Class has been moved to eleven o’clock! Boy do I need that extra hour! Originally I thought maybe I’d get up early and go to school to use the internet, but I’m so far behind on sleep that my body won’t let me get up until the last minute.
Breakfast hardly seems like enough fuel, so I make sure to add a few glasses of juice. One of piña and one of melocotón—my favorites. Then it’s off to school.
I’m really enjoying the chance to hear other people’s translations. It’s nice to know that other groups are working with the same obstacles we are. Specifically, Carin and Cortney and I have found it difficult to work with particular verb tenses. We run into trouble when verb tenses don’t agree. For example, with the poem Noturno, the Spanish text uses the subjunctive tense—a particular verb conjugation that is very uncommon and used very differently in English. The trick becomes how to convey the meaning carried by the choice to use that particular verb tense… yes, it’s all very poetic.
We are, for the most part, encouraged by the suggestions we received on our first poem, but our second poem seems to be a bit of a tougher nut to crack. This untitled poem, which we refer to as Gatomaquia (that’s the first word of the poem), has a more abstract structure that breaks up the lines of the poem into seven sections. While this makes the text appear easier to translate (it looks deceptively like less work), in actuality, each sentence will stand alone, like a snapshot, and there’s no way we can leave any line with a weak translation.
Cortney really saves the day on this poem. I think she’s been nervous about how to contribute, she’s a first year Spanish student, and just as I feel intimidated by the exceptional education some of the other students have had, so must Cortney. She shouldn’t worry at all! Cortney is one of the brightest girls I know, and an incredibly hard worker. Every time we meet, Cortney comes ready with every possible definition of words and phrases, and she does research! Today, Cortney gifts us with this tidbit:
Gatomaquia is actually the name of a theatrical work by Lope de Vega (mentioned in our poem). I believe Cortney describes it as the original “Cats.” Suddenly it all comes together…
This particular piece describes a special characteristic of Rome: the incredible stray cat population. Though we’ve seen quite a few stray cats in Cádiz, we have been assured by other students who have been to Rome before, as well as by Giuseppe, that nothing can prepare us for the cats of Rome… for the Gatomaquia Romana.
Here is the original text in Spanish:
1
Gatomaquia romana. ¡Qué poema
hubiera escrito aquí Lope de Vega!
2
Gatos en las columnas asombradas.
3
La vieja loba madre
ha sido derrotada por los gatos.
4
Rómulo y Remo bajan por la noche
para mamar la leche de las gatas
y jugar con los gatos por los Foros.
5
Gatos nocturnes en la Roma antigua.
Parecen esperar entre las sombras
la caricia sonámbula
de Baudelaire.
6
Hoy me pasó rozándome la frente
un gato muerto negro.
Venía
de la última ventana de un palacio.
7
En vez de la princesa,
en vez del duque,
hoy sale por la puerta derruida
un gran gato sarnoso.
With this poem, we encounter a lot of in-fighting. None of us are having an easy time working with the original text because of the sentence structure and with some of the lines we have three different understandings. We also have very different opinions regarding what sounds good in English. For instance, Alberti references the great myth of Rome, the adoption of Romulus and Remus by a wolf. Alberti writes, “La vieja loba madre” which literally, word-for-word, translates to “The old wolf (female) mother.” We translate this to “the old mother she-wolf.” Carin hates it. Cortney and I think it’s funny. It gets worse. Alberti repeats the word “gatos” more than a few times in his original text. Carin does not want us to repeatedly use the word “cats” in our English translation. Because words in Spanish have gender, when Alberti uses “gatos” (male) and “gatas” (female) they could actually be considered two different words. The only way to recreate this in English is “he-cats” and “she-cats.” Carin also hates this. In fact, this pisses her off big time. So, Cortney and I suggest “tom-cats” and “she-cats.” That’s a no go. Things are not looking better…
With the help of the rest of the class, we settle on “she-wolf,” and scrap “tomcats” for “kittens,” leaving only a few repetitions of the word “cats.” We may have reached a compromise. However, the joke of she-wolves, she-cats, and tomcats may never die.
Our bigger problem actually lies with our mistranslation of section six. We incorrectly understand it to mean a cat grazed the front of the speaker, the cat being described as deathly black. As it turns out, it’s a dead cat, which is black in color, whose body falls and grazes the forehead of the speaker. Whoops. This is why we consult the class and the professors!
Here is our final English translation:
1
Gattomachia romana: what a poem
might Lope de Vega have written here!
2
Cats among astonished columns.
3
The old she-wolf
has been defeated by the cats.
4
Romulus and Remus descend into the night
to nurse on the milk of cats
and play with kittens in the Forum.
5
Nocturnal cats in ancient Rome.
It seems they are waiting within the shadows
the somnambulant caress
of Baudelaire.
6
Today a dead black cat
grazed my forehead.
He was coming
from the highest window of a palace.
7
Instead of the princess,
instead of the duke,
today, through the demolished door,
passes a great mangy cat.
Back at the house Isabel has prepared the most garlic infused meal I’ve ever eaten. We eat garlic soup and then some sort of cauliflower hash, with garlic. I eat and then turn in for a siesta. I’m taking a day off from the beach and I’m going to catch up on sleep. I crash for four hours, waking up just in time to go meet Tony and the other Spanish students for office hours at Plaza de Mina.
Tonight most of the group is meeting at Plaza Fragela to eat at a little Italian restaurant where the pizza is supposed to be good. I walk down there with a few of the girls, but duck off on my own to get cash and when I make it back to the Plaza everyone has arrived and is already seated. I sit with Amy and Becky and Nicolas, the Frenchman (which is what I insist on calling him). Amy and I order the ravioli de salmón, which is okay, and we hatch a plan for the evening.
Of course we end up at the beach, of course! But the group breaks up and only a few of us end up heading back into town. I refuse to go back to the Irish bar, despite the fact that the poor bar-tenders we’ve seen the last three nights are not working tonight. Mostly I just want to do something different. We end up at a small tavern called the Woodstock, where, sadly, the have decorated using only posters and paraphernalia from bands that didn’t actually play at Woodstock…
The bar is horribly smoky, but the music is good (classic rock), but I try to make it an early night and head home before closing—for once!
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