Translation

Jacinta Murrieta

November 6, 2023 Farmworker, Fiction, Issue 26, Issue 26 Fiction, Translation

By JULIO PUENTE GARCÍA
Translated by JENNIFER ACKER, with thanks to Luis Herrera Bohórquez

Para Violante, en sus primeros meses

I met Jacinta in the migrant camp where we grew up. I remember that it was the beginning of June, a few days into the start of the harvest. At that time, Jacinta had lived for nine springs—she was two years younger than me—and for obvious reasons she still used her given last name, López del Campo. Those of us who saw her timidly climb the stairs and enter the last shack, which served as our classroom, with her butterfly notebook pressed to her chest and her gaze glued to her sun-toasted legs, never imagined that in less than ten years she’d be proclaimed the artistic heir to Joaquín Murrieta, a figure shrouded in dust but fondly remembered within the Mexican communities settled in the central lands of California.

Translation: “The Old Song of the Blood”

November 2, 2023 Poetry, Translation

By HUMBERTO AK’ABAL

Translated from the Spanish by MICHAEL BAZZETT

Humberto Ak’abal (1952-2019) is widely known in Guatemala. His book Guardián de la caída de agua received the Golden Quetzal award in 1993, and in 2004 he declined to receive the Guatemalan National Prize in Literature because it was named for Miguel Angel Asturias, whom Ak’abal accused of encouraging racism, noting that his views on eugenics and assimilation “offend the indigenous population of Guatemala, of which I am part.”

What does it mean then to meet Ak’abal in English? What does it mean to translate an indigenous writer who spurned institutional accolades from one dominant, oppressive language into another colonial tongue?

Translation: Five Poems by Serbian Poet Milena Marković

October 5, 2023 Poetry, Translation

Poems by MILENA MARKOVIĆ, translated from the Serbian by STEVEN and MAJA TEREF.

Translators’ Note

As translators, we have multiple ways in which we interact as a translator couple. Oftentimes, we will sit side by side and take turns translating and transcribing as we work our way through a text. Sometimes though, one of us may translate a poem and later have the other check it. The poem “little lambs” is an example whereby Maja wrote out her translation in a notebook, which Steven later typed up and checked against the original. In the middle of the poem where “a band of clouds cross above my son,” Maja had followed the line with “while he squatted in the shallows,” yet Steven misread “shallows” as “shadows.”

September 2023 Poetry Feature: Uljana Wolf

September 28, 2023 Poetry, Translation

Poems by ULJANA WOLF, translated by GREG NISSAN.

Six poems from kochanie, today i bought bread, New from World Poetry Books.

shoes danced to shreds

as a fable
1 soldier danced
12 maidens to shreds

Poetry Feature: Poems from the Immigrant Farmworker Community

September 21, 2023 Farmworker, Poetry, Translation

Poems by JORDAN ESCOBAR, OSWALDO VARGAS, ARTURO CASTELLANOS JR., and MIGUEL M. MORALES.

This fall, half of The Common’s new issue will be dedicated to a portfolio of writing and art from the farmworker community: over a hundred pages filled with the stories, essays, poems, and artwork of immigrant agricultural workers. The portfolio, co-edited by Miguel M. Morales, highlights the work of twenty-seven contributors with roots in this community.

An online portfolio will also accompany the print issue, giving more space for these important perspectives. This feature is the first of several that will publish throughout the fall. Click the FARMWORKER tag at the bottom of the page to read more, as pieces are added.

Translation: “James Joyce” by Muhammad Zafzaf

September 7, 2023 Fiction, Translation

By MUHAMMAD ZAFZAF

Translated from the Arabic by LILY SADOWSKY

Piece appears below in both English and Arabic.

Translator’s Note

In “James Joyce” (1982), a stifled writer engages a hallucinatory Joyce in dialogue about writing, and in so doing, interrogates not only what—but also who—makes a great writer. Combining his trademark intertextuality with tense mixing and pronoun ambiguity, Zafzaf creates a haze of temporal unease. But however lost in time our writer is, he is distinctly aware of his place. Creative mastery is never simply a matter of skill but always also a question of positionality and circumstance. The freedom to be authentic or make new, to mean or will, is not equally free for all. Time is unstable; remembrance, unbalanced.

