Ásta and Valla responde + Sanches response - Soren

 I loved Ásta and Valla so much! I thought Valla had some really interesting things to say on translating a work that you may not fully understand--Ásta talked a lot about how her work exists as its own entity, and how she's one of those authors that writes where the words take her, and Valla's commentary on translating such mystical work was very insightful. Their dynamic was great to watch too! Seeing an author be so close to her translator, and vice versa, was lovely and I loved hearing from both the author and the translator in relation to a specific work. I don't mean to keep bringing up Anton Hur, but there was an interview in which he said that he doesn't speak to the original author because he translates good authors and doesn't feel the need to ask them for clarification.  After watching them interact, I realized why that line made me so uncomfortable when I initially read it. 

I was a little confused on Sanches' translations. I thought Slash and Burn read a little dry, but I wasn't sure if it was intentional and written very deadpan in the original, or if it was translated that way. Korean has the same issue--sentences tend to be more direct in Korean because it's much broader in its descriptive and emotional words, and so needs less to convey more, and is often translated very bluntly without consideration for the actual weight of the emotion behind it at all. I found myself wondering if the narration, in Spanish, wasn't originally more emotional and ore indicative of a child's point of view. I thought the pure grits and gut reading held a lot more emotion and stream of consciousness-style writing, which led me to believe that the bluntness in Slash and Burn was intentional, but something about the translator's note at the end of the story tells me otherwise.