Andrés Neuman’s A Father Is Born, translated with delicate precision by Robin Myers, is a quietly powerful meditation on fatherhood, language, and identity. This slender volume delicately weaves poetic vignettes and prose reflections, capturing the intimate transformation of becoming a parent, and Myers, having worked on the translation during her own pregnancy, brings an empathetic awareness to the text’s subtle rhythms and linguistic surprises. The dialogue also touches on linguistic shifts, cultural inheritance, and the vibrant literary scenes of Buenos Aires and Mexico City—culminating in a tender exploration of voice, translation, and the evolving nature of home.
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Maddy Robinson (MR): The book is such a quietly beautiful collection of aphorisms, blending poetry and prose to explore the experience of fatherhood. When you’re tasked with finding a narrative voice so closely aligned with the author’s own, how does that compare to translating fiction?
Robin Myers (RM): That’s a wonderful question. Having worked with both life writing and fiction, I honestly don’t feel there’s a huge difference. What matters most is paying close attention to what the language is doing on the page—trying to understand and honor the author’s choices.
For this particular book, it falls along a spectrum of Andrés’s styles. I’ve had the honor of translating his work before—both his early novel Bariloche, which he wrote at a very young age, and also a book of his poetry. What I find remarkable about A Father Is Born is how it combines his novelistic sensibility with the precision of poetry; there’s something about the spareness and distilled quality of this book that I also find in his fiction. The voice emerges from those deliberate decisions.
The text is elliptical, presenting quick vignette-like scenes, from the interior world of preparing for fatherhood to welcoming the child, and the intensity of early parenthood. It also beautifully captures the child’s formation and psyche. It was important for me to attend to the imagery and the surprising, somewhat unconventional sentence structures Andrés uses—which are rarely predictable. Translating this invited me to stay alert to that strangeness in his sentences.
The book is deeply earnest but also includes humor, sometimes self-deprecating. I also tried to retain those moments with their original oddness in English.
MR: As a reader, one of the remarkable things about books like this is how we experience them differently depending on where we are in life. I think the same is true of translation: a book arrives at a time in your life when you least expect it. I happen to know that this book found you at a very fitting moment in your life. Could you talk about that a bit?
RM: I’d love to. I can’t quite recall exactly when I signed on to this project, which was originally published as two volumes in Spanish but was later set to be published as a single book in English. Most of the translation happened while I was pregnant, which was unexpected. I had hoped to have a child but not exactly during the translation process.
Interestingly, this also happened with another book I translated, La Playa by Marina Perezagua, which deals with pregnancy and the premature birth of a daughter. That was a very different experience to translate while pregnant.
Translating A Father Is Born was incredibly moving and comforting, both a gift and a surprise. It allowed me to experience it intimately, in a rhythm that feels like a strange but beautiful music. It felt like being welcomed into Andrés’s respectful and wondrous perspective on parenthood, with all his reverence for his partner, for his child, and the fullness of the experience with all its transformations and terrors. That was very grounding for me as I navigated my own pregnancy.
During the translation, I was mostly working in late-stage pregnancy, making final adjustments in a somewhat altered, sleep-deprived state. Now, my child is nearly five months old, and I’m able to connect with certain sections differently, especially those describing the preverbal phase, the child’s discovery of sounds and voice, which Andrés writes about beautifully. When I translated the book, it felt like a message from the future. Even now, as I continue to engage with it, there’s still this sense of everything yet to come: watching a child become who they are, watching yourself become a parent, a partner, and a writer in wholly new ways.
MR: That’s such an eloquent way to put it—time traveling, in a way, moving forward and backward along this strange and mysterious journey so many have taken before. And obviously, the metaphor of translating and gestating simultaneously resonates: both involve working with something constantly in development, a project or life growing with all its uncertainty. Would you draw any parallels between translating literature and pregnancy?
RM: There is, in a sense. I’ve always been wary of equating translation or writing with gestation. I’ve balked at the idea of publication as birth; it feels inadequate. There’s nothing quite like physically giving birth to a child, and comparing publication to that always felt a bit off.
But I do appreciate the mystery of the comparison, which is filled with ideas about what’s happening and what you can do. As a translator, you attend carefully to the text, revise, make choices. As a pregnant person, you pay close attention to your changing body, consider food, exercise, surroundings, and how you nourish yourself. And ultimately, so much remains beyond control. As a translator, authorial intent is always somewhat unknowable. You engage with what’s on the page and interpret it.
