The House on Mango Street

The pieces of text I chose to translate are two short stories from the bildungsroman novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, named Rafaela who Drinks Coconut and Papaya Juice on Tuesdays and Sally. I chose these segments from the novel because I felt like they were essential to a few of the main themes and messages central to Cisneros’ story – identity and sexuality. While Rafaela speaks of the lack of emancipation women have due to their being extremely beautiful or desirable, Sally talks about a girl who has a sort of sexual maturity and is a somewhat autonomous individual who has control over her choices in how she dresses up and wears makeup, but the fact that her father comes from a strict religious background, and warns her saying that “beauty means trouble” puts her in an abusive mental space and traps her inside this bubble where she is not free to express herself. The intended audience of this text would be young girls, because these stories illustrate situations that show us problems that women and adolescent girls face in communities where poverty, racism and sexual and emotional abuse are prominent. These stories are told to help them acknowledge and recognize that these are real problems that female individuals have to deal with. I also feel that this text is worth reading because readers can relate with Esperanza’s character and see themselves in the emotional and mental growth process she goes through, and little, everyday things like her wanting to be someone’s friend because she aspires to be like them (like in Sally) or buying juice for the lady next door (not exactly an activity I would consider regular, though) are a few things that could be relatable.

Rafaela que Bebe Jugos de Coco y Papaya los Martes 
Los martes, el marido de Rafaela vuelve tarde a casa porque esa es la noche que juega dominó. Entonces Rafaela, que todavía es joven, pero está envejeciendo a causa de asomarse la ventana tanto, ella está encerrada porque su marido él tiene miedo de Rafaela se escaparse ya que es tan hermosa para mirar. Rafaela se asoma por la ventana y se apoya en su codo y suena que su pelo era como Rapunzel. En la esquina, hay música del bar, y Rafaela desea poder ir allí y bailar antes de que vuelva vieja. Pasa mucho tiempo y olvidamos que ella está allí arriba mirando hasta que ella dice: ¿niños, si les doy un dólar, van a ir a la tienda y me comprareis algo? Ella tira un dólar arrugado y siempre pide por coco o a veces jugo de papaya, y se la enviamos en la bolsa de compras de papel adjunto al tendedero. Rafaela, que bebe coco y jugo de papaya los martes y desea que hubiera bebidas más dulces, no amarga como una habitación vacía, pero dulce como la isla, como el salón de baile por la calle en donde mujeres mayores lanzan ojos verdes fácilmente, así como dados y casas abiertas con llaves. Y siempre, hay alguien que ofrece bebidas más dulces, alguien que promete mantenerlos en una cadena de plata.

Sally

Sally es la chica con ojos como Egipto y nylons el color del humo. Los niños a escuela creen que es hermosa porque su pelo es negro brillante como plumas de cuervo y cuando se ríe, ella se mueve el pelo hacia atrás como un chal de raso sobre su hombro y ríe. Su padre dice ser esta hermosa es un problema. Son muy estrictos en su religión. No se supone que bailan. Recuerda a sus hermanas y esta triste. Entonces ella no puede salir. Sally, quiero decir. Sally, ¿qué te enseno a pintar tus ojos como Cleopatra? Y si rollo el cepillo pequeño con mi lengua y masticarlo hasta un punto y sumergirlo en el pastel fangoso, el de la pequeña caja roja, ¿me ensenaras? Me gusta tu abrigo negro y los zapatos que usas, ¿de dónde los sacaste de? Mi madre dice para llevar negro tan joven es peligroso, pero yo quiero comprar zapatos como el tuyo, como tus zapatos negros hechos de gamuza, al igual que los. Y un día, cuando mi madre está de buen humor, tal vez después de mi próximo cumpleaños, voy a pedir comprar los nylons. Cheryl, que ya no es tu amiga, no desde el ultimo martes antes de Pascua, no desde que te llamo ese nombre, y un poco de agujero en el brazo y parecía que ibas a llorar y todo el mundo estaba esperando, pero no lo hiciste, no lo hiciste Sally, no desde entonces, no tienes un mejor amigo con quien apoyarse en la valla del patio de la escuela, para reírse detrás de sus manos de los chicos. No hay nadie que te preste su cepillo pelo. Las historias los niños cuentan en el guardarropa no son verdaderos. Te apoyas contra la valla del patio de la escuela solo con los ojos cerrados como si nadie estuviera mirando, como si nadie pudiera verte de pie allí, Sally. ¿Qué piensas cuando cierras los ojos? ¿Y por qué siempre tienes que ir directo a casa después de la escuela? Te conviertes en una Sally diferente. Enderezas tu falda, se frota la pintura azul de los parpados. No te rías, Sally. Miras tus pies y caminas rápidamente hacia la casa que no puedes dejar. Sally, ¿a veces deseas no tener que irte a casa? ¿Quieres que tus pies algún día continúen caminando y te alejen de Mango Street, lejos y tal vez tus pies se detengan frente a una casa, una hermosa con flores y grandes ventanas y escalones para que subas de dos en dos dónde una habitación está esperando por usted? Y si abrías el pestillo de la ventana y le dabas un empujón, las ventanas se abrirían. Todo el cielo entraría. No habría vecinos entrometidos observando, ni motocicletas ni automóviles, ni sábanas, toallas ni lavandería. Solo árboles y más árboles y mucho cielo azul. Y podrías reírte, Sally. Podrías irte a dormir y despertarte y nunca tener que pensar a quién le gustas o no. Podrías cerrar los ojos, no tendrías que preocuparte por lo que la gente dijera porque te gusta soñar y soñar. Y nadie podría gritarte si te vieran en la oscuridad apoyado en un automóvil, apoyado en alguien sin que alguien piense que eres malo, sin que alguien diga que está mal, sin que todo el mundo espere que cometas un error cuando todo lo que querías, todo lo que querías, Sally, era amar y amar, amar y amar, y no llamarlo loco.

