After speaking with Ásta and Vala on three different occasions, I got the sense that the two of them have a very close friendship that contributes to the relationship they have as author and translator; Vala has a very good understanding of Ásta’s artistic vision which contributes to her wonderful translations. Ásta is such a sweet person with a bubbly personality, I really enjoyed meeting her. She seems to have an instinctual and natural understanding of poetry. I was mostly impressed by her reading of the poems in the original Icelandic and how musical it sounded and comparing that to the English which sounded completely different. I was grateful for how thoroughly Vala answered my questions about her translation process. She answered the question I had about the poems that focused on sound–that she was given creative liberties for it and translated for the sound as opposed to preserving the meaning in the original. The two allowed me to realize that if one translates an author that is living, then it’s important to have chemistry with them.
This week's two readings have such a stark contrast despite being translated by the same translator. I read the excerpts from “Dogs of Summer” first and recognized it’s very colloquial, low-register voice of an adolescent girl. In contrast, “Slash and Burn” had a very different, more refined tone. Julia Sanches must be a well rounded writer to be able to write in two very distinct voices in this way–I was very inspired. I really enjoyed the way her translation of “Dogs of Summer” really situated me in the environment and culture of the setting, foreignizing terms like “tía” and many of the food items.
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