Similarly, pregnancy carries profound humility—no matter how many thoughts or feelings you have, the child is an independent person, an enduring mystery. They will be unknown to you, as you to them. So I try to approach both translation and pregnancy with being mindful of how much remains unknowable. The rest is a labor of close attention and care.
MR: Speaking of authorial intent and the author, did you have much contact with Andrés during the translation? Since this is your third book with him, do you have a strong working relationship?
RM: Yes, I communicate quite a lot with Andrés, and we have become friends through these collaborations. We’ve only met once in person here in Buenos Aires, where I now live.
Usually, at a late stage, I share a polished manuscript with Andrés. He’s a wonderful reader in English and a writer himself, so he gets quite involved, especially with spare, language-driven books like this one. I really enjoy that collaboration. He made many suggestions, asked questions, and requested changes. As a translator and reader of many translations, he is always respectful and leaves the final decisions to me, which is exactly how I would want it with anyone translating my work.
There was quite a bit of back and forth during the editing, which enriched the translation. One interesting thing Andrés did was to make some radical changes, things too late to change in the original Spanish, but he approached the English as a standalone work. For example, he sometimes removed sentences that didn’t feel necessary in English. That openness to revise oneself through the translator is rare and requires tremendous trust and collaboration.
MR: Another thing I wanted to ask is how this book feels like a desire to dwell in and fully experience the intimate world that opens with a child’s birth, that small universe between the parents or caretakers and the child. The vignette-like scenes almost preserve that moment in time through writing. Do you ever think of translation as a form of preservation or archiving, an act of holding onto these moments or worlds as you respond to their texts?
RM: That’s a fascinating question. I think yes, in a way, there is an act of preservation in translation since you’re trying to capture something at a specific time and place, preserving the author’s voice and style. At the same time, translation, like music, is inherently transformative. Even archiving involves transformation; something preserved in one context changes in another, especially through reception.
I personally find the analogy of music very helpful, like the role of a cover artist. You honor and reinterpret a work, striving to do justice while bringing something new. That’s not a contradiction—though translation often brings anxiety. We tend to accept musicians interpreting other musicians more readily. A good cover listens deeply to what’s latent in the original and brings that out freshly in a new voice or language. Experiencing both allows something new to emerge. So yes, preservation in translation is a conversation, opening the work to new and unexpected places.
MR: That’s such a lovely analogy. Especially since Andrés is the son of musicians. In the book, he describes visiting the room with his mother’s violins, touching old instruments, almost interacting with the past. It’s like being another link in the family chain, a version of history, layered with all the twists of fate that led us here.
One other part I wanted to discuss is “Small Speaker,” which is an exploration of linguistic identity alongside family heritage—the dual inheritance of past and responsibility. Andrés is also a migrant, carrying the weight of family history lived and written about. As someone who works in multiple languages and lives in Buenos Aires as an expatriate, did you identify with that complex sense of dual cultural identity and inherited responsibility?
RM: I do, but in a different way, which I mention out of respect. Andrés and his parents left Argentina as political exiles during the military dictatorship, settling in Spain. My situation is very different: a voluntary move abroad, without duress. One of the most fascinating topics Andrés and I discussed was his linguistic migration, from Argentine Spanish to the accent of Granada, Spain, where he lives now. He grew up with the former but now speaks a different variety depending on context.
That emerges strongly in “Small Speaker,” where he talks about introducing his child to Spanish words from both Spain and Argentina. There’s an awareness that his son will grow up speaking with a different accent than him and will see him as somewhat foreign, carrying a distinct linguistic heritage. That really struck me. I now live in Buenos Aires but spent thirteen years in Mexico City, where I learned Spanish partly as a connection to my own family history; my paternal grandmother was Mexican. Living in Argentina, I can feel my accent changing. I worked hard to speak Spanish a particular way and was proud of that. It now feels a bit silly! Because we are porous, our language adapts according to what we hear.
Andrés’s reflections on family history, linguistic identity, and how his son inherits a patchwork of influences resonated deeply with me. The texture of speech, the intimacy of these shifts, really touched a chord during the translation.
MR: Do you ever feel that home is a space you inhabit in your translation work? When you settle down to translate, does that headspace feel like a version of home?
RM: What a lovely thought. Actually, yes—I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but I do find comfort and solidity in that space. Also, it feels like a place where I can have a less fraught relationship with my first language. English is globally dominant in aggressive, hegemonic ways; it has imposed itself as an imperial force. I wouldn’t claim translation or writing is innocent of that, but translating into English—which is always my target language—brings me into contact with its rich musicality, and I’m always learning how it interacts with the Spanish varieties and writers I translate. I’m constantly reminded of the multiplicity of Spanishes and Englishes, their shifts in accent, vocabulary, region, and time.
