Contributions by Rodrigo Marchán
Rodrigo Marchán says: my first exposure to translation was a selection of poems by Bukowski published by Emptybeercan, a house started by Federico Ludueña in Argentina in the early 90s. Ludueña's translations were noble and correct, but certain parts just sounded strange to me. There was something about the original tone that just wasn’t there. Latin American Spanish isn’t the same as Spanish Spanish. After Bukowski died, Planeta published a two-volume bilingual edition of selected poems. This time the drawback was Jorge Lanata’s prologue, but in the book itself you could see the connection that the translator established with the voice of the author. After that I went back over the whole list of North American writers I had liked before: Henry Miller, Salinger, Fitzgerald, some of Faulkner and Ferlinghetti and the guys from City Lights. The Canadian infiltrator Leonard Cohen, and later on, Cheever, Carver, and Foster Wallace. One thing I read recently that needs to be translated is Elizabeth McCracken’s Here's Your Hat What’s Your Hurry.
The Birthday Card
Dorothy Spears
An impotent man on vacation, so potent at work, keeps going at his wife every night, every afternoon. “I need to prove that I’m norm…I mean, that I’m all right,” he whispers, with coiled desperation.
The wife buries her face into a synthetic pillowcase, recalling a discussion they’d had a decade ago about a birthday card from George. He’d accused her of trying to ruin him, citing her need to discuss the birthday card as an attempt to undermine his confidence. It was only a few months after their wedding; he’d picked up her favorite wedding gift, a Navajo bowl, and smashed it against the oak floor of their apartment.
Today, after breakfast, and another failed attempt, she goes for a solitary bike ride. Down the road the workmen wave and grunt “Salaut.” They are splitting boulders … Read More »
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