prevalent, symptomatic of late 19th to early 20th century Philippine fiction in Binisayâ, Tagalog, and other local languages. To National Artist for Literature and Cebuano Studies scholar Resil B Mojares, this comes as no surprise “considering the contact Filipino writers had with Romantic literature through Spanish and American intermediaries.” Rama himself wrote from within a particular tradition in Philippine literature in Binisayâ: the dinalídalí, in itself comparable to the binirisbiris and pinadalagan (sometimes spelled pinadagan, or the Spanish instantanea and rafaga), “short account[s of] spontaneous and hurried quality” which subversively proliferated in vernacular publications even at the imposition of American literature and the English language in the public educational system after the Philippine-American War. Most sugilanon and dinalídalí from Rama’s Portrait started as serialised prose pieces from Kauswagan [Progress] and the bilingual Nueva Fuerza/Bag-ong Kusog [New Force], both periodicals he himself edited, the latter, he owned. 

My impetus behind translating Rama is grounded on two rationales. First, it has been 100 years since the publication of Portrait. The second reason is geopolitical. “Few works in Cebuano [or Binisayâ],” according to Mojares, “have been translated into other languages, whether foreign or Philippine. This is essentially a problem of power: Cebuano has historically been relegated to a position subordinate to Spanish, English, and Tagalog. The concentration of state power and media resources in a Tagalog-speaking primate region and the promotion of Tagalog as ‘base’ for the national [Filipino] language, or as the national language itself, have marginalized regional languages like Cebuano. As a consequence, the development of Cebuano has been stunted.”

Perhaps the primary challenge in translating Rama is that his Binisayâ is distant from mine not only in terms of the temporal (a century apart) but also in the geopolitical (my native tongue is a different dialect within Binisayâ; his is contentiously considered ‘the standard’). His Binisayâ—in its contemporary form a language already heavily influenced by, and possibly the language spoken by the ‘natives’ who had first contact with, the former Iberian colonisers—is also interlaced with the conventions of mechanics and punctuation from Spanish which are no longer used. A product of his own time, Rama’s moral compass is also very different from mine. While “Ang mga mahadlokon” [The cowards] paints a homophobic and effeminophobic picture of two unmarried—possibly queer-coded for gay—men living together as chicken-hearted village idiots, the fictional universe of “Divorcio” [Divorce] is where victim-blaming coupled, as always, with misogyny, is normalised. So beyond textual concerns, my act of translating Rama was also a sort of my confronting of the perpetual elephant in the room in several works within Philippine literature in Binisayâ from a century ago and even that which pervades until today. Such is propagated by paleo/conservative circles of old, (predominantly) male writers who are remnants—or, I daresay, residues—not only of this particular aesthetics, but also of this sociopolitical alt-Right conservativism which, with misplaced regionalism in the mix, has enabled and is still complicit to Philippine authoritarian fascistic regimes.”

—Alton Melvar M Dapanas 

The Cowards 

It was 3:30 at Sunday dawn, the day of the mass at church. Ating and Tuloy both rose from bed and got on their feet. 

“Let’s go, Tuloy. It’s time for church.”

“I know. I even called you up earlier.” 

And so the two went down the stairs. I should say that these two bachelors are known in town for being chicken-hearted so not a day goes by without them doing things together. As they trek through the dimness of the road, they realized they’re being followed. With the loud footsteps behind them, Tuloy felt the chill. He poked Ating and whispered, “Check out who’s behind us.” 

“Ah, not me,” Ating pleaded.

And so on they went while holding each other’s hands tight. When they stop, the one behind them stopped as well. When they run, the one behind them ran as well.

“We’re going to die, Tuloy!” Ating mumbled.

“Don’t say a word! Just pray,” was Tuloy’s reply. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Excerpt from Les pays by Marie-Hélène Lafon

July 5, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Dr. Benjamin Eldon Stevens

Rumors made the rounds, Monsieur Jaffre was a rebel, a sort of Prometheus chained to the cause of second-rate students

This Translation Tuesday, glimpse into the novelistic invention of Marie-Hélène Lafon’s award-winning Les pays through her protagonist Claire who, much like the author herself, moves from agricultural France to the city. Encountering a certain professor of Greek at the Sorbonne, Claire’s eyes open to this world of “impeccable choreography” and the difference that Monsieur Jaffre brings in his manner and mystique. Translator Dr. Benjamin Eldon Stevens brings us through the landscapes through which Lafon writes, and the feeling he tries to evoke in a translation that bubbles with a kind of intellectual and spiritual wonder. 

