In Víctor Hugo Ortega’s “The Most Beautiful Statue,” from his collection Elogio del Maracanazo, we begin with the overwhelming recollection of a car accident, only to have the narrator pull the rug out from under our feet. It’s not a tale of a traffic collision, but instead a dizzying descent into memory, taking us from anime to a bizarre but delightful encounter between a football team and a statue of Nobel winner Gabriela Mistral.
While these associations may seem eclectic, the backdrop of the city of Santiago unites these disparate elements, as is true elsewhere in Ortega’s work. His prose and poetry thematize the city, while grounding it in the specificity of Santiago and Chile to interrogate the question of chilenidad, or Chilean identity. Following the estallido social, the mass protests that erupted across the country in 2019, the country is in the process of rewriting its Pinochet-era constitution, and the question of what exactly it means to be a Chilean in Chile right now is all the more pressing. As Ortega’s translator, I spoke to him about his interest in the transient nature of the city, the theme of chilenidad, the specificity of Chilean Spanish, and his personal interest in a collaborative translation process.
Georgina Fooks (GF): I want to begin this conversation by talking about the first story of yours I translated, “The Most Beautiful Statue,” which is from your first translated collection, Elogio del Maracanazo (into Portuguese and Italian). For me, this story—as well as the book as a whole—emphasizes a number of essential themes that come up in your work: the specifically Chilean setting, TV, poetry, football. Why did you decide to have this text translated first? Does it have any special significance for your body of work as a whole?
Víctor Hugo Ortega (VHO): The truth is that it happened somewhat by chance. Someone wrote to me about translating an excerpt of the titular story into Portuguese, for an illustration and writing project they were running on Instagram. I agreed, and after a few conversations, this person ended up being one of the translators of the Brazilian edition. It all happened quickly from there. This connection is a consequence of the unusual trajectory the book has had—which, as you know, began as a self-published book in 2013. Everything that has happened with it, from then to now, has been very special.
The story you translated, “The Most Beautiful Statue,” has a unique place in the text, because it brings together themes that don’t appear to have any natural connection: Gabriela Mistral and football. But it turns out that both of these themes are connected to one of the main character’s memories, which happens in a specific area of the city. And the city is a very important presence in the story and the book—I think in everything I write. It must be because I am constantly wandering the city, since I live very far from it and travel there every day for work. I’m talking about Santiago, a city you knew when you were in Chile. Was it difficult to translate such a local story? Did it remind you of your time in Santiago?
GF: The translation process taught me a great deal because the story functions on multiple narrative levels—you have an introspective protagonist who is active and present in the narration of the text, but there’s also a very sensory, vibrant description of the surroundings. It also offers a wide variegation of cultural touchstones. The juxtaposition of Mistral and football interests me, because even though they seem like such different themes, they are both essential for the version of chilenidad (or Chilean-ness) that you offer in the text—an authentic chilenidad that comes from you as a writer, introspective and separate from stereotypes or popular tropes.
It reminded me of my time in Santiago, walking around everyday neighborhoods where people live, instead of the typical tourist neighborhoods. Traversing the city on foot, for me, is a way of learning to write it—to understand and remember the city in a physical and mental capacity, to live it instead of just visiting. Your story transports the reader to Santiago in that sense. You’ve told me before that your poetry collection, Latinos del sur, depicts a Santiago that no longer exists. What changes have you noticed lately? Are they related to the estallido social [the mass protests of 2019–20 in Chile] or something more fundamental?
VHO: It seems nearly all poetry writes of places that no longer exist [laughs]. I think that condition of peripateticism, in a sense similar to an idea by the great Chilean photographer Sergio Larraín, is present in nearly all of my work, whether it be fiction, poetry, or essays. A few years ago, a letter Larraín wrote to his nephew was published, with his recommendations for dedicating yourself to photography, and one of his recurring pieces of advice is to wander and wander through unknown places until the images come to you. It’s a good way to approach places from another point of view, even if it’s the same corner by your house or a place you’ve passed thousands of times, like in the case of “The Most Beautiful Statue.”
With regards to Santiago, I have to say it’s a city that changes very quickly, and I was conscious of that long before the estallido social and the pandemic. Sometimes I would go out looking for a specific spot—a plaza or a coffee shop—only to realize that it no longer exists, and something else is already being put up in its place. In Latinos del sur, there’s a poem, “Sospecha,” that satirizes this in regards to a historic neighborhood:
they’re going to destroy the plaza
to build line 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33
of the Santiago metro
In Santiago, there’s a great irresponsibility with regards to architectural harmony and heritage. I could say that the idea of Chile as “an exaggeratedly capitalist country” can be seen very clearly in its architecture, especially in the Región Metropolitana [the Santiago Metropolitan Region].
I have a question I’ve wanted to ask you for a while, and I figure there’s no better time than this: why are you so interested in translation in all its forms?
GF: I’ve always been used to living between languages, between cultures, as the daughter of an immigrant mother. I don’t know—and will never know—what my first language was, Slovak or English. But I actually feel very comfortable with that uncertainty. The ability to live with those questions has helped me as a writer and also as a translator; translation is a series of choices, and we can’t always make the perfect choice, so the effort is about encouraging and sustaining that ongoing process, rather than achieving a finished product. I like that it’s never-ending, alive somehow.
I want to ask you the same question: why, as a writer, are you so interested in translation? You’re quite involved in the process and remain so responsive to my questions. Does it have creative potential for you as well?