Living outside where I was born, now in a third country after Mexico, brings questions about what home means. I never expected to leave Mexico, which felt central to me. So sometimes I wonder: “Is it still home? Did I ever call it that? What does it mean to root yourself somewhere new?” Parenthood deepens these questions.
For me, translation offers an ongoing exploration of plurality in language. Spanish is plural, and English is plural, and that exploration brings a certain centeredness. Both languages are integral to who I am. English remains central as my first language; there is definitely a sense of home in it. What I love about your question is that home can change, expand, complicate, and still be home.
MR: Much like family, I suppose. And you’re also a poet who writes in English. Would you say your translation work influences your poetry?
RM: Absolutely. I’m not always sure how, but I trust it influences me. With some poets and writers I translate, I’m more aware of how they shake me up linguistically, and how that energy seeps into my own work, but sometimes it’s more subterranean and mysterious.
More than anything, translation involves a certain distance that’s different from writing poetry. Even when you feel deeply connected to a text, there’s something already existing independently—something “over there” you approach from a distance. It’s like studying the decisions that someone else made. Since I spend far more hours translating than writing poetry, when I do write, I’m more attentive to my decisions.
Poetry is often talked about as a mystical act where language flows out mysteriously. Sometimes it does feel like that, but I often approach writing from a translator’s perspective, which involves asking what certain words do together syntactically and visually on the page. There’s a kind of detachment in my writing that translation has enabled, which I appreciate. It helps to de-romanticize writing a bit.
MR: I love that idea of writing as studying decisions. And I suppose you’re always interrogating life and its weirdness, trying to find the words to do that. More practically, since you’ve recently moved to Buenos Aires, how have you found the literary scene? Have you managed to engage much with it? How does it compare to Mexico City?
RM: Yes, both are vibrant literary hubs in distinct ways. I’m still getting to know the Buenos Aires scene and am somewhat distant at the moment, but in recent years, especially when traveling between cities, I’ve participated in readings and festivals here. Recently, now that I’ve spent more time, I’ve been amazed by the intensity and breadth. Mexico has a vibrant scene too, but it feels more localized to specific neighborhoods—which likely reflects socioeconomic and structural factors since books in Mexico are proportionally expensive, and while there is government support for presses, public education suffers cutbacks. Many more factors constrain poetry readings and publications there than in Buenos Aires.
What amazes me about Buenos Aires is how so many publishing houses keep functioning despite the country’s ongoing economic crisis, often working on shoestring budgets. I really don’t understand how it works, but it’s a thriving scene for new work, small presses, and poetry events.
However, both countries are highly centralized: resources flow mainly to their capitals, leaving other regions relatively cut off from literary life and distribution.
MR: I’ve heard there’s a strong solidarity among readers, writers, and publishers to make literature accessible during such a crucial time. Do you have any upcoming translation projects? Have you been working on multiple projects simultaneously? Does your translation of A Father Is Born interact with your other projects?
RM: I usually juggle multiple projects because that’s my livelihood. Sometimes I wish I could focus fully on one book at a time, but I love how translating multiple works lets me inhabit very different “breaths”—or aliento in Spanish, which literally means “breath” but also denotes scope or rhythm. Living in several very distinct texts simultaneously changes my own breathing and rhythm. I’m obsessive about my daily page quotas to meet deadlines, and after working on these expansive narratives, returning to Andrés’s compressed, focused work was refreshing. It quieted things down, changed my pace and rhythm entirely.
Robin Myers is a poet and Spanish-to-English translator. Recent book-length translations include We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (2025), Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza (co-translated with Sarah Booker, 2025), A Father Is Born by Andrés Neuman (2025), What Comes Back by Javier Peñalosa M. (2024), and The Brush by Eliana Hernández-Pachón (2024). A 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, she was longlisted twice for the 2022 National Translation Award in poetry and among the winners of the 2019 Poems in Translation Contest (Words Without Borders/Academy of American Poets). As a poet, Robin is the author of the forthcoming Centro (Coffee House Press, 2027). Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2022, Guernica, The Drift, Poetry London, Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, Annulet Poetry Journal, Massachusetts Review, and other journals. She is an alumna of the Vermont Studio Center, the Banff Literary Translation Centre, the Community of Writers, and Under the Volcano.
Maddy Robinson is an English writer and translator from Spanish and Russian. She holds a Masters’ degree in Comparative Literature and her work has appeared in publications such as The Kelvingrove Review, From Glasgow to Saturn, El Diario and Pikara Magazine. She lives in Madrid.
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