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Sample translations submitted: 2
French to English: Extract from 'Mon Cœur a l'Étroit' by Marie Ndiaye
Source text - French 1. Quand cela a-t-il commencé?
J'ai parfois l'impression, au début, qu'on me regarde de travers. Est-ce vraiment après moi qu'ils en ont?
Lorsque j'ose évoquer ce changement devant Ange, à la table du dîner, il me répond, après une légère hésitation de pudeur ou d'embarras, qu'il a remarqué la même chose le concernant. Il me demande, en me regardant fixement, si, à mon avis, c'est à lui que ses élèves ont quelque chose à reprocher ou si, à travers lui, ils me désignent, sachant bien que je suis sa femme.
Cette question me déroute. Qu'ai-je donc fait, et à qui?
Les yeux d'Ange sont remplis d'inquiétude à mon sujet. Il aimerait que je lui dise que c'est lui et uniquement lui que visent les regards torves de ses élèves et, même, que c'est encore à lui que s'adressent les regards de mes propres élèves portés sur moi.
Cependant, Ange lui-même, qu'a-t-il fait, et à qui? N'est-il pas un maître d'école estimé, n'est-il pas un homme discret et en tout point honorable?
Nous finissons notre repas en silence, chacun de nous deux conscient des craintes qui agitent l'esprit de l'autre mais aucun n'osant en faire part ouvertement car nous sommes habitués à la paix, à l'harmonie, à l'immédiate compréhension de tout ce qui nous entoure, aussi, d'une certaine façon, notre propre peur nous répugne-t-elle, comme une incongruité.
2. On ne sait pas
Les mères de famille pressent contre leur ventre leur enfant rougissant quand j'arrive devant l'école. L'embarras malheureux de mes élèves me pince le cœur. À quelle sort de vilenie faut-il qu'ils croient soudain, me dis-je, pour ne plus oser lever les yeux sur moi alors que nous nous entendions si bien?
Je me demande, troublée : Que leur a-t-on raconté?
J'avais l'habitude de considérer qu'une mauvaise réputation n'est jamais complètement injustifiée et que, si les réactions à la renommée suspecte peuvent être disproportionnées, stupides, méchantes, ce qui les provoque est rarement contestable.
On se doute toujours, pensais-je, de quoi on est accusé. On s'en doute toujours, pensais-je. Maintenant je dois l'avouer, et je suis consciente de ma présomption, de ma sottise, et j'en ai le front brûlant: il m'est impossible de seulement entrevoir les raisons de notre mise au ban de l'école, Ange et moi.
Cela m'est impossible. Dieu sait que je cherche, Dieu sait qu'Ange, la nuit, cherche et se tourne et cherche encore et se retourne au lieu de profiter bien légitimement du sommeil nécessaire à notre tâche d'enseignants patients, fidèles, infatigables. Je devine qu'Ange ne trouve pas plus que moi de motif compréhensible, cependant nous ne parlons plus jamais de cette question, redoutant de lui donner par les paroles une réalité menaçante.
Nous nous sentons innocents mais nous avons honte.
3. Toutes ces bonnes années
Nous travaillons depuis quinze ans dans cette école. Nous aimons l'odeur des couloirs quand, le matin, encore seuls, nous ouvrons notre classe bien ordonnée et que le tableau propre, le sol brillant, l'attente modeste des objets si endurants et persévérants, toute cette tranquille constance en quelque sorte nous saute à la figure, nous rappelant amicalement qui nous sommes.
Nous travaillons là depuis quinze ans, d'abord simples collègues, puis mari et femme, c'est-à-dire qu'Ange est mon mari et que je suis, moi, Nadia, sa femme.
Nos classes sont attenantes et nous nous sommes tout naturellement accordés, sans précipitation mais sans feindre de vouloir retarder ce qui serait arrivé immanquablement. Nous aimons tous deux notre école avec une passion qui ne peut être comprise que par un petit nombre de nos semblables. Cette passion, me dis-je, n'est-elle pas trop orgueilleuse sous ses apparences de dévouement? Ne mérite-t-elle pas d'être punie, empêchée, puis réduite à une expression plus simple d'attachement à son travail?
Je me dis, sans conviction, que là peut-être réside la cause de l'antipathie brutale que nous inspirons, Ange et moi, à nos élèves, à leurs parents, à Mme la directrice, à nos voisins. Nous avons manqué d'humilité. À vouloir bien faire nous nous sommes aveuglés.
Mais, cela, est-ce une si grande faute?
Translation - English 1. When did this begin?
I sometimes have the impression, to begin with, that they are giving me funny looks. Is it really me they're after?
When I dare bring up this change in front of Ange at the dinner table, he replies, after a slight hesitation out of a sense of propriety or embarrassment, that he has noticed the same thing concerning him. Looking at me fixedly, he asks me if in my opinion it is him his students blame for something, or if, through him, they are indicating me, knowing well that I am his wife.
