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Thursday, November 5th, 2020
Raya el mediodía en Bruneville. El cielo sin nubes, la luz vertical, el velo de polvo espejeante, el calor que fatiga la vista. En la Plaza del Mercado, frente al Café Ronsard, el sheriff Shears escupe a don Nepomuceno cuatro palabras:--Ya cállate, grasiento pelado. Las dice en inglés, menos la última, Shut up, greaser pelado. --Texas, by Carmen Boullosa
It's high noon in Bruneville. Not a cloud in the sky. The sun beats down, piercing the veil of shimmering dust. Eyes droop from the heat.
In the Market Square, in front of Café Ronsard, Sheriff Shears spits five words at Don Nepomuceno:
“Shut up, you dirty greaser.”
He says the words in English.
--Texas: The Great Theft, by Carmen Boullosa tr. Samantha Schnee
The tension between Cortina and the Brownsville authorities broke into violence on 13 July 1859. Brownsville town marshal Robert Shears was brutalizing Cortina's 60-year-old former ranch hand. Cortina happened to pass by, and asked Shears to let him handle the situation; Shears is said to have yelled at him in reply, "What is it to you, you damned Mexican?"
--Wikpedia entry for Juan Nepomuceno Cortina An interesting thing to keep in mind when reading Texas in either the original or the translation is, the characters (of whichever nationality) are switching code much more frequently than is shown in the book. In the original, Shears speaks in English with a word of Spanish; Frank/Pancho relays the insult to Sharp in English (presumably verbatim, though Boullosa only paraphrases him as saying "tal y tal") and Sharp tells it to Alitas in (unquoted) Spanish, and when Alitas repeats it he is using Boullosa's original phrasing, "¡Cállate grasiento pelado!" (p.18)The chisme spreads from mouth to mouth, in the book the dialogue is rendered in Spanish but the attentive reader will be able to guess what language is being spoken at each juncture. By the time it gets down to the Matasánchez ferry, William Boyle repeats it in a phrasing close to the historical record preserved at Wikipedia: "None of your business, you damned Mexican!" Also finding Schnee's translation choice interesting. When Boullosa quotes Shears as speaking in English with a word of Spanish, it seems like it ought to be preserved in translation. I think the code-switching the characters do is a key part of the story -- Boullosa preserves enough of it in dialogue to give a sense that the characters are living in both languages. Will keep track of how Schnee is rendering this.
posted afternoon of November 5th, 2020: 1 response
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Sunday, November 15th, 2020
I get the impression that Schnee is usually leaving vaquero untranslated when it is referring to a Mexican cowboy, rendering it as cowboy when it is referring to a gringo. This seems right to me, even though it introduces a distinction that's not present in the original text. It jumped out at me during Lázaro's speech at the end of part 1, when he said "one of King's cowboys" had insulted him and then later said "the era of the vaquero is over." The translation brings out a shift in meaning of the word between "un vaquero de King" and "el tiempo del vaquero".
posted morning of November 15th, 2020: Respond
➳ More posts about Readings
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I notice as I'm reading Schnee's translation of Texas that she skips over a clause here and there. For example, "dio muchos detalles y contó otros, hasta dijo que si Nepomuceno era el que había interceptado el correo, le colgó el bandidaje de los robines y quién sabe cuánto más." (p. 21) is translated as "He gave lots of details and made up others, even saying that it was Nepomuceno who had robbed the mail." (p. 7) Schnee even skips whole paragraphs. In the original, after the section which ends "Agua fuerte saca el puñal." comes
(Dos que anotar cuando el sol refulge en la hoja de metal del puñal de Agua Fuerte: al astro se le ve mejor y al acero parece no pesarle el astro. Parecería que el abrumado firmamento no puede con el peso del coloso; se diría que allá en lo alto está por resquebrajarse el azul, que la bóveda necesita compartir la carga con el velo del polvo terrestre y que el puñal pulido lleva al astro con ligereza.) (p. 25)
[(Two things to make note of, while the sun is shining off the metal sheet of Strong Water's blade: the star appears larger and the steel does not seem weighed down by the star. It would seem the firmament is overwhelmed, that it cannot bear the gargantuan weight; one could say there is a crack in the blue up there, that the vault of the heavens has to share its burden with the earthly cloud of dust and that the polished blade carries the star with ease.)] This word-for-word rendering is poor but gives an approximate sense The translation skips directly to the next section, beginning "Inside the Smiths' home, lovely Moonbeam gets back to work." (p. 9) It doesn't seem like the missing content is incorporated anywhere else... Not sure what to make of this. Possibly Schnee was working from a different edition than what I'm reading?
