I thoroughly enjoyed reading the short story Ace by Antonio Di Benedetto, in Ester Allen’s translation. I haven’t read much South American literature, and I believe this to be the first Argentine short story I have read. Surprisingly, it was a much smoother experience than I had expected, as I thought I would experience some difficulties understanding some culturally specific concepts. In fact, I was brought to a whole new and fresh world featuring the little town where Ace takes place, many card/chess games in names I have never heard of: escoba, tute, brisca, and truco, and a culture of gambling behind the bars, and just an overall mysterious air that is different from what I had experienced through reading literature from the East. 

As smooth as my transition to this literature piece was where not too many foreign words or concepts hinder my reading flow, I really appreciated the Spanish words Ester Allen kept in the story such as the “por favor” and “señora” or “señorita”. These words help bringing me into the social dynamic of that culture as if it puts me in a house in Argentina and I can see how the master and the girl, or the girl’s mother, dynamically move and interact in the house. I hope this doesn’t come off sounding like a far-fetched statement, as this is truly how those remaining Spanish words helped me to immerse myself in the story. I also agree with the usage of the ellipses in the story for how they help delineate Leyes’s secretive and mysterious demeanor through the slow speech. 

 

For the first guest lecture, we had Gabriella Page-Fort join us for the first guest lecture from amazon crossing, an Amazon branch with the motto of “Amazon Crossing introduces readers to authors from around the world with translations of international books, making award-winning and best-selling books accessible to new readers.” on its official website. 

I have never heard of Amazon crossing before Professor Elliot introduced us to our lovely guest speaker, nor have I had a single idea of how publishing works, especially literature from authors abroad and translated works. In her slideshow, Gabriella presented numerous books with their covers shown on the powerpoint, while sharing with us the story of the books’ publication. Listening to the diverse paths each book in translation made its presence to the world, I learned the industrial side of the job of a translator. Before, the translators seem to be those who read a ton, pick out work they resonate with the most and write them in another language, and that work will somehow magically appear on a foreign land. Today, I learned that translators can reach out to both the original author and the publisher to promote oneself and surface a work. As opposed to a translator’s work being passively discovered and promoted, knowing that translators have such autonomy to decide what they want to translate (with certain strings attached, of course) and the ability to take initiative (and perhaps thus take control of their income in a way) is reassuring. 

Although I am not currently thinking of making a living out of translating, this guest lecture with Gabrielle provided excellent insight into the translated literature publishing world and demystified the behind-the-scenes operations between writing and seeing the book on the shelf for me. I found this guest lecture to be overall very helpful, and am grateful for her generous gift. 

P.s. When picking the book, I wanted to get Liu Xinwu’s The Wedding Party, but I told myself that I’m going to take this chance and step out of my reading comfort zone of East Asian literature and explore works of authors from the other continents. I am content with and excited to read The Murmur of Bees.  

 

Jiayi