“The title of Marie-Hélène Lafon’s 2012 novel, Les pays, suggests a humanizing plurality. Ordinarily, ‘les pays’ would refer to ‘countries’ or ‘nations.’ Here it seeks to make of the French ‘countryside’ something more than how the region is traditionally depicted: instead of the simple monolith that may be found in literature of the city, rather a set of places with their own complex histories. This chimes with Lafon’s stated hope to develop a contemporary literature that would lift rural lives—likewise plural—to the level of myth.

Thus Lafon refigures her own upbringing, with her move from countryside to city modeling that of Les pays’s main character, Claire. Like Lafon, Claire has left her childhood home in Aurillac to study classical literature at the Sorbonne. In this excerpt, which starts the second part of the novel, Claire is in her first year at the Sorbonne. Overwhelmed by the work and not helped by other teachers, she yet delights in language, privately calling the coursework ‘cursus’ and its masters ‘mandarins’ (for, implicitly, they are tart). That sparkling delight she finds reflected in Monsieur Jaffre. His love of the material, his home library overrun with ‘paunchy dictionaries,’ a desk under the spreading arms of a—Chekhovian?—cherry tree: such details suggest to Claire that a life of joy is possible, albeit a ‘joy both ardent and austere.’ It is that complex feeling, felt by the author no less than by her character, that I have hoped to capture in this translation.”

—Dr. Benjamin Eldon Stevens

The Greek professor has a woman’s hands, he rubs them together, interlaces his outstretched fingers; his wrists are supple, and Claire thinks that he must play the piano. She imagines him in a large living room, the piano is black and stretches across a patterned rug, the room is studded with books; his daughters would be listening to him, he has three daughters she knows that he has said so, all three in sciences like their mother, they did however do Latin and Greek in high school, through their final year; the eldest a doctor, a geneticist, a PhD candidate, the other two engineers. Two daughters would be seated on stiff armchairs upholstered in pale yellow fabric, like you used to see for sale in pairs in the window of the antiques dealer in Saint-Flour, you did not know the price, which was not posted, behind the senatorial armchairs you could make out gleaming dressers, pontificating armoires and distinguished vanities, you did not stop you never went inside. The Greek professor’s youngest daughter would stand up straight at her father’s side and turn the pages of the score, or the father would play without one; Claire hesitates, she does not know if playing without a score, by heart, is a sign of greater distinction at the piano; she hesitates also on their first names, Anne, Alma, or Sophie, she sees the girls’ hairstyles, smooth brilliant blunt bobs for the younger two, long hair left down the back for the eldest, they are brunettes like their father, the color matte. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Punishment” by Inés Garland

June 28, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Richard Gwyn

That night, as always, Ramona made us pray on our knees, side by side, with our elbows resting on the bed.

This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you a short fiction from the prize-winning Argentine writer Inés Garland. The story evokes the terror endured by two sisters from an affluent Buenos Aires family, after their parents leave them in the care of a vindictive nanny at the family’s country ranch. Tense and dramatic at turns, this story is a look into a child’s psyche and how they navigate the vagaries of their world. Before reading the piece, hear from translator Richard Gwyn himself about the connotations and choices around the story’s title. 

One issue stood out above all others in translating Inés Garland’s short story ‘La Penitencia,’ and it concerned the title. Penitencia—‘penance’ in English—is familiar to practising Catholics as an action one performs in the hope of making up for a sin. The particular nuances of this concept, or sacrament, might not be familiar to non-Catholic readers. ‘Penitence,’ which sounds as if it should be right, refers more specifically to a state of mind; of regret, sorrow, or remorse for a wrong committed, and it was clear from Garland’s story that the nanny, Ramona, was expecting rather more than this from her young charges. I opted for the less problematic but less precise ‘Punishment’ to cover a multitude of sins, not only those committed by Catholics.

—Richard Gwyn

That summer might have been no different from any other. We had spent Christmas in Buenos Aires and two days later, like every year, Mum and Dad took us to the country. Ramona was sitting between Clara and me, on the back seat, and was staring ahead, very quiet. She always travelled like this, with her arms crossed and back straight; occasionally she moved her lips as if she were praying and looked at Mum, at the back of Mum’s neck, with short and furtive glances.

