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Traduciendo al Inglés a Roberto Bolaño [ENG]

Natasha Wimmer ha sido la traductora al inglés de tres obras del escritor chileno Roberto Bolaño. Durante una breve entrevista habla sobre la hipotaxis en la prosa de Bolaño, la ciudad de México en la configuarción de Los Detectives Salvajes y dos detalles sobre la traducción de escenas sexuales en la obra de Bolaño.

Uno de esos aspectos:

Metió los dedos hasta el fondo, la chica gimió y alzó la grupa, sintió que sus yemas palpaban algo que instantáneamente nombró con la palabra estalagmita.

He pushed his fingers all the way in, the girl moaned and raised her haunches, he felt the tips of his fingers brush something to which he instantly gave the name stalagmite.

I don’t keep early drafts of translations, but do I remember some of the decisions I made. The word that gave me most trouble was ‘grupa’, which literally means a horse’s hindquarters. I wanted to preserve the farmyard connotations, which give the sentence an extra jolt of dirtiness. Another possibility might have been ‘rump’, but there’s something more suggestive and sexual about ‘haunches’. The rest was fairly straightforward, once the decision had been made (at the start of this short chapter) to respect the often ungainly length of the sentences. Reading it over now, it occurs to me that the effect is almost of breathlessness, or panting, which is certainly appropriate in the context.


Enlace: Translating Sex - Granta Magazine


UPDATE: Al parecer este problema con Bolaño también ocurrió al traducirlo al japonés.