Collective residencies / Poetry translation between catalan, Basque and Galician / Olot
MARÍA ALONSO SEISDEDOS
From Friday, 1 April 2022 to Friday, 8 April 2022
Bio
Graduated in Philosophy and Letters (Philology Division, Hispanic Philology Section) from the UAB (1984) and in Philology (Galician-Portuguese Philology Section) from USC (1988).
In 1986 she started translating audiovisuals for dubbing and subtitling. In 2009 she made her debut as a literary translator with O museo da innocencia (Masumiyet müzesi), by Orhan Pamuk, in collaboration with Bartuk Aykan, which was recognized with the award of the Association of Writers in Galician Language to the Best Translation of that year. Since then, she has faced various works of literature for adults and children and youth. For the Galician version of Ulises by James Joyce (together with his colleagues Eva Almazán, Antón Vialle and Xavier Queipo), she received the National Award for Best Translation 2014 granted by the Ministry of Culture, Education and Sports in Spain. I Xela Arias Award from the Galician Association of Translation and Interpreting Professionals in 2018.
Project
I’ll revise and try to improve and old own translation of Miguel Martí i Pol’s work, Vint-i-set poemes en tres temps, into Galician.
Translating poetry in a shared space and time
Darrera cada porta
hi ha gent que agita cascavells
ran mateix del fondal temptador
de les paraules.
Miquel Marti i Pol: Vint-i-set poemes en tres temps, Edicions 62, 1972.
I remembered it from time to time. In the drawer lay that bundle of pages, twenty-seven and one, as if buried: another life that hadn’t been. I translated them, the poems, because I felt close to them, despite the seemingly immeasurable distance that separated me from the man who had written them. Maybe, too, deep down, because I thought they’d open for me the door to the future that I dreamed of; also, because I was young and shy and had no weapons that would allow me to say out loud: “this is what I want”. I don’t know if now, that I’m no longer that young, I have got them. It does’nt matter. I, too, climbed slowly, without raising my voice, up the stairs. And the door is now open.
Behind the door were others like me, translators, veterans or begginners, all with the same fears and insecurities, and no certainty, walking in the shadow of the words of others, and in front of a window that painted the colors of the days as days are: gray and calm and blue and vivid, colder or warmer, as a frame for the meeting.
When we were together, we talked about poetry, about translating poetry, about the rocky and dimly lit path that doesn’t always lead to the right word, about the indispensable doubts about not betraying the original, because we don’t have a vocation for treason. We talked about poetry, about translating poetry, in the Faberllull room, at breakfasts and lunches and dinners. We talked about poetry at the top of the volcanoes, on the terrace near the sswimming pool, on the paths and sidewalks, in the middle of the beech forest of Jordà, where we also kept quiet to draw the ochres or to listen to the shy singing birds.
We translated poems when we were alone, in the silence of the room, in the enclosed space where the spirit grows devouring and becoming the spirit of others.