Before reaching the dirt road, Mum and Dad announced that, this year, they wouldn’t be able to stay with us, even for one night; some friends were expecting them the next day. Clara began to cry. Ramona continued to stare straight ahead, but clenched her jaw. I decided that this time I wasn’t going to let Mum and Dad go without telling them how Ramona carried on with us when they weren’t around, but, determined as I was, I couldn’t think of a way of telling them everything without Ramona hearing me.

The solution occurred to me when I saw the overgrown field of maize, next to the house. While they were unloading the bags and opening up the house, I explained the plan to Clara, without going into details. I grabbed her by the hand and we ran into the maize field and lay on the ground, face down.

My plan was simple: Mum and Dad would have to look for us to say goodbye—I was sure of that—and when they bent down to give us a kiss, the leaves of the maize would hide them. Down there, hidden from Ramona, I would tell them everything. It seemed so easy, so perfect. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Cho Ji Hoon

June 21, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Sekyo Nam Haines

but what shall I do with / my long sighs that turn my lips blue

Part of the Green Deer school of poetry that emerged in the aftermath of Japanese rule, the celebrated South Korean poet Cho Ji Hoon was one of the most distinguished poets of modern Korea. This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you two of Cho’s poems translated by Sekyo Nam Haines that evoke the complex folds of longing and distance through their meditations on the simplicity of a door or a road. 

Stone Door

There is a stone door that will open at the brush of your fingertips, without a sound.
Many people are anxious about it, but since the door has been shut, within the stone walls, the green moss grows on the shelves of twelve stair cases.
Until the day you return, I keep a stick of candlelight that will never burn out.
As long as your longed face reflects faintly in the dim light, even if a thousand years
pass, my sad soul will not close my eyes. 

What are those few dewdrops that always linger on my long lashes?
Should I dry my tears with the blue linen robe you left behind?

My two cheeks still look peach colored as before, but what shall I do with
my long sighs that turn my lips blue?  READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “CABO ROUGE / Kabiosile” by Soleida Ríos

June 14, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Kristin Dykstra

I scrawl / lacerate / squeeze / twist / hammer

This Translation Tuesday, enter the oneiric geography of acclaimed Cuban poet Soleida Ríos in a hybridised work that is her own fluid and inventive relationship to genre and tradition. The airport—with all its connotations of citizenship, mobility, and border-making—is given a surreal makeover when the speaker at every unexpected turn is confronted with the presences of Chagall to Sarduy, from an Arching-Eyebrow Woman to (Normal-Brow) woman. Accompanying Kristin Dykstra’s energetic translation is an illuminating tour of Ríos artistic and political inheritances that allows us to see the poet’s workings, but which renders her poem no less strange and powerful.

“Soleida Ríos often explores dreams, as well as realities refracted through dreamlike states. An elusive quality characterizes her work, the spirit of creative cimarronaje. This term refers to the ethos of the fugitive slave, which Ríos has invoked in some descriptions of her writing. Her book Estrías (Grooves) intertwines that spirit with a more recent strand of Cuban history: the internal migration of rural citizens (many of them Afro-descendent), who like Ríos moved from their origins in eastern Cuba to the western capitol, Havana, in the decades after 1959. In the city, finding and keeping a home can be a struggle. 

“CABO ROUGE / Kabiosile” depicts psychological navigations of national space and legal language in search of one’s own place. Along the way the narrator registers artistic legacies of Severo Sarduy, Marc Chagall, René Magritte, and Yoruba traditions in Cuba. Here too are figures from local bureaucracy, which might well be described as a culture in its own right. The agent at an airport counter initially seems responsible for enforcing travel regulations, then transforms into a subject struggling to create a place that state officialdom would interpret, legally speaking, as her house. Settings shift, contributing to the sensation of unreality. Perhaps we have fallen into a Chagall painting. But the woman’s refrain foregrounds practical acts of migration: “I left MY COMMUNITY and I moved on to THE COUNTRYSIDE … From the countryside I came HERE.” Other recurrent elements invoke attributes of the orisha Changó, who is associated with the color red and explosive percussion in ritual music. The kabiosile of the title is a verbal salutation to Changó.”

—Kristin Dykstra 

CABO ROUGE / Kabiosile

… I’m not reproducing …
I scrawl, lacerate, squeeze, twist,
hammer.
A number.
A smudge.

In the airport (one example), my head filled with such disorder that I’ve forgotten to retrieve my suitcases. Eighteen suitcases.