This question throws me. What have I done then, and to whom?
Ange's eyes are full of concern for me. He would like me to tell him that it is him and only him who is seeing the sideways looks of his students and, even, that the looks aimed at me by me own students are also meant for him.
Yet, Ange himself, what has he done, and to whom? Is he not a respected school teacher? Is he not a discreet and in all ways honourable man?
We finish our meal in silence, each of us aware of the fears troubling the other's mind, but neither daring to openly acknowledge them because we are used to peace, to harmony, to the immediate comprehension of everything going on around us. Also, in some way, our own fear is loathsome to us, like an incongruity.
2. We don't know.
The mothers press their blushing children to their stomachs when I arrive in front of the school. The miserable embarrassment of my students stabs at my heart. What kind of villainy must they suddenly believe of me, I say to myself, that they no longer dare meet my eyes when we got on so well?
Worried, I ask myself: what have they been told?
I used to consider that a bad reputation is never completely unjustified and that, while the reactions to the reputed suspect may be disproportional, stupid, vicious, what provoked them is rarely questionable.
One always knows, I thought, what one is being blamed for. One always knows it, I thought. Now - and I am aware of my presumptuousness - I must admit my foolishness, and it makes me feel feverish: it is impossible for me even to glimpse the reasons for the school's boycott of me and Ange.
This is impossible for me. Lord knows I search, Lord knows that at night Ange searches and turns and searches again and turns again instead of making the most of the well earned sleep necessary to our task as patient, faithful, untiring teachers. I figure Ange finds no more conceivable motive than I do, though we never again discuss this issue, dreading that our words might lend it an ominous reality.
We feel innocent but we are ashamed.
3. All those good years.
We have worked in this school for fifteen years. We like the smell of the corridors when, in the morning, still alone, we open our well ordered classroom and when the clean blackboard, the shining floor, the modest expectation of such resistant and persevering objects, all this peaceful continuity hits us in the face as it were, reminding us in a friendly manner who we are.
We have worked here for fifteen years, merely colleagues at first, then husband and wife – that is to say that Ange is my husband and I, Nadia, am his wife.
Our classrooms are adjoining and we got together in the most natural way, not hurriedly but without pretending to wish to delay what would have happened inevitably. We both love our school with a passion which can only be understood by a small number of our fellow teachers. This passion, I say to myself, is it not too arrogant in its guise of devotion? Doesn't it deserve to be punished, halted, and reduced to a simpler expression of attachment to one's job?
I tell myself, without conviction, that there lies the reason for the sudden antipathy Ange and I inspire in our students, in their parents, in the principal, in our neighbours. We have lacked humility. Wanting to do well, we lost sight.
But that, is it such a big failing?
Spanish to English: Extract from 'El jardin devastado' by Jorge Volpi
Source text - Spanish Ana
Conocí a Ana – la vi apenas – cuando ella estaba a punto de casarse. Con un amigo mío o, debería precisar, un nuevo amigo. Lucía radiante y exaltada. Yo tomaba un café con él, y ella llegó para llevárselo de compras: los arreglos y desarreglos de los enamorados. Me saludó con efusión y se marcharon.
No habían pasado tres meses de la boda – yo no fui requerido – cuando Ana y mi nuevo amigo ya se habían separado. Un matrimonio exprés, doble catástrofe. Nunca supe los motivos. El y yo nos distanciamos por mezquindades que no vienen a cuento y no indagué más en su efímera tragedia.
Un año después dicté una conferencia sobre Toni Negri y la afasia democrática en la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Ana me observaba entre el público. Trabajaba como reportera, me confió, pero había acudido aguijoneada por mi nombre. ¿La recordaba? Sus labios y su temple. Por supuesto.
Compartimos el resto de la tarde, tomamos unas copas – nada extraño – y me llevó a un desabrido club de salsa, aunque se resistió a bailar conmigo, qué fortuna. La acompañé a su casa por la madrugada, en la Avenida Río Churubusco, y eso fue todo.
Nos habituamos a llamarnos. Me atraía su urgencia, su brío, su voz ronca. Aunque aborrezco los teléfonos, la dejaba hablar de mis cosas y ninguna – su familia, la estupidez de los políticos, su pasión por los zapatos – sin límite de tiempo. Apenas descifraba su lógica, si acaso la tenía: era perfecta.
En su departamento, blanco y despoblado – hueca galería de museo – me presumió su colección de pipas de agua. Luego vinieron el alcohol y las pastillas. Sus temblores nocturnos y el pánico que le deparaba su recámara.
Yo no compartía sus afectos – soy un cobarde que jamás pierde el sentido – y me asombraba al verla pasar de la dulzura al llanto a la violencia, espectador único de los tres actos de su drama.
