fadeaccompli

A rather literal and only slightly tidied-up translation of a Pablo Neruda poem. I can't properly do it justice, but it is just too damn awesome not to share an attempt.


Cortez

Cortez has no people, he's a cold lightning bolt,
his heart dead inside his armor.
"Fertile lands, my lord and king,
temples in which studded gold
lies in the Indian's hands."

Now arrive destroying daggers, knocking over
the low lands; the stampeding hordes--
the mountain ranges of the perfumes
stopping their troop between orchids
and coronations of pines--
running over the jasmines,
until the gates of Tlaxcala.

(Terrified brother, do not take
as a friend the pink vulture--
from the moss I tell you, from
the roots of our kingdom.
It will rain blood tomorrow,
the tears will be liable to
form clouds, vapor, rivers,
until our eyes melt.)

Cortez receives a dove,
receives a pheasant, a zither
from the musicians of the monarch,
but he wants the room of gold,
he wants another passage, and it all falls
into the chests of the voracious men.

The king leans out from the balcony:
"He is my brother," he says. The stones
of the people fly in response,
and Cortez sharpens daggers
across the betrayed kisses.

Return to Tlaxcala; the wind has brought
a deaf rumor of sufferings.

Prepositions are troubling me.

The thing about Spanish prepositions is that as soon as you get away from the very literal/physical ones describing the position and movement of two physical objects in actual space, they stop meshing with English prepositions quite so well. It's a little subtle thing, and it's usually clear from context, but--it's one of those places where my ability to express myself in a language starts sliding behind my reading/listening comprehension.

All those little places where there's an "a" and I would have expected a "con", or a "de" when I thought it would be a "por"... Spanish is not just English with different words. Spanish is not just English with different words and a different way of handling verbs. Spanish is not just English with different words and a different way of handling verbs and adjectives on the other side of nouns and some quirky idioms and gendered nouns and...

I am also troubled by the words that I just can't find in my dictionary, and can't find a close-enough word to guess at. But vocab is one of those things I just have to pick up over time; I'm still slowly getting used to the words for shoulder, to tie up, wild beast, tangle, bug, shoreline, motorboat, to be in the habit of doing, compass--all those words that show up over and over again until I reach for the dictionary to look them up for the sixth time and realize I remember what it means.

But vocab I have the dictionary for. It's those prepositions that are gonna get me.

pómulos: cheekbones
pantano: swamp
voraz: voracious
sanguijuela: leech
descalza: barefoot
a raudales: in abundance
amparo: shelter
cal: quicklime
ron: rum


Words not in the dictionary:

callejuelas (alleys?)


End of chapter four! I have now ordered this book to have my own copy, since there's no way in hell I'm going to be finishing it before it's due back at the library, and I'd like to be able to underline words and make notes in the margins for convenience.

I did not exactly breeze through chapter three, but "El Abominable Hombre de la Selva" was a relatively brisk read compared to some that came before. This was equal parts that Kate Cold is a delight to read about and that I've stopped looking up every vocabulary word I'm not sure about; if I'm pretty sure of what it means from context, onward I go.

I was absurdly proud to recall what 'albóndigas' were.

The liberal use of similes in this book are a mixed blessing; they're nicely evocative, but they're a lot harder to work out from context than the straightforward descriptions. But I like the rivers in the jungle sliding around like luminous serpents, so I think overall I am for them.

Onward through chapter four, "El Río Amazonas". Which is making me somewhat nostalgic for my time in the jungle.

Fun vocab:

llanto: crying
descalza: barefoot
escasa: scarce
hueso: bone
moler: crush
añicos: smithereens
aniquilar: to overwhelm
desangrarse: to bleed to death
puñetazo: a punch
farfullar: to jabber
mascullar: to mutter

Words my dictionary didn't have:

ablanzó (a verb, and an action one, but the nearest I can find is "ablandar" which makes no sense in context: pushed? charged?)
destripó (another action verb: shredded? tore?)
solía (seems to mean 'alone' or 'only' in context)

Chapter one finished!

Alexander Cold despertó al amanecer sobresaltado por una pesadilla. (Alexander Cold woke at dawn frightened by a nightmare.)

I've just started the first chapter of one of the very few YA fantasy (I think? It might just be general adventure) novels that I was able to find at the Austin City Library branch that boasted the most Spanish books. As I suspected, the main problem appears to be that 90% of the books available, at least in elementary and YA categories of fiction, are translated from English. (Two were translated from German, which was at least nice for the novelty.)

This is apparently the first YA book by the author, Isabel Allende. I confess that I am slightly bemused to find that the protagonist is named Alexander Cold--his parents are Lisa and John--but if I'm running around slapping Czech names on my fantasy protagonists, why shouldn't an author from Chile put English names on hers?

Attempting to decipher unfamiliar vocabulary from context has been rough going so far, as the first paragraph starts by recounting a dream the protagonist had. And it's not encouraging that I had to look up three words in the first sentence alone... But, hey, if it were easy, it wouldn't be instructive.