But since I also forgot to set aside my essential documents, namely: TICKET, BOARDING PASS, BAGGAGE CLAIM stub, among others of subtle distinction, which I can’t remember now … I’m thinking about how I can maneuver, to present myself in transit and request my entirely disproportionate and (I guess) extremely suspicious baggage.

So now I’m at the counter saying, with all the composure of (borrowed voice) I-Came-On-The-Flight-From-Paris….

Arching-Eyebrow Woman looks at me doubtfully …, she turns back to the heap of papers … So I confirm, “The-11:39-From-Paris.” 

And immediately I remember, horrified, “the PERMIT, I forgot the PERMIT …”

Nothing subtle about that.

And my wings drop away from me.

Arching-Eyebrow Woman, still doubtful?, asks me, “Your last name is Vives ….?!” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Katrine von Hutten

June 7, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Cristina M. Burack

gladly would I write two three / sentences that look like you

This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you two poems by the German writer Katrine von Hutten, including her poem “Description”, which won the Leonce and Lena Prize in 1969. In an elegant and plain style rendered by translator Cristina M. Burack, these two poems convey the simplicity and mystery of approaching another person through one’s private vocabulary. 

Description

gladly would I write two three
sentences that look like you
that are as you are
at best I can describe you

you are a wolf
in wolf’s clothing
and a sheep
in sheep’s clothing
but you know that

the circles under my eyes look like you too
when you jump through I have to laugh
you often say whoopsie
even when you don’t say it
better to say: you mean it

it is only half past six
but already wholly dark
you’re like that too

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Flowerie Dream” by Hàn Mặc Tử

May 31, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Phuong Anh

I beg, please empty out words and let yourself be present

This Translation Tuesday, treat yourself to a poem by the poet Hàn Mặc Tử, a celebrated figure of the New Poetry Movement in colonial Vietnam. Translator Phương Anh—whose interview with Vietnamese writer Thuận we recently featured—brings to us this poem with its modernist and mist-like qualities. “Flowerie Dream” is a meditation on the quality of presence from the early twentieth century that refracts the influence of French symbolism. 

“Hàn Mặc Tử’s poetry, with his surreal and ambiguous imagery, has often been considered untranslatable. It doesn’t help that, with each printing, there have been tweaks in punctuations and even words. In my opinion, his poems invite multiple translations, with mine being one of the possibilities, based on the version found in the bilingual edition Le Hameau des Roseaux by Hélène Péras and Vũ Thị Bích. My approach for this poem was mainly to bring out that meditative and quality of mystique in the Vietnamese, and to take liberties in changing the structure, particularly in the first stanza. In Vietnamese you can often create a double action in a very short space, but when translating into English (or French), in unpacking all actions, sometimes the line becomes too long, taking away that succinctness from the Vietnamese. Therefore, I decided to move a few words around—but only when it fits the effect. For example, instead of directly translating the word ‘không gian’ (space), I left the line hanging on ‘staining.’ Partly because I felt the line was getting too long, but also because I wanted to bring out the idea of the staining movement of the smoke by having it intrude onto the next line. This adds to the mystical quality of the ‘khói trầm’ (smoke) which also can refer to the agarwoods sometimes present in spiritual practices. Similarly, I moved the verb ‘daring’ up a line, and placed it at the enjambement to underscore both the speaker’s confidence and hesitation.” 

—Phương Anh

Flowerie Dream

Low-hum smoke gently ripples across, staining
Bluish time spills into golden dream
This evening’s dress is too formal—daring
To kiss chrysanthemum soul’s in the dew

Can you water the flowers with your warm tears?
Count a petal for each loving time
Can you bury the pieces of withered spring?
And please, bury them in the depths of the heart. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Chemistry Lesson” by Hagit Zohara Mendrowski

May 24, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Dana G. Peleg

In our room we are delivering / each other

Revel in the sensuous yearning of “Chemistry Lesson” this Translation Tuesday, a poem by the pansexual Hebrew poet Hagit Zohara Mendrowski’s that itself enacts a pedagogy of queer desire. In Dana G. Peleg’s translation, the linguistic aspects of gender between Hebrew and English unfold in poetic time to elongate and stretch the modes of desire latent in Mendrowski’s poem. Read this poem today and hear from the translator on the choices she made: 

“The love poems of Hagit Zohara Mendrowski, a pansexual Hebrew poet, reflect a great yearning. In many of her poems, the lover she yearns for is non-existent or a fantasy male or female lover. In this poem, the female lover is real, tangible. Furthermore, the gendered conjugation of verbs and prepositions in Hebrew does not leave any doubt regarding the type of the lovemaking depicted here. When using second person singular in Hebrew poets are forced to choose a gender. English, on the other hand, allows room for interpretation. I took the liberty of leaving readers with a question mark for a while. That question mark becomes an exclamation point when Mendrowski writes “pigeons” in the feminine. This is a grammatical error, or a children’s word, since “pigeon” in proper Hebrew is pluralized in the masculine. This usage adds another layer to the yearning expressed in this poem, for turning lesbian lovemaking into an act of procreation, of recreating.” 

