The translator highlighted that Vallejo gave her “a lot of creative freedom” when it came to translating her texts into English.
The English version of the successful essay ‘Infinity in a reed’, by Irene Vallejotitled ‘Papyrus’ for the English-speaking market, This took the award for best translation into English. of a work in Spanish in 2023, an award granted each year by the Queen Sophia Institute.
Vallejo’s work, an unprecedented editorial success for an essay of more than 400 pages which has sold more than a million copies, has been translated into English by Charlotte Whittle, whom the jury highlighted has known how to “balance erudition and informality, boldly navigating the changes in register and tone” of the original work.
Whittlewho takes home the $10,000 prize, is an experienced translator and editor with two PEN translation awards to his credit, and explained to EFE that translating Vallejo’s work into English took him approximately a year of work, mostly during the pandemic, so it was “great company” for him at that time.
He highlighted that Vallejo gave him “a lot of creative freedom” when it came to translating his texts into English., especially the quotes from classical Greco-Roman authors, which Vallejo herself translated into Spanish; She explained that tradition says that we must look for the most canonical versions of these authors, but she found them too “nineteenth-century” and heavily burdened by all kinds of censorship, so she discarded them.
He pointed out that the most difficult challenge of translating Vallejo was power as the author. “maintain the intimate tone without losing the light pace of the language or abandoning the complexity of the ideas”and to achieve all this earned her some advice from the author herself: think of the book as a work of oral tradition.
The award ceremony took place at King Juan Carlos College of New York University, and was attended by the other finalists: Katie Whittemore, translator of ‘Piel de Lobo’ (Lara Moreno); Daniel Hahn, translator of ‘No fire ever’ (Damiela Eltit), and Isabel Adey and Charlotte Coombe, translators of ‘In December the breezes arrive’ (Marvel Moreno).