The fault is not in the stars

The following is a digest of a paper that I read at the International Conference on Translation, University of the Philippines, October 25, 2014. It gains resonance in the publication of three translations of John Green’s novels and the forthcoming Philippines International Literary Festival to be held August 28-29 at Raffles Hotel in Makati. My Filipino translation of Marivi Soliven’s novel, The Mango Bride, will also be published next week.

1. What made you accept the translation job for The Fault In Our Stars?

I have long wanted to translate books that many Filipinos will read. I wanted to translate the Noli and Fili into modern Filipino. But since my Spanish is rusty, that will still take ages to do. So when I met again our Ateneo alumna Xandra Ramos at the launch of Manila Noir, she asked me if I could translate John Green’s novel.  I said, let me read the book first.

 John Green is a master of plotting and characterization. His characters are people, fully-fleshed and full-bodied. You can see them breathing in front of you. He also has  philosophical depth. And for those who chastise me for translating a “mere”  romantic novel, please read first the novel by John Green. It is a brave and unflinching look at the polarities of love and death, seen from the lens of two young and bright  people,  who happen to be in love.

 2. What was the most challenging aspect of translating this popular work?

 The most challenging aspect was getting the tone right, the voices of the teenagers when they speak, as well as rendering the exposition into Filipino.

It helped that I taught English and Creative Writing to American students at  Rutgers University in New Jersey in 2001, when I was on a post-Fulbright Scholarship training program. Moreover, I have been teaching at Ateneo de Manila University for almost 30 years and have taught at  least two generations of English-speaking, Hollywood-watching, students. I also  have a teenaged nephew in the house, as well as my adopted daughter who is  turning 12. I eavesdropped surreptitiously in their conversations, how they speak, their idioms and turns of phrase, the very words they use.

But what really horrified me was when I saw that the novel had excerpts from  William Shakespeare, Williams Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and  T.S. Eliot. I almost burst my blood vessels translating these four difficult  writers. The excerpts from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,  Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” Stevens’ “Seven Ways of Looking at a  Blackbird,” and Eliot’s “The Wasteland” haunt me still.  May God forgive me if I did not do justice to their works, but I tried, I translated their poems with fear and trembling!  

3. The translation has received a varied response, with some people saying that a Filipino translation is not needed. Some are saying that the translation should have been more “current.” How would you respond to these comments?

Some people say a Filipino translation is not needed because they themselves can only read in English. Really? Most of the ones who blasted me in social media have awful grammar themselves. One of them asked: “Why did you translated this novel into Filipino? It will cheapened the novel.” Really!

I have taught for three decades and this is what I have learned: those who are good in English are also generally good in Filipino because they have had good  teachers in both languages, in their grade schools and high schools.

Why can’t we have a translation when John Green’s novel has been translated in  so many other languages? Why deprive those who want to read in Filipino to  read in Filipino? After all, I am not offering a haphazard translation. For example, I did not follow strict Filipino grammar especially in the dialogues, to make the novel contemporary. I used “Nakakakilig naman si Augustus Waters,” and not  because, frankly my dear, I haven’t heard someone in the throes of love say, “Nakakikilig ka naman!”

As to the question of current Filipino, I suggest they read the complete novel of John Green. He likes to twin together words to produce a startling contrast. He is also a master of the long and difficult sentence. The people complaining, when  you read their comments in social media, have such limited vocabulary and they write fragmentary sentences. And lastly, John Green is a master of  lyricism. How do you match a lyrical sentence in English. With, I hope, an equally lyrical sentence in Filipino, which our “Americanized” Filipino youth would call shallow and superficial. I guess they are not describing the act of translation: they were describing themselves.

What you read in a text, as one wit said, is a reflection of yourself. If you say the Filipino language cannot capture philosophical ideas, or cannot capture the sweep of lyricism, or the argot of the young, then why not read the original novel first and compare it with the Filipino translation?

I thought that this issue has been laid to rest four decades ago, when the brilliant poet Rolando S. Tinio wrote his poems, from English to mestizo poems to Tagalog, and when the pioneering philosopher Fr. Roque J. Ferriols translated and wrote books on philosophy in the native tongue.

Well, reading the blast of ignorantia in the social media makes you sad that they – or their teachers – have not been dazzled by the golden images and ideas from Tinio and Ferriols. What a pity!

And I am glad to report to you that all 5,000 copies of my translation were sold out in less than three weeks. It landed in the bestseller’s list of National Bookstore. We are now in our second printing, or is it now the  third?, and copies of the translation are still flying off the shelves of National Book Store. 

I do not know how you can argue with that. 

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