From what I heard, Signs Preceding the End of the World is a translated novel by Yuri Herrera. It can easily be summarized as a woman, Makina, crossing the border between Mexico and America to deliver a letter and get her brother back. It sounds like an adventurous story full of conflict but the author makes the trip sound like it’s nothing. It’s mostly due to how he created Makina, a Mexican woman who behaves like a secretary in modern standards but has a very important role and isn’t portrayed like most Latin women in Spanish literature. For starters, she’s no pushover, Makina sounds like any woman doing what she’s told to at first glance but she’s not afraid to punch a guy, hold a normal conversation with an underground mob boss, or snap off a groper’s finger. On pages 30-32, Makina was getting her bus ticket and these two younger guys where used for Herrera to show how tough she is; one of the guys at the bus, let’s call him Lucky, was trying to “accidentally” feel up Makina’s thigh but she caught his finger, bent it back to his wrist, and said “You crossing over to find a gig? Then you’ll need every finger you’ve got, won’t you? Cause you can’t cook or pick with your tootsies, now can you? So [listen] up,I’m going to let you go and you’re going to curl up with your little friend back there, and I swear on all your pain that if you even so much as think about me again, the only thing that hand’s going to be good for is wiping ass”. A long statement but it perfectly captures Makina is as a character and woman this early in the novel. Maybe not entirely as a woman but it shows her defiance against another guy and that’s something not all female characters portray in Latin literature.
Another thing to point out is Makina’s purpose, she’s the messenger in all this. She’s told to deliver this to so-and-so, meet up with that guy and that guy, and so on. Normally this would be a parallel to her strong character but Herrera makes her profession more meaningful than being just a messenger. “You don’t lift other people’s petticoats. You don’t stop to wonder about other people’s business. You are the door, not the one who walks through it (page 18)”, those are the rules Makina goes by. That’s how Herrera describes Makina, not as a maid or servant but as a bridge from one person to another. Herrera makes this more important by mentioning, on the same page, that Makina operates a switchboard with the only phone in her village for miles and being able to talk in three tongues, “sometimes they called from nearby villages and she answered them in native tongue or latin tongue. Sometimes… they called from the North; these were the ones who’d often already forgotten the local lingo, so [Makina] responded responded to them in their own new tongue. [She] spoke all three, and knew to to keep quiet in all three, too (page 19)”.
In short, Herrera’s female protagonist is someone unique, who can run any errand and be expected to come back for more. She’s not tied down for being a woman or a messenger, she does what she’s told to do and isn’t weak or vulnerable because she’s a woman. In fact, she used her sexuality to take advantage of the opposite gender and isn’t faint from violence, “even though she hadn’t wanted to be fawned over, just wanted a man to lend himself, [the boyfriend] touched her with such reverence that it must have been smoldering inside him for ages (page 27)”, “Before [Makina] was through, [the boyfriend] nodded as if to say Yeah, yeah, just sticking your tongue in my mouth again, and then turned and versed with the weariness o a man who knows he’s being played and can’t do a thing about it (page 29)”, “With his cane, [the old man]pointed to a little door at the back of the store [where Makina] washed her hands and face; the wound on her ribs was dry and when she rubbed the soap across it hardly even stung (page 58)”.
These quotes Herrera made are meant to establish the type of character Makina is because if she and her brother switched roles, Makina being in the US and her brother running all of her errands and making the trip across the border to get her, then it wouldn’t have the same impact or carried as much weight as another Latino doing a man’s job.
Author: carlosci
The dissatisfaction of having everything and nothing
Fiction writing can be described as a form of what we want to tell, to talk about something that can’t be real but may be real if things went a certain way. A novel by Ahmed Khaled Towfik, Utopia, translated by Chip Rossette, tells a story about how things would, or might, be if the wealthy were given everything and the poor were stripped of everything. To summarize, the novel takes place in Egypt with two protagonists, Alaa and Gaber. Alaa is a very wealthy young man who is given everything from his wealthy parents and takes anything everything he wishes for his amusement while Gaber is a slightly older man has nothing but a younger sister that motivates him to keep living in hazardous poverty. In this setting, Utopia is the name of an island were the very rich, Alaa being one of them, are guarded by military professionals and are given luxuries and highly addictive substances to escape boredom while the extremely poor, Gaber and his sister, are left to struggle in an economy where nothing is given but stolen and living conditions that has left them to resort into an animistic lifestyle. The premise is that Alaa wants to do something that he hasn’t already done yet, claiming that he’s done anything and everything within an hour, which is hunting the poor people, branded as the Others, for a trophy in the form of a severed arm or head. In comparison, it’s like an alternate version of The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell but instead of a manhunt where the predator becomes the prey it’s about a predator who is saved by his prey but has no intention of giving up what he started. The novel contains a lot of themes about neoliberalism, the reversion of basic instincts, the folly of man, and the loss of morality and rational thinking. What this all leads to is nothing but dissatisfaction.
The novel goes into full detail between the two characters and the contrasts of being the predator and the prey, how Alaa is greatly influenced by a western culture and wants to be more western like the American films he’s seen from the 70’s and 80’s while Gaber studied and graduated from a free university/college but wasn’t able to find work. It shows the sides of being entitled and influenced by a male-based patriarchy, which lead to a toxic influence of taking what you believe is rightfully yours because of your social status, and how the efforts of your education fall on deaf ears when nobody wants to listen or see the disgusting state they are in and would rather make things worse by doing what’s withing their reach with minimal effort. The idea that having money to buy whatever you want leads people to abandon all future worries when there no longer is a middle class and all the money they make and spend will eventually return to them compared to trying to rob from others and hope that it will bring them something. It’s a disgusting world for those and many more reasons but one that feels almost terrifying is that there seems to be a sense of truth if you are given something without paying a price. One of the rules in Utopia is to not steal from other Utopian citizens but any and all acts of corruption can be paid off or be given a blind eye if nobody else speaks of it, an example of this are the occasions where Alaa lists his morning routine which involves having sex with the black maid and getting high on a new kind of drug that’s expensive but an everyday commodity within an hour or so. He lists that his daily life is finding how he can pass the time when nothing interests him anymore and sex loses all meaning even if he forces himself on others who all eventually stop resisting his advances. The loss of feeling anything from this, joy, pleasure, thrill, danger, responsibility, authority (to an extent), even morality only means that this person is no longer human.
