READIN

🦋 Translating rhythm, translating syntax

(Rivera Letelier seems really to have given my reading and translation a focus they did not have before.)

Terminan de apagarse los sones de la canción mexicana que antecede a la que él quiere escuchar, y en tanto la aguja del tocadiscos comienza a arrastrarse neurálgica por esa tierra de nadie, por esos arenosos surcos estériles que separan un tema de otro, el ilustre y muy pendejísimo Viejo Fioca, paletó a cuadritos verdes y marengo pantalón sostenido a un jeme por debajo del ombligo -- pasmoso prodigio de malabarismo pélvico --, trémulo aún de la curda del día anterior y palido hasta la transparencia, llena su tercer vaso de vino tinto arrimado espectralmente al mesón del único rancho abierto a esas horas de domingo --...

So, wow; the first sentence of Queen Isabel Was Singing Rancheras is seven pages long... I enjoyed the challenge of getting the multipage paragraphs in Resurrection across with a sense of the driving rhythm of the original, and communicating the sense of it. This is kind of ridiculous! Those paragraphs had maybe page-long sentences at some points, but 7? Gorgeous though. I'm having trouble believing he was able to do this on page one of his first novel (1994) and have it be successful -- a popular novel! It seems audacious and intimidating.

posted evening of Friday, May 10th, 2013
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Roughly:

The sounds of the Mexican ballad are fading -- this is the one just before the song he's been waiting for, and the record-player's needle begins to drag itself through this no-man's-land, this sandy, sterile ditch that separates one track from the next; and the illustrious, the amiable Old Fioca, decked out in green jacket and dark gray trousers hanging a few inches below his belly-button -- astounding prodigy of pelvic acrobatics -- still shaking from last night's inebriation, pallid to the point of transparency, fills his third glass of the red wine standing ghostly on the counter of the only bar open at this hour Sunday morning --...

Not sure what to do with "arrimado espectralmente". Or with "pasmoso prodigio de malabarismo pélvico". Also "sostenido" -- is this referring to a belt or suspenders holding the trousers up?

posted morning of May 11th, 2013 by Jeremy

(Maybe 3 pages into it now, reading aloud -- it is a lot of fun to read aloud but I do miss some of the meaning.)

posted afternoon of May 11th, 2013 by Jeremy

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