Good, bad books are the answer sometimes

I don’t always read very high-brow Latin American literature. After all, I have been living in the United States for eight years, and some of its pop culture has to stick on me somehow.

About two month ago, one of my friends told me to read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Well, I am hooked to the series. And in the middle of midterms, reading something a little lighter is a relief (or so I tell myself in order to feel less guilty).

Now, the book is going to be turned into a major motion picture, and I plan to be there for the premiere on Nov. 21. I know that I said that books do not translate well into movies, but in the case of good, bad books like this one, I don’t think that there is much to tamper with.

It is a joke among Twilight geeks, like me, to spend hours gazing at the screen and looking at the trailers for the movie. But yesterday, the same friend who let me borrow the first book of the series, showed me the trailer for the movie in Spain.

Well, the translation is hilarious.

The characters all have very heavy Spanish (from Spain) accents. They all linger on the “s” like most Spaniards do and have a certain emphasis to words that is only noticeable by Latin Americans.

In my mind, Edward speaks perfect English and not perfect Spanish.

A disappointing trip to the library

I was really looking forward to check out “Malinche” by Laura Esquivel yesterday, so I went to the Smathers Library Latin American Collection to check if they have the book. When I got there, I was very happy when I found it, but when I finally found the book I opened the front page to read the first sentence of the book, as I always do, and found out that they only had it in English.

At that point, I really thought how great it would be to live in a bigger city or one where Spanish is a more predominant language. The ideal scenario would be to live in Washington D.C. where I could just go to the Library of Congress that is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month from Sep. 15 to Oct. 15.

Also, during this time, there are also many events celebrating Hispanic heritage. It would be great to go see the film “In the Time of the Butterflies” this Saturday instead of watching football, but then again, I don’t live in Washington D.C. and Gainesville is not as Spanish literature friendly.

Fortunately, the Smathers Library has about 450,000 volumes and I had no problem finding a good alternative. As usual, one of the books by Mario Vargas Llosa called me from the shelf and one of my good friends had recommended it. So now I’m reading “La Ciudad y Los Perros,” or “The Time of the Hero.” I think is really odd that I went to the library with the purpose of checking out a book about a traitor to the Aztecs, Malinche, and got out with a books about a boy in a military academy in Lima, Perú. That is just the way Spanish Literarure crawls on me.

Lost in translation

Recently, I went to Borders with my neighbor– whose first language is Mandarin– and we had a discussion about what is lost in translation in books. She found a book by Gabriel García Márquez translated into English and told me I should buy it, but I told her that there was no point for me to read a translation if I could read it how it was originally intended. My neighbor is not a big reader and couldn’t really grasp the power of language and how it is hard to translate literature.

I’m not trying to say that it is impossible to translate a work from Spanish to English because I think it can be done. However, it would be very silly of me to skip on the opportunity to read in my native language.

To me, reading in Spanish is a sensory experience . I usually think and dream in Spanish, and reading in my language is more attractive because it appeals better to my subconscious mind.

In addition, I think that Romantic languages, in general, have better cadence.

For this reason, I find it especially difficult to translate poetry.

I found one of my favorite poems by Gioconda Belli translated to English and was disappointed. “Y Dios me Hizo Mujer” , or  “And God Made me Woman” in English, which fails to capture the cadence of Spanish.  Only the title is not as powerful in English as it is in Spanish. The word “and” lacks the potential for alliteration that “y” (which is pronounced as a vowel in Spanish) has. In the second stanza, Belli uses “y” to emphasize the qualities of her gender; “y pliegues y suaves hondonadas y me cavó por dentro” does not translate properly to say “and folds and soft hollows…”

When I first read “Y Dios me Hizo Mujer,” I was hooked to Belli’s poetry. I don’t know if it is because I read the poem in Spanish first, or because of the subtle rhythm of the poem in Spanish, but the translation of the poem failed to move me the way the original poem did.