Eleanor Stanford is the author of História, História: Two Years in the Cape Verde Islands (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography) and The Book of Sleep (Carnegie Mellon Press). Her poems and essays have also appeared in Poetry, The Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, and many others. She lives in the Philadelphia area. More at www.eleanorstanford.com
Her essay "Your Sweet Words, José: Translations from the Portuguese" appears in Issue Forty-Four of The Collagist.
Here, Eleanor Stanford talks with interviewer William Hoffacker about translations, socioeconomic divides, and the music of language.
1. Could you please discuss the origins of “Your Sweet Words, José”?
It grew out of my experiences talking with my in-laws’ housekeeper, who is an undocumented worker from Brazil. My family and I lived with my in-laws (who also happen to be Brazilian) for a summer, after we ourselves had just moved back from a year in Brazil, and I spent a lot of time chatting with the housekeeper while she made the beds or mopped the floor. Kind of awkward and weird, but after living in Brazil, I was, for better and for worse, a bit more comfortable with the socioeconomic divide that is largely taken for granted in that culture.
2. What is your first priority when working in the medium of translating someone else’s words? Please explain.
My first priority is being faithful to the feeling and to the cadences of the speech, rather than the literal meaning of the words. Even in calling this piece “translations” rather than “a translation,” I was trying to suggest this sense of multiple possible versions, and the impossibility of a single definitive translation.
3. Have you found that lessons learned from your work as a poet have influenced the way you write translations (or creative nonfiction, in general)? How so?
Definitely. In any genre, it is a similar process for me: I am trying to find the music of the language.
4. What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m working on a novel, set in Brazil in 1968, about a young medical student who gets involved in the guerrilla resistance to the dictatorship and is forced to flee her parents’ home in São Paulo.
5. What have you read recently that you would like to recommend?
I recently read and very much enjoyed Michael Pollan’s new book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. Also Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas (which I reread, as I was teaching it for a class); Mumbai New York Scranton, a charming, quirky memoir by Tamara Shopsin that includes drawings and photos; the novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, by Mohsin Hamid; The Pharmacist’s Mate, by Amy Fusselman; and Matthew Dickman’s latest collection of poems, Mayakovsky’s Revolver.