—Dana G. Peleg

Brilliant formulae you have developed
Insist on impregnating me

When you squat on all six
my tongue draws infinite figures of eight
inside you. The whole room is lit. I drop into
The world of my childhood, scared
to sprout
but your obstinate womb pushes away—

Outside people continue to
Spit, swear, drag their heavy baskets.
Honk their limping cars.

In our room we are delivering
each other. Wander READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Excerpt from “Father” by Ivana Dobrakovová

May 17, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Julia Sherwood and Peter Sherwood

I was horrified that one day I’d be as stingy as my dad. Because stinginess is hereditary, you see. It’s a genetic predisposition, I’m quite sure

This Translation Tuesday, we feature a story from Slovak writer Ivana Dobrakovová’s European Union Prize-winning collection of short stories Mothers and Truckers. Told from the perspective of a young woman who brings up memories of her father, this story—translated by our very own editor-at-large for Slovakia, Julia Sherwood, and Peter Sherwood—employs a first-person voice that is compelling and speaks from the very core of a childhood that is at once stained and sustained by these recollections. Hear from our translators on the themes and connections of the forthcoming collection which opens with this powerful story. 

““Father” is the opening story in Mothers and Truckers, a collection of five stories by Slovak writer Ivana Dobrakovová, set in her hometown of Bratislava, and in Turin, Italy, where she now lives. Each of the stories features a troubled young woman living through, or reliving, a variety of  traumatic events and Dobrakovová has given each a distinct voice in which they deliver cascading internal monologues that are intense, searingly honest and often very funny. As Hungarian literature scholar Anna Gács notes in her foreword to the English edition, due from Jantar Publishing on 30 June: “By focusing on the mental processes of her protagonists, sometimes almost in a stream-of-consciousness manner, she offers us five sensitive portraits written with an abundance of empathy, down to the most ironic details.” While four of the protagonists struggle to shake off the influence of dominant mothers and to escape from claustrophobic relationships with neglectful husbands or partners, or seek solace in imaginary relationships, here the author focuses on on the impact on the narrator of her father’s mental decline and descent into alcoholism.”

—Julia and Peter Sherwood

What do I know about my parents’ relationship? The less the better? To be on the safe side? Mum must have seen something in him. But what exactly?

She said that once Dad had told her, in the presence of other people, that she was not only intelligent but also beautiful. It must have been quite a statement, an exceptional compliment for her to cherish the memory of it so much. To want to share it with me. He had always had a drinking problem, which is why, as long as I can remember, I always thought of it as something inseparable from him, a part of him that was meant to be that way. Just like his illness. There’s no point trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg, what was the cause and what was the effect: his unstable mental state, the age-old proclivity to drink, the genetic predisposition to both that got all mixed up, reinforcing each other until they came to form his very essence.

Nevertheless, some episodes do stand out.

One night, Mum, at the end of her tether, dragged us out of bed. ‘Girls, get up, go and tell your Apuka that we live one floor higher up’. My sister and I staggered out into the stairwell in our pyjamas, drowsy with sleep. We didn’t understand what was going on. We found Dad one floor below, persistently ringing our neighbour’s doorbell even though the neighbour was standing in his open doorway trying to stop him. With great difficulty, the two of us then helped Mum haul him upstairs and into our flat. I don’t know when exactly this happened. Or how old I was at the time. My sister was still at the same school as me, so I would have been in the third form. One of the first incidents of this kind, to be followed by many more. It felt bizarre. Like a bad dream. Like a night-time escapade foreshadowing my eventful youth. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Excerpt from Lucky Beny by Simona Bohatá

May 10, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Alžběta Belánová

“You’re gonna be a famous photographer . . . you’ve got an eye for it, you see 'it,’ dude, they can’t teach you that at no school.”

