Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

Spain Gives Junot's Translation a Nod, Again.
August 17, 2008

 More good news for Random House’s Spanish translation of Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The translation by Achy Obejas, got another big write up in Spain’s papers.This time in the literary blog called El Escorpion in El Mundo. The Spaniards, who tend to be pretty darn picky about any type of Castellano that doesn’t read or sound like theirs (for example: dubbing Mexican films like Y tu mama tambien) have really enjoyed talking about this book. .

I’ll translate a salient segment of the blog:

Without a doubt, the most surprising and stimulating aspects of this novel is the text. That despite being an English translation, it sounds unusually free in Spanish: mixing slangs, mixing languages, mixing tones, mixing vulgarities and gongorisms, archaic and corrupted language, just mixing what works;  ultimately, one receives the noise of the street or of stupefied hearts with a clarity that’s slightly disconcerting. At the same time, the writing is like a party: we’re in Paterson, we’re they’re poorer than rats and happier than Christmas. On the same note, a good part of the Spanish of this kind of literature seems rigid, overly conscious of itself, with a bowtie and an opening speech, ceremonious in its lack of inventiveness, tacky in its casino. And I’m not only referring to the language of elders: sometimes the young ones are even stiffer. In conclusion, for those who read it, let’s see what you think of these winds on our language, now that lately this is what it’s about…

Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on August 17, 2008 | Comments (0)