Tardé en atisbar que, detrás del brío y sus desplantes, Ana sufría.
Una noche me llamó encogida en el armario: ojos feroces la acechaban. Rescaté su cuerpo helado, besé sus párpados y me sentí infinitamente poderoso. Ana me concedía la dicha de salvarla.
Apostasía
Mi católico padre nunca me llevó a misa, tal vez porque no admitía competencia: él era el albacea de lo cierto. Harto del mundo – otro extranjero – se refugiaba en unas cuantas convicciones absolutas: la familia, Dios, el sacrificio. Me inscribió en una escuela confesional, a la cual él también había asistido, para que los hermanos apuntalasen su ortodoxia.
De adolescente padecí un breve arrebato místico: leía a Santo Tomás – pedante e inadaptado – me persignaba al pasar frente a una iglesia y cerraba los ojos ante la pornografía que traficaban en las aulas. Me figuraba apologista. Hasta que me topé con Nietzsche – una colisión, una tortura – y perdí la fe.
¿La perdí? ¿Perder lo que no exist? Esa fue mi triste rebelión, mi felonía: Dios - enaltecido sea – está enterrado. Nadie nos salva ni condena. La verdad es un acto de violencia, la culpa una enfermedad de siervos abatidos.
Una batalla de por vida. Contra mi padre. Contra mí mismo. Y, pese a mi blasfemia, no sé si la he ganado.
Translation - English Ana
I met Ana - I barely saw her - when she was about to get married. To a friend of mine or, I should specify, a new friend. She looked radiant and excited. I was having a coffee with him, and she arrived to take him off shopping: the arrangements and derangements of people in love. She greeted me warmly and they left.
Three months hadn't passed since the wedding - I wasn't invited - when Ana and my new friend had already separated. An express marriage, a double catastrophe. I never knew the reasons. He and I drifted apart because of irrelevant petty behaviour and I didn't enquire further into his ephemeral tragedy.
A year later I gave a lecture on Toni Negri and the democratic aphasia in the Faculty of Political Science and Ana noticed me amongst the crowd. She told me she was working as a reporter but she had come after being goaded by my name. Did I remember her? Her lips and her temperament. Of course.
We spent the rest of the afternoon together, we had a few drinks - nothing strange - and she brought me to a tasteless salsa club, although she was reluctant to dance with me, what luck. I accompanied her to her house in the early morning, on the Avenida Río Churubusco, and that was all.
We got into the habit of calling one another. I was attracted to her urgency, her spirit, her husky voice. Although I loathe telephones, I used to let her talk about a thousand things and nothing - her family, the stupidity of politicians, her passion for shoes - with no time limit. I could barely figure out her logic, if she had any: she was perfect.
In her apartment, white and uninhabited - a vacant museum gallery - she showed off her collection of water pipes to me. Later came the alcohol and pills. Her nocturnal shaking and the panic which her bedroom contained for her.
I didn't share her affections - I'm a coward who never loses his head - and I was astonished to see her go from sweetness to tears to violence, a lone spectator of her play in three acts.
It took me a long time to understand that, behind her spirit and self-confidence, Ana was suffering.
One night she called me from the wardrobe she had shrunk into: ferocious eyes were spying on her. I rescued her frozen body, kissed her eyelids and felt infinitely powerful. Ana granted me the pleasure of saving her.
Apostasy
My catholic father never brought me to mass, perhaps because he would not accept competition: he was the executor of what was right. Sick of the world - another outsider - he took refuge in so many absolute convictions: family, God, sacrifice. He enrolled me in a religious school, which he had also attended, so that the brothers would take note of his orthodoxy.
As an adolescent I underwent a brief mystical fit: I read Saint Thomas - pretentious and maladjusted - I crossed myself on passing in front of a church and closed my eyes before the pornography being traded in the classrooms. I imagined myself an apologist. Until I ran into Nietzsche - a collision, a torture - and I lost my faith.
Did I lose it? Lose that which does not exist? That was my dismal rebellion, my felony: God - be he praised - is buried. Nobody saves nor condemns us. Truth is an act of violence, guilt a sickness of dispirited slaves.
A struggle for life. Against my father. Against myself. And, despite my blasphemy, I don't know if I've won it.
French to English (University of Dublin, Trinity College) Spanish to English (University of Dublin, Trinity College)
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Having studied French and Spanish to BA level in university, I then read for a Masters in Literary Translation in Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. I obtained a Distinction in this MPhil which is the highest possible result for this postgraduate course. I have been translating throughout my five years of college and hope to spend many more years thus intimately involved with languages. Shortly after graduation I was awarded a fellowship with Dalkey Archive Press in the US who publish more foreign literature in translation than any other Anglophone publisher. During my time there I translated several short stories for two of their Best European Short Fiction series and a novel by Claude Ollier amongst various other work. I have just completed a translation of a Spanish novel which is awaiting publication.
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