posted morning of November 15th, 2020: Respond
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Monday, November 16th, 2020
A defining feature, even a tic, of the narrative voice in Texas is use of appositive phrases. Very frequently when a character is referred to it is with name + occupation, or name + some defining characteristic; e.g. we see "trapper Cruz" or "Cruz, the trapper" more often (I reckon) than just "Cruz". This is useful to me as a reader, since there are a lot of characters to keep track of; also it is cute. I wonder if it is a common feature of Boullosa's writing or just in this book -- something to keep an eye out for.
posted afternoon of November 16th, 2020: Respond
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A section early in Texas consists of short paragraphs describing the events of the years between Texas being declared independent and being annexed to the US. The paragraphs are in order by year; the one for 1836 says Austin was declared the capital of Texas; skirmishes continued. That's incorrect, and in the translation this is changed to 1839 (the correct date), and the order of paragraphs is altered. (Luckily the original text did not have a paragraph for 1839, so there's no need to merge two together.) This seems like the right thing to do.
posted evening of November 16th, 2020: Respond
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Thursday, November 19th, 2020
As I make my way through the original and the translation of Texas (having read each of them through once) I'm noticing some minor differences that I just find inexplicable. For instance the Mexican character Salustio in the original (p. 55) is "Jones, a runaway slave" in the translation (p. 33). Why? I'm leaning as a tentative explanation toward the idea that Schnee translated a late pre-publication draft, and Boullosa made some final edits before the original was published which were not incorporated into the translation. No idea if that's correct or not.
 Another instance of this -- in the original we meet "otro que también se llama Blas, y no por bastardo..." in the Café Ronsard (p. 73) -- in the translation the character's name is given as "David" (p. 49) and no mention of bastardry is made, and there is no "also". The también in the original might be referring to Blas the bastard son of Gutierrez? Not sure.
↻...done
posted morning of November 19th, 2020: Respond
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Saturday, November 21st, 2020
An interesting question in reading Schnee's translation of Texas is her rendering of La Grande as "Mrs. Big". It makes me think about how characters' names are rendered in this translation. There are many gringo characters with names which are a descriptive English word like Wild, Trust, Dry -- sometimes these are understood to be a proper name, sometimes a nickname, sometimes it is not clear. Mrs. Big is the only one of these whose nickname is given in Spanish in the original text*; it kind of sticks out because she is described as racist and jingoist American. It would stick out like a sore thumb if in the translation, she was called La Grande -- I wonder though what Boullosa had in mind here. I will be keeping an eye out for how descriptive names of Mexican and Black characters are rendered. The only one that is occurring to me right now, Juan Caballo (a cimmarón, an escaped slave who has crossed the Río Grande to Mexico), is rendered Juan Caballo -- makes sense although you lose a little wordplay when he is talking with a Seminole named Wild Horse. Native American characters have their descriptive names rendered in Spanish in the original and in English in the translation; my understanding of this is that in the world of the novel, the characters have descriptive names in their own languages.
*Aha -- just spotted that Elizabeth Stealman's nickname La Floja is rendered as Mrs. Lazy in the translation, parallel to La Grande / Mrs. Big. This is a little different since Mrs. Lazy is what they call her behind her back -- I was thinking it was Mexicans calling her "La Floja" but maybe it is gringos too.
...Also Mocoso is rendered as "Snotty".
Here's an odd one -- the printer, a Mexican man named Juan Printer in the original, is named Juan Prensa in the translation. :)
(The frontspiece of the translation is a map showing a couple of key locations in the novel; Mrs. Big's Hotel is labelled "Mr. Big's Hotel". I spent a while trying to figure out why, before I realized how many typos there are in the text. Wishing Deep Vellum had more of a budget for copy editing.)
↻...done
posted morning of November 21st, 2020: Respond
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Sunday, November 22nd, 2020
Wondering while reading Texas -- what is gained by renaming Brownsville and Matamoros to Bruneville and Matasánchez? I guess it is meant as a marker that the book is fiction rather than history? But I don't quite see how such a marker is needed; and plenty of things in the novel have actual historical names including one of the main characters.
posted morning of November 22nd, 2020: Respond
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