Translation: Excerpt from A SPACE BOUNDED BY SHADOWS

August 3, 2023 Fiction, Translation

By EMINE SEVGI ÖZDAMAR
Translated from the German by YANA ELLIS

Piece appears below in both English and German.

Translator’s note

One of the many things that drew me to A Space Bounded by Shadows is the novel’s overarching theme of exile and wandering between worlds — imaginary and real. The narrative weaves the rich tapestry of an artist’s life between art, relationships, and politics and their declaration of love for literature, film, and theatre. As an immigrant myself, the book captured me immediately because it explores how mother tongue and second language can merge, creating a new, enriched language and overcoming speechlessness in exile.

Translation: Excerpt from TAXI

July 25, 2023 Fiction, Translation

By SERGIO ALTESOR LICANDRO
Translated from the Spanish by MARY HAWLEY

Translator’s note: Sergio Altesor Licandro’s 2016 novel TAXI (Estuary Editora, 2016) holds particular resonance this year, the fiftieth anniversary of the brutal military dictatorship in Uruguay, which held power from 1973 to 1985. The novel is structured as a series of journal entries recorded by the protagonist, Pedro Fontana, who in his youth—like the author—spent years in military prisons in Uruguay, as punishment for his opposition to the military dictatorship, before being exiled to Sweden. In Sweden, Fontana trained to become an artist, lived there for some years, and eventually left to search elsewhere for his destiny. Now, many years later, he has returned to Sweden for a conceptual art project, which is to drive a taxi in Stockholm and record his interactions with the passengers, as a way of analyzing life in Sweden at a time when the democratic-socialist ideals of the past have given way to a grim neoliberalism. In this excerpt, however, Pedro Fontana must instead analyze his own past.

Translation: Excerpt from In Anne Frank’s House

July 6, 2023 Essays, Translation

By MAHA HASSAN

Translated from the Arabic by ADDIE LEAK.

Piece appears below in both English and Arabic.

Translator’s Note:

When In Anne Frank’s House (Al-Mutawassit, 2020) was published, it was met with near radio silence—a strange reaction to a new book by a celebrated author. In an interview I conducted with Hassan in fall 2021, she suggested that this reaction was one of fear. The fact that many in the Arab world conflate Judaism with Zionism—and Israeli oppression—means that writing about a young Jewish martyr like Anne Frank was automatically taboo, and any response to Hassan’s book would be wading into murky waters. Hassan was accused of writing about Anne Frank to court international favor, and the memoir was automatically labeled as political. In my later attempts to locate a publisher for the English translation, I came across a similar hesitation and mistrust—concern, among other things, that an author from an Arab country might not treat Anne Frank with the respect she deserves.

Welcome to the Department of Unanswered Prayers

June 6, 2023 Fiction, Translation

By NORMAN ERIKSON PASARIBU
Translated from the Indonesian by TIFFANY TSAO

From Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated by Tiffany Tsao. Excerpted with permission from the publisher, Feminist Press.

Welcome to the Department of Unanswered Prayers! Here’s your ID. When it’s time to go home, put your badge in your bag and leave the bag in your car. Rather than tossing it in some drawer, I mean, or chucking it somewhere inside your room. Don’t worry. No one will steal it. And don’t forget to bring it tomorrow and the day after and all the days after that. You’ll need it to get past security and to access the main entrance, the department, the sub-departments, the letter storage facility, and the archive. It happens every now and then—someone forgets their badge and has to go home to retrieve it. What a waste of time and money. Remember, every minute you’re late will incur a corresponding reduction in your heavenly salary. Each minute you’re late also incurs a 0.33-point penalty, to be subtracted from your end-of-year point total. Don’t let it get so dire that you can’t redeem them for the leave you’re entitled to every fourth year, because if you’re short even a fraction of a point, you’re still short a fraction of a point.