This Translation Tuesday, we feature an excerpt from Simona Bohatá’s novel that offers the reader a kaleidoscopic perspective on a slice of the working class in 1980s Czechoslovakia. With prose reminiscent of Bohumil Hrabal, the novel was nominated for the Magnesia Litera Prize in the Czech Republic where the jury praised Bohatá’s characters as “so full-blooded that we can almost feel their pulse.” As you glimpse into this fascinating novel of the everyday, hear from translator Alžběta Belánová on the intricacies of representing the Prague slang. 

“The novel offers an up-close-and-personal look at the grimy, crumbling world of workers’ settlements, pubs and salvage yards in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the lively assortment of bizarre characters who inhabit it. Young Beny leaves home to escape a violent and abusive father to find refuge at a scrapyard run by someone they call the Fabrikant. Together with Hany who is handicapped, a drifter called Julča and Beny’s brother Vítek, they form a quirky new family. While the author certainly shows the dark and disturbing reality of this era—Beny and the others were certainly dealt a hard hand in life—the book doesn’t just serve up misery as the real time storyline moves in an almost optimistic direction. Beny is truly lucky, as he manages to find a better job and ends up having more time for his one passion, which is photography. As with other Simona Bohatá’s works, the biggest challenge for the translator is capturing the atmosphere of the novel, which the author achieves through the use of heavy working-class Prague slang, what is more, spoken by teenagers. Linguistically, I found a parallel with The Basketball Diaries memoir (and similar such works), which achieves the same effect through the use of heavy New York slang and a disarmingly familial tone of the various journal entries. I found this quite inspiring for my translation and was able to draw on that to find the right voice for Beny and the others.”

—Alžběta Belánová 

Beny 

He was mad as hell as he walked up the street, angry with himself for letting it get to him even after all these years. He ran into them stupidly on the corner right by the ice cream parlour. They were laughing but stopped when they caught sight of him. Two, maybe three of them said “hey,” while the others bent their heads down in embarrassment. Beny was ten times more embarrassed though because they split the embarrassment up among themselves but he had to go at it alone. 

Classmates, he thought and smirked to himself. They were thick as thieves all of year eight including Jana and Bingo whose grades were just as shitty as Beny’s. But Bingo’s mom came down hard on him, forced him to start cramming and managed to get him through to ninth grade. No one came down hard on Beny though, so he had to go off to trade school right out of eighth grade while Bingo went on to ninth grade with all the others and then on to grammar school. 

He was a leper to them ever since. It only took one time when he met up with them after summer vacation to figure that out. He was sitting with them outside the Bookworm restaurant and it was as though he was invisible to them. They wouldn’t look him in the eye. Jana was latched on to Bingo who was telling idiotic stories. The very same Jana who was telling him how much she loved him only half a year ago. They didn’t even notice when he left. He didn’t see them for more than four years after that and now he had to go and run into them all together like that.

He wanted to go home but felt all out of sorts so he headed to the scrapyard.

“Fuck them, dude . . . they’re just spoiled brats.” Fabri handed him an opened bottle and Beny took a big gulp to wash the anger down. Fabri went on with his philosophizing.

“Where the hell would they be without their filthy rich fathers? Bullshit, rich brats . . . with parents in high places . . .” He shot a side glance at Beny and was glad to see him smile.  READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Rain in Bình Dương” by Văn Giá

May 3, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and Bruce Weigl

Somebody had said that there were professions which set the teeth on edge, the profession of pointing with five fingers . . .

From 1954 to 1975, Việt Nam was divided into North Việt Nam and South Việt Nam. Exacerbated by the Việt Nam War, the division caused tremendous tension among the people on both sides. This Translation Tuesday, we are brought back to this age of division through a tale by the acclaimed short story writer Văn Giá, one that portrays an undercurrent conflict in the most casual of encounters and the writer’s strong desire for all Vietnamese people to unite, to reconcile, and to heal. Translators Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and Bruce Weigl’s short, sharp sentences give the story a stuttering rhythm that conveys a sense of wariness and caution that permeate the characters’ minds. 

My tooth and gums are now okay. My dentist says a scar has grown onto the gum. “Leave it alone for around a year and come back for a check-up,” he tells me. I tiptoe, open my mouth wide, tilt my face, and look into the mirror. It’s true that a scar is there. This tooth. A windy and raining evening in Bình Dương . . .

It was so unlucky, that trip. My tooth suddenly betrayed me. My gum swelled so much. I couldn’t stand the pain. I would lose my cool standing at the classroom’s podium looking like this. I thrashed around all night, drained of energy. After a quick and barely chewed dinner, I asked my student, “Please, could you find some place for me to get my tooth fixed? Otherwise I’ll be in big trouble.” 

