Well, this can work in the following ways:
1. I can reach out to more readers.
2. I wouldn't have to hire a translator.
3. That would be something to add to the CV (curriculum vitae).
Now, I had two reasons for this thought:
1. I had taken a course in grad school on literary translation, AND
2. I've been practicing Spanish lately (reading, writing, AND speaking--my voice was sore earlier from spending 30-60 minutes on the Duolingo app).
In hindsight, there's still work to do when it comes to learning Spanish, but sometime in the future, anything would be possible.
Learning Literary Translation
During my last semester at Our Lady of the Lake University (grad school) back in Spring 2018, I took a class on Literary Translation. The idea behind literary translating was to understand the ways of translating a text that was a different language. Most of the texts that we translated were in Spanish; and we were allowed to use any means of translating that reflected our studies. (By the way, I would treat Google Translate as a last resort, because one: I knew some Spanish; and two: a physical dictionary tends to outperform Google Translate all the time, because the responses aren't robotic or (excuse my French) half-assed.)
And during that time, we were supposed to work on a big project on our own, and give a presentation on it. The big project was basically doing one of the following:
1. Translating 5 poems
2. Translating a chapter from a book, OR
3. Writing an essay on one of the translating techniques that we had learned from our textbook
And we had a pretty good textbook called The Translation Studies Reader (3rd ed.),
Fun fact: For my project, I had decided to translate a text from Dutch to English. The main reason (or the method to my madness) was because with the homework assignments that we were given (which was translating from Spanish to English) were too easy for me, and I wanted to challenge myself a bit. And my instructor, Dr. Octavio Quintanilla, was totally on board with that! Thus, my project had covered four or five poems written in Dutch; and it was quite fun, because I was curious about the language prior to taking the class--here was what happened: After watching YouTube videos on Sesamstraat (Dutch equivalent of Sesame Street) and Het Zandkasteel (translated from Dutch as "The Sandcastle"), I saw all that as inspiration for my school project.
Duolingo
Now, I'll fast-forward to this past February (2019), I had found this app called Duolingo.
The app is free, unless you subscribe to Duolingo Plus, which gives you unlimited lives, shows you exclusive progress reports, and has no ads. Even though the app offers a free trial, I tend to stick with the free version, despite having the ads.
Since I had used the app in February, I've been doing better and better in speaking Spanish (By the way, you can choose from many languages on the app; but for now, I'm sticking with Spanish). I like that the lessons are consistent; and the visuals and audio are pretty good. I tell ya! It's more fun and interesting than any Spanish course that I've taken in the past. (That's just my opinion, because high school, as I may have mentioned in a past blog post, wasn't really fun for me.)
Going back to my book series...
So, I go back to the question of whether or not I'll translate my work. That would be nice to do; that can happen. Although, I still need to perfect my Spanish, you know? I need to learn the language 100%, before I even think to translate my work. However, I can still see that happening in the future.
You never know... there may be a Delfin Princesa in the future...
Veronica Gonzalez
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