TRADUZCO PARA ROBAR.
Traduzco a lxs autorxs que, luego de leerlxs,
me dejan con el siguiente pensamiento flotando en la cabeza:
¿por qué no escribí yo ese poema?.
Traducir es, entonces, mi manera de escribir esos poemas.
De ser, a través del proceso, esxs autorxs.
Leemos para ser otrxs.
Escribimos para ser otrxs,
y en ese dejar-de-ser, encontrarnos.
O perdernos, no importa.
Traduzco para robar,
y me dejo traducir para ser robado.
Para que otrxs puedan ser,
a través de mí, yo.
Para de dejar de existir
al menos durante el tiempo
que tardan esos ojos,
esas otras lenguas,
en recorrerme
(la versión de mí que el texto muestra).
Y, casi siempre, eso me alivia.
Traducir es una posibilidad de que el alivio ocurra.
I TRANSLATE TO STEAL.
I translate the authors who, after reading them,
leave me with the following thought floating in my head:
Why didn’t I write that poem?
To translate is, then, my way of writing those poems.
To be, through that process, those authors.
We read to be others.
We write to be others,
and in ceasing-to-be, find ourselves.
Or lose ourselves, it doesn’t matter.
I translate to steal,
and I let myself be translated to be stolen.
So that others might be,
through me, myself.
To cease to exist
at least for the time
that those eyes take,
those other tongues,
in traversing me
(the version of me that the text offers).
And, almost always, that relieves me.
Translation is the possibility of relief occurring.
––translated from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
The above poem is taken from sometimes I write poems and sometimes I write poems (Broken Sleep Books, 2021).
MARTÍN RANGEL is a Mexican writer, poet, wordsmith, translator and net-artist. Author of several books including Rojo (2013), El rugido leve: las canciones de Ryan Karazija (2015), emoji de algo muerto (2015), delirioamateur (2016) and Al margen del mundo (2017). As “R V N G E L” Martín raps, speaks, performs and publishes net-collages and glitch art. As “MALVIAJE,” Martín produces experimental electronic music and “arte sonoro.” He wrote about the Mexican spoken word scene for the anthology Verbs That Move Mountains, edited by Claire Trevien. He has translated into Spanish poets such as Vlad Pojoga and Mira Gonzalez, and had a literary translation residency from the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity in Canada.
LAWRENCE SCHIMEL is a bilingual (Spanish/English) writer living in Madrid, Spain who has published over 120 books, including the poetry pamphlets Fairy Tales for Writers & Deleted Names (both A Midsummer Night's Press) and a collection of 100 erotic microfiction Una barba para dos (Dos Bigotes). He is also a prolific literary translator, recent poetry translations include Impure Acts by Ángelo Néstore (Indolent Books, finalist for the Thom Gunn Award), I Offer My Heart as a Target by Johanny Vázquez Paz (Akashic, winner of the Paz Prize), and Voice of the Two Shores by Agnès Agboton (forthcoming from flipped eye, winner of a PEN Translates Award).