“I will look for one now. Stay calm, Teacher. Don’t worry.” 

But . . . the rain was pouring so.

I glided into the car. A brand new one. Its interior still had that new smell. Super shiny. I praised him, saying the public could benefit a great deal from such a posh head of the sub-district People’s Committee. Having said that, I startled myself and I was afraid that he thought I was mocking him. 

I hurried to say, “I mean when the head of a sub-district People’s Committee does well, his people also benefit. If local government officials are poor and rough-looking, they get no respect from the common people. If you were poor and held a leader’s position, greed would be born. If you are already rich, you don’t have to be greedy. Therefore the people would benefit . . .”

After I finished speaking, I realized that my own reasoning sounded like that of some kind of pimp. I was startled again, but my student said nothing. I told myself to keep my mouth shut. 

But then I asked whether it was still far away. “Quite close by,” the student answered. He said no more. Outside, Heaven continued to dump down its water. The rain was getting heavier and heavier. Few people were travelling on the road. It was around seven or eight p.m. The student drove so fast. I was fearful. It would be dangerous if someone dashed out from a lane. 

“There’s no need to hurry,” I told him. 

He said nothing. I sat at the back, craning my body to look through the car’s front glass. The wipers worked furiously. The car dashed past a push-cart which was moving through the rain; perhaps a cart of a wandering seller. A white sheet of water, curving like a rainbow, blanketed the person pushing the cart. I knitted my brows. “Please slow down. You made that person soaking wet.” 

The student said nothing. I glanced at the front mirror to look at his face: cold as a metal sheet.

The car slowly turned into a small lane and came to a stop. The student told me to sit inside the car so he could go in and check if the practice was open. He didn’t use personal pronouns, but spoke without using the proper form of address. Perhaps here, people spoke this way. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t important. 

After a while the student came back. “It’s closed. Let’s go somewhere else.”  READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Foal” by Mohamed Makhzangi

April 26, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Chip Rossetti

One of Egypt’s best short story writers, Mohamed Makhzangi traces the numinous, almost supernatural, connections between our species and others.

Each story in Mohamed Makhzangi’s unique collection Animals in Our Days features a different animal species and its fraught relationship with humans—water buffalo in a rural village gone mad from electric lights, brass grasshoppers purchased in a crowded Bangkok market, or ghostly rabbits that haunt the site of a long-ago brutal military crackdown. Other stories tell of bear-trainers in India and of the American invasion of Iraq as experienced by a foal, deer, and puppies.

Originally published in 2006, Makhzangi’s stories are part of a long tradition of writings on animals in Arabic literature. In this collection, animals offer a mute testament to the brutality and callousness of humanity, particularly when modernity sunders humans from the natural environment. Makhzangi is one of Egypt’s most perceptive and nuanced authors, merging a writer’s empathy with a scientist’s curiosity about the world.

 Like Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Haruki Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes, or J. M. Coetzee’s Lives of Animals, Makhzangi’s stories trace the numinous, almost supernatural, connections between our species and others. In these resonant, haunting tales, Animals in Our Days foregrounds our urgent need to reacquire the sense of awe, humility, and respect that once characterized our relationship with animals.

We are happy to partner with Syracuse University Press to present an excerpt of its debut in English.

FOAL

A wise man was asked: “What possession is the most noble?” He replied: “A horse, followed by another horse, which has in its belly a third horse.” 

—al-Damiri, Major Compendium on the Lives of Animals 

Trembling, the small foal scurried between his mother’s legs when the sound of explosions struck his ears and the lightning flash of bombs glimmered in his eyes. He couldn’t hear the voices of any of the humans he was familiar with, not even the terrifying voice of the president’s son, whose arrival at the palace race track instantly caused the grooms to tremble and made the horses quake. His voice was rough, and his hand heavy and brutal. He had big teeth that showed when he scowled at other people or laughed with the foal—for him alone the president’s son laughed. He would place his right hand around the foal’s neck and burst out laughing while taking some sugar out of his pocket for him, the purest kind of sugar in the world. He would feed it to him with affection and delight, but he was harsh and irritable toward everyone else. Once the foal saw him beating a stable hand who was slow to saddle his horse. After the stable hand fell to the ground, the president’s son kicked him with the iron spurs of his riding boot, and kept kicking his head until blood poured out of his nose, mouth, and ears. He gave the foal’s own mother a hard slap when she shied away a little just as he was about to ride. He kept slapping her on the muzzle while she bucked, whinnying pitifully, until blood poured from her jaws. He didn’t stop hitting her until the foal ran up and came between him and his mother.