I decided to go with The House on Mango Street because personally, the message spoke to me more than the rest of the options. I am glad that I went with the two short stories that I selected because as I mentioned in the introduction, I felt as if these two segments were very vital to the whole story and introduced an important character like Sally, who was someone that played a central role in the protagonist’s character development.

I had a wide range of choices for diction in Spanish. Pronouns are a very complicated concept in this language, because depending on the way a sentence is structured or the tense you choose to employ, pronouns can be added to verbs too. Like most languages, in Spanish, nouns are given a gender of either masculine or feminine.

Spanish being one the most spoken languages in the world, I was able to find a translation of The House on Mango Street easily on the internet. When I skimmed through the document, I noticed a lot of things that the translator and myself had done differently. First off, the choice of adjectives differed in both of our translations but that could easily be attributed to the fact that in Spanish, you have a diverse choice in adjectives. The way the translator and I had structured our sentences in many places were different as well. The thing with Spanish (and with many other languages, I’m sure) is that you cannot translate word-by-word. If you do, your text would end up not making sense at all. So when I translated, I had to omit some words here and there and at times rephrase sentences in my head and then type it out in Spanish. There were times where I couldn’t capture the essence of a certain phrase, because the way it was said only existed in English and I did not know how to replicate it in Spanish.

Translating a text from its original language to another language does change up the original message or sentiment the author tries to create and this is exactly the difficulty that translators face and hence use the phrase “lost in translation”. While translating, I realized that techniques used in the English language like similes such as “eyes like Egypt” or “nylons like smoke” are kind of redundant in Spanish because similes as poetic as in English don’t exist so it was a bit funny to me when I translated “eyes like Egypt” to “ojos como Egipto” because you simply would not say that in Spanish, and use “dark eyes” or “dramatic eyes” instead. On the whole, I quite enjoyed doing this activity because I got to learn that the English language is rich in its devices and techniques, while Spanish is a very interesting language with a lot of grammatical and lexical rules. I am not as proficient in Spanish quite yet, but I hope someday I get to learn the literary techniques and devices that Spanish has to offer. 

Plastic: Can We Ever Get Rid of it?

Plastic has unfortunately become a very vital component in industries and has seamlessly integrated itself into our daily lives that it’s hard to imagine a life without it. There are many campaigns and organizations that work actively to advocate against using plastic products but at most times we see all that campaigning fall on deaf ears. We should keep in mind that there are many restraints we collectively face as a society and also on an individualistic level that impede us from making progress and make impactful changes to the environment we live in.

All of us tend to automatically gear towards things that are cost-efficient or cheap, are easily accessible in the market, and have longevity to them. Plastic ticks the boxes for all three which is exactly the reason why industries are able to produce so much of it while consumers simply keep buying the products they’ve got to sell. A lot of industries rely on plastic as their primary source of income and capital, so it would only be a financial setback for them to cut its usage. Another thing we should consider is the recyclability of plastic. The necessary technology and equipment exist for the process, but they aren’t cost-friendly and feasible considering the amount of water, energy and effort that is put into cleaning and preparing used plastic in order for successful recycling.

There are a lot of limitations when we arrive at the social aspect of this issue, the major one being education. Being educated on any given topic and having enough awareness and knowledge to act on it is the prerequisite to making a real change. We could easily shift the blame on social media and talk about how ‘easy’ it is to be in the know of it all but we should also keep in mind that not everyone has access to it. Citizens living in rural areas might still not know the global impact of continued and careless use of plastic which is why it should become our priority to keep everyone informed of the dangers of non-biodegradable waste and make conscious efforts to minimize our use of plastic.

Our mindsets and the way we perceive things undoubtedly impact the way we’re going about this whole situation. We tend to associate the lack of personal connection to the dangers happening with plastic use. For instance, I used to be a very careless individual and wouldn’t think twice before throwing away my plastic bottle of juice in some corner of the street, not thinking of the consequences or how it would affect, say, dogs. This similar mindset is what people employ to turn a blind eye to the imminent dangers of plastic and lines like “at least I don’t throw plastic directly in the ocean” are used to justify their refusal to cooperate with and participate in plastic waste abatement and reduction of litter.

All in all, while cutting plastic completely seems a bit unrealistic, especially when we look at all these barriers and obstacles that come in the way, I think what we need to practice and preach is fostering mindfulness and having a deeper consideration of the products that we use on a daily basis and amend our habits to reduce plastic use such as bringing our own cup, carrying/using metal bottles instead of plastic ones, etc. We should remember and practice that a little effort goes a long way and if we consciously make an active effort, we can expect to see a positive difference and a cleaner world.