It’s difficult to find examples of how we would feel this emptiness because we do find ways to continue living and we aren’t all in the worst living conditions like the Others, whom have resorted to eating dogs as a cheap alternative for protean or prostitute our own relatives to make a cheap amount of income. We aren’t riddled with fleas, pests, diseases, amputated, disfigured, or dying before adulthood or our middle ages or even hunted/abducted by the elitists for their own amusement. But why would these terrible things feel like a reality if all of these events take place in a fictional world several years ahead of us; one of the themes in Utopia is that these events are possible if things have gone in such a drastic event and all the basic necessities were stripped from us and we accepted these losses as a new call of order. It’s almost frightening because the parallels between Gaber and Alaa are similar and yet Gaber is the only one who still holds on to his values but ends up as the prey through and through even when he’s in control of Alaa’s life and access to his home. All we can do is find ways to keep us to move ahead instead of finding ways to waste our time.
Seeing how one poem can change nineteen times
Poetry is a very diverse for of literature; sometimes poems are translated more than once with a different audience in mind. “Nineteen Ways Looking at Wang Wei” from Eliot Weinberger is a short book where Weinberger goes over the nineteen versions a poem from Wang Wei, a Chinese poet from the seventh century. This is a short reading analysis on the different ways this Chinese poem was translated; I saw how each translation carried a different impact from the translator and thought if the specific ways this poem was translated could give it a different experience. The poem can be easily summarized after reading a few translations; Wei’s poem revolves around a spiritual experience where an individual is completely alone on a mountain and the sunlight breaking through the threes shading everything below. The summary is a rough translation of the main idea but the different styles give a different tone by using additional words, fewer words, or by the way it’s structured. The translations all carry the same theme but the word choice, phrasing, grammar, and layouts all tell the same poem with a different connotation.
Fletcher’s translation of Wei’s poem, titled “The Form of the Deer”, is what I consider an English translation of a Chinese poem. His translation incorporates a rhyme scheme and arranges words to get a good flow. Some characters from the Chinese text have been modified in this version to be more enjoyed for the general audience of his time (1919), such as adding personification to give a fresh and warm feeling. For example, he says that the sunlight “pierce” through the forest which gives a warm picture of sunlight breaking through the shade. In comparison with Fletcher’s translations, the translated version from Chang Yin-nan and Lewis C. Walmsley gives a more “mystical” feeling just from their words choice alone. Words like “slanting”, “motley”, and “jade-green” don’t really serve a purpose to the original poem but it gives a mystical feeling for a more oriental audience. I believe that one reason why they decided to these words was to highlight the spiritual aspect of Wei’s poem while Fletcher’s version was to give a smoother tone to describe the experience. Their versions differ in what their highlighted goal was but they still manage to deliver Wei’s poem.
Overall, this is just my examination on how translations deliver the same message in different forms. The two versions I referenced are just examples out of nineteen with almost an infinite number of ways this poem can be translated. Some are given adjustments to fit the times literature was written, others are translated as basic, or literal, as possible, and others are translated into different languages other than English, which gives even more depth to how translations can be formatted. One way I heard of describing a translation is the deconstruction of the original for a lesser version of the same thing. This came up in a classroom discussion on the subject so it can be interpreted however you want. The way I describe translation is the substitution or rearrangement for the general audience. In the end, it doesn’t matter how others see it as long as the same message is kept intact.
Misunderstandings When You’re Bored
This kind of blog isn’t about anything from social media or anything big or important, it’s just about those times where you don’t pay attention and it ends up leading you into misunderstandings. It happens to everyone, at school, at home, at work, when visiting other people, there are moments where we all lose interest and sometimes it ends up leading us into the wrong direction or misunderstanding others. It’s easy to understand this when we are busy or tired but this is something we have to be careful with because it rarely leads to major set backs. I say rarely because most of the time we would just ask another person something we didn’t understood or we would continue on until we’re corrected later on. This isn’t something serious because if we do end up misunderstanding something and get corrected later on, we’d only get slightly embarrassed or get set back.
This is just something I want to say because I noticed in myself and others throughout school. One little misunderstanding on a homework assignment leads to a set back, more work, or embarrassment. It’s not the worst thing that could happen but when you’re bored from paying attention in high school, college, or even university, it leads to some more issues that might be tricky to stay up-to-date. One example would be if student A writes down his schedule and upcoming due dates for high school but receives a call back from a job application. He’s given a chance to work at a store but when he is asked what day he can start, he appoints it on a study session after school when he said “I’ll be there next week after two…. two thirty-five through three forty”, while looking at his schedule. This is a lot of “if”s and “and”s in this fictional, and pretty weak, example but it’s to highlight those moments where not being clear can lead you into some set backs. It’s a really obscure and extreme example and it’s something that most people would call “first world problems”, but it shouldn’t be something left unchecked until much later.
To repeat and summarize myself, this is just something for anyone whenever you think things are uneventful, when you have too much time in your hands, not enough time in your hands, or find things too easy. If something pops up or if you didn’t hear something correctly, or think you heard something differently, it doesn’t hurt to take a few seconds to check and revise.
Literary Genres in Translation 