World Literature Today – July 01, 2019

ESSAY

Translating Cuba in the

Twenty-First Century

by Vanessa Garcia

Through conversations with several translators, Vanessa Garcia explores the intentions and

challenges of those working through a coded world of censorship to bring Cuba to light.

I

f we look at the etymology of the word translation,

it comes from translatus, which means to carry

across, to bring over. Literary translations carry

us across language, people, and cultures. But the

brave and swift-tongued who are translating Cuba right

now are carrying a heavier load still. They are carrying

an island across a slippery border, swimming in misper-

ception. They are working through a coded world of

censorship and trying to bring an island to light. An

island that has, for so long, lived in darkness.

Among these translators are Achy Obejas, Alexis

Romay, Eduardo Aparicio, Kristin Dykstra, Dick Cluster,

and Anna Kushner, among others. Without these decod-

ers, the voice of an island would be lost in the battle

between surface and reality. The English-speaking world

would not have access to greats like Heberto Padilla,

Leonardo Padura, and sharp new voices like Wendy

Guerra, Rita Indiana (Dominican), or Marcial Gala.

“But the power of literature is irrepressible,” says

Eduardo Aparicio, president of Aparicio Publishing, and

most recently the English-Spanish translator of Richard

Blanco’s Looking for the Gulf Motel. “There’s a reason

why tyrants ban books and authors. Literature is power-

ful, mind-changing, life-changing, world-changing,” he

continues.

Aparicio goes against the usual current of Cuban

translation, which moves from Spanish to English. He

translates, instead, into Spanish—books from exiled

Carrying a People

Across a Watery Divide

above Isla (la otra

orilla), 2013, by

Cuban artist Yoan

Capote. Oil, fish-

hooks, and nails on

panel of canvas

and plywood,

104 x 154 x 8 cm

32 W LT SUMMER 2019