VHO: I’m very interested in language, and by putting Chilean Spanish—with all its peculiarities—face to face with English, Portuguese, or Italian, I’ve initiated a learning process for adapting language through words, sounds, and strategies. Even though I don’t speak these languages, the way a translator handles popular expressions—the chilenismos, which are very present in my writing—really captures my attention. Sometimes they are lost; sometimes they’re kept. There’s also the intrigue of finding out if situations that have one implication in Chile have the same meaning in other countries. Being in dialogue with translators is very interesting for me. Very productive as well. And from all of this, I come back to considering the way of speaking we have in Chile—its sounds, its tensions, its inventiveness.
Do you find a lot of differences reading Chilean Spanish as compared to the Spanish in other Latin American countries?
GF: I think Chilean Spanish is well known for being different from other Spanish-speaking countries; I hadn’t heard a Chilean accent until I came to Santiago. When I arrived, everyone told me that in Chile, they eat their words. But I feel very close to Chilean Spanish now, it has the familiar sense of home. I’m currently reading Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor in the original language, and it’s very much a Mexican Spanish—I’m fascinated by regionalisms and thinking about how to translate them.
How would you describe Chilean Spanish to a non-Spanish speaker? Or Chilean writing overall?
VHO: I think that, as opposed to the Spanish in Mexico, Argentina, or Colombia, Chilean seems languid, and the ends of certain words and phrases can blur. It hurts to say that we eat the sounds of the middle letters; I suppose that’s something to do with how fast we speak. Now, I don’t know if literature can manage to include that, because sometimes you lose sonority in writing, and that’s why one resorts to chilenismos and typical expressions to highlight the vocal aspects of the text. I don’t know if you agree, but I like the idea that you don’t have to lose sight of the nationality of the author, and that the reader knows they’re reading something that was written in another language. Perhaps there’s some creative liberties to be taken in wordplay between the original and source languages. It all depends on the kind of book. I have a penchant for exploring possibilities—not to excess, but as a small gesture. For example, in “The Most Beautiful Statue,” I like that you used the name of the character from Captain Tsubasa as a Chilean would: “El Korioto,” and not like you would in English.
GF: It’s interesting translating something that’s already been translated, as in the case of Captain Tsubasa, a series translated from Japanese to Spanish (Super campeones) and also separately from Japanese into English. It can often be useful to take advantage of existing translations, but the character “El Korioto” has an anglicized name in the English series, and it wouldn’t have made sense to put such an English name in such a Chilean story.
It’s more likely now that an Anglophone reader would have a vague knowledge of Spanish—even if they’ve just seen Narcos or another show—and as such would probably recognize the structure “El Korioto” as a name. And it was important for me to keep that stylistic element in English, because we’re not reading a story from just anywhere—we’re reading a Chilean story, and I didn’t want to domesticate the language. The question of whether to domesticate a translation or have the cultural differences resonate is very important.
I know you’re interested in the theory of translation, having read the ideas of [Mexican writer] Juan Villoro or [literary translator] Megan McDowell. Do you have a preference for how a translator should approach your work? And does that change depending on genre?
VHO: Personally, I liked the way you resolved that character’s name, but you also have to consider that often these gestures between authors and translators succumb to the editorial gaze. You can make suggestions, but they won’t always make it to the final version. There’s a battle of wills there. Regarding your question, I am just getting to know the experience of being translated, and I’m enjoying it a lot, learning from the translators and conversing with them about how to adapt Chilean expressions so that they maintain their meanings in Portuguese or Italian. I like the idea of working with translators who feel like the text belongs to them, and luckily that’s been the case in the way the work has been managed, in cooperation with our editorial independence and identity. Maybe I wouldn’t be as comfortable working with a translator commissioned by someone else.
With regards to genre, I don’t have a preference, I enjoy the process whether it’s short stories or poetry, but we’ve only just begun translating the poetry. So, I’ll put the question back onto you: what genre do you prefer in the translations we’re working on?
GF: Short stories and poetry present very different challenges as a translator, because the poetic voice often has a completely different function than that of narrator. In the short stories, I want to keep the idiomatic voice. In poetry, there’s usually just one voice in your poems, but translating that into English, you feel the material presence of each word, and choosing between one word or another affects how well the English flows. The process of translating poetry feels very similar to writing poetry myself, so maybe I like it more for being a feat of ingenuity, whereas the short story is a feat of stamina. But it’s very productive translating both genres as they influence each other.
One final question: what impression do you want your work to leave on the reader? How would you like to be read?
VHO: It’s hard to answer that, because from what I understand of literature, books cease to belong to their writers and come to belong to their readers. They have absolute freedom to form their own impressions while reading. But despite that, I’d be happy if my readers in English, Portuguese, or Italian identified themselves and connected in a sensory way to my writing, even if at first glance, it might seem distant or foreign.
Georgina Fooks is a writer and translator, and is Social Media Manager at Asymptote. She studied French and Spanish literature at Oxford and is currently preparing for postgraduate study, specialising in Argentine poetry. She has lived in Santiago and Paris, and currently works in London.
Víctor Hugo Ortega was born in Malloco, Chile, in 1982. He is a journalist, writer, and university professor. He has published four short story collections and two poetry collections, all in Spanish. His short story collection, Elogio del Maracanazo, has been published in Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay, and is currently being translated into Portuguese and Italian. In 2021, he won the Short Story Prize at the Fondo Nacional de Fomento del Libro y la Lectura (National Fund for the Promotion of Reading and Literature) awarded by the Chilean Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage.
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