The foal felt the tension in his mother’s warm stomach above him. She was stifling the restless movement in her legs so as not to bump against the body of her little one taking shelter up against her. She stood in place and trembled whenever bombs reverberated or the flash of explosions lit up the sky. During the few lulls, no sooner did she relax and he could feel the warm flow of her affection, than the noise and flashes would start up again. Deafening noise, then silence. Deafening noise, then silence. Fires, the sound of buildings collapsing, and screams. Then after a long grueling night, a terrible silence prevailed. With the first light of dawn, the foal heard a clamor of human voices shouting at each other, and hurrying footsteps, then a lot of people burst in on them, their faces covered in dust and their eyes red. They started fighting with each other around the fenced corral. Then the gate was thrown open, and the foal could feel his mother’s body trying to get away from the rough rope around her neck. Another piece of rope went around his neck, too, and he saw himself running with his mother, bound together to a rope tied to the back of a ramshackle pickup truck that clattered down long rubble-filled streets. Fires blazed on either side of them. Corpses were scattered about. Chaos reigned.  READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Four Poems by Jonatan María Reyes

April 19, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Shannon Barnes

a gunshot, popcorn / popping, a bullet tearing / into flesh, the mouth chewing

This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you four poems by the Puerto Rican poet Jonatan María Reyes that focus on the minutiae of place and neighbourhood. Resembling photographic snapshots of everyday urban scenes looked at from the different hours of a day, these poems stare at flies, neon signs, garbage bags, dryers. They stare, through the modest crack that each short line pries open, at “what lives / in the background” to borrow the language of Shannon Barnes’s evocative translation, “and demands / of the system another / kind of resistance.”

1.3

a fine steam bursts
from underground.
sparks fly from the neon light
of a giant sign.
somebody at the bus stop
eats cheetos and licks
their orange fingers.
random newspaper pages
crunch and float through the air.
they’re later lost.
a green liquid seeps
out of a garbage bag.
it leaks slowly and flows
towards the sewer.
someone gets off a bus
puts gum in their mouth
and pretends that
everything stops there READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: An Excerpt from Dying Water by Amna Mufti

April 12, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Haider Shahbaz

We are related to the land in many ways, but surely the strongest tie is that of the grave.

This Translation Tuesday, we are thrilled to bring to you an excerpt from the novel Paani Mar Raha Hai (Dying Water) written by the award-winning Pakistani writer Amna Mufti. With the 1947 Partition of India looming in the backdrop, Irfan and Shahida move to Pakistan and confront not just a divided world but also a divisive secret. Adapted and condensed into a self-contained short story by translator Haider Shahbaz, this at once mythic and historical tale of ecological crisis from the Urdu is a riveting take on the fault lines between geological and geopolitical boundaries.

“The novel, Dying Water, focuses on the environmental consequences of the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan. In this way, it connects our current climate catastrophe to longer histories of colonialism and partition. It also changes the language and framework we use to talk about the climate crisis—instead of scientific facts, it forms a narrative out of religious beliefs and mythical tales to create a unique prose style that emphasizes our ethical connections to nature.” 

—Haider Shahbaz

 

Irfan remembered the first time someone brought up the idea of his marriage to Shahida. 

Irfan was well-educated—an alumnus of Aligarh—and extremely good looking, but even he was taken aback when he first heard about the proposal. Shahida was rich and beautiful beyond imagination. Irfan, on the other hand, didn’t have any family. It’s not like he was born from a stone. When times were good, he used to live in Amroha with all his relatives. He got his degree in engineering from Aligarh and went to Delhi to look for a government job. Around the same time, the British decided to leave and partition India. Irfan heard that government officers could choose if they wanted to stay in India or leave for Pakistan. 

What does a blind man want? Two eyes! Irfan sent a telegram to his family and told them they were moving to Pakistan. The family was scared. They didn’t want to leave. But what could they do? Eventually they mustered up the courage to get a train from India to Pakistan. Each and every family member was killed on that train. Nobody survived. 

Irfan got his Pakistan, and he loved it with all his heart. Pakistan gave him a high-ranking position in the government bureaucracy. And Pakistan gave him Shahida. He was completely blown away by her beauty, grace, and refinement. Even touching her was overwhelming for him.  READ MORE…