You must always check a silence, not because the baby might have choked, but because it is in the middle of destroying something, thoroughly and slowly, with great and secret pleasure. It is important to remember this — you run back to the room, not to see if the baby needs resuscitation, but to save your floppy disks. Once you realise where the balance actually lies you can free yourself from the prison of worry. I know this. I am an expert. Some people, as they mount the stairs, might listen for the sound of a toy still in use — to me, this was the sound of the baby randomly kicking buttons in a sudden choking or epileptic fit. I used to read the ‘Emergencies’ section in the How to Kill Your Baby books all the time. The How to Kill Your Baby books are so popular that I assume some part of us wants to do just that. If the unconscious works by opposites, then it is a murderous business too, giving birth.
How to Kill Your Baby: A List:
Too much salt, fungally infected honey, a slippy bath surface, suddenly jealous pets, permanently jealous siblings, a stupid or pathological babysitter, the stairs, a house that goes on fire while you are ‘outside moving the car’, a child-snatcher, a small plastic toy, a playful jiggle that is as bad as a shake, an open cutlery drawer, a necklace, a string, a plastic bag, a piece of burst balloon, an electric cord, a telephone cord, a lollipop, a curtain cord, an inhaled sweet, an accidentally suffocating pillow, a smoky room, the wrong kind of mattress, an open window, a milk allergy, a nut allergy, a bee sting, a virus, a bacterial infection, a badly balanced walker, a bottle of bleach, all kinds of weedkiller, both on the lawn or in the bottle, pesticides, miscellaneous fumes, all carcinogens including apples, a failure to apply sun cream, the lack of a hat, battery-produced eggs, inorganic meat, cars. You might also have Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy without knowing it, so it is a good idea to check yourself for this, from time to time.
As far as I can see from the news reports, one of the most dangerous creatures in a child’s life is a stepfather, but the books don’t seem to mention them. They warn against mothers’ endless sloppiness with dangerous domestic objects, but they never mention their taste in men.
When the baby is eight months old, she cries every time I move out of sight. This separation anxiety can get quite wearing — it is so large and so illogical. Besides, I don’t need to be reminded that I’m not going anywhere, I am with this baby all the time. But I wonder if part of the problem isn’t my own anxiety when I leave the room. Will she still be alive when I get back? I picture the court case.
‘And why, pray tell, did you leave the baby?’
‘I . . . A call of nature, your honour.’
He pauses. A ripple of sympathy runs through the courtroom.
‘Well, I suppose even the best mothers must er um,’ though you know he thinks we shouldn’t. ‘Case dismissed. I suppose.’
Mothers worry. Fathers worry too, of course. But mothers are supposed to worry, and fathers are supposed to reassure. Yes, she is all right on the swing, no, he will not fall into the stream, yes, I will park the buggy in the shade, oh, please get a grip.
Is it really a gender thing? Maybe the people who worry most are the ones who spend the most time with the baby, because babies train us into it — the desperation of holding, walking, singing, distracting. Babies demand your entire self, but it is a funny kind of self. It is a mixture of the ‘all’ a factory worker gives to the conveyor belt and the ‘all’ a lover offers to the one he adores. It involves, on both counts, a fair degree of self-abnegation.
This is why people who mind children suffer from despair; it happens all of a sudden — they realise, all of a sudden, that they still exist. It is to keep this crux at bay perhaps — that is why we worry. Because worry is a way of not thinking something through.
I think worry is a neglected emotion — it is something that small-minded people do — but it has its existential side too. Here is the fire that burns, the button that chokes, here is the kettle, the car, the bacterium, the man in a mac. On the other side is something so vulnerable and yet so huge — there is something unknowable about a baby. And between these two uncertainties is the parent; completely responsible, mostly helpless, caught in an ever-shrinking circle of guilt and protectiveness, until a kind of frozen passivity sets in. There is a kind of freedom to it too — the transference of dread from the self to the child is so total: it makes you disappear. Ping! Don’t mind me.
The martyred mother is someone uplifted, someone who has given everything. She is the reason we are all here. She is also, and even to herself, a pain in the neck.
I think mothers worry more than fathers because worry keeps them pregnant. To worry is to possess, contain, hold. It is the most tenacious of emotions. A worry — and a worrier — never lets go. ‘It never ends,’ says my mother, ‘it never ends,’ meaning the love, but also the fret.
Because worry has no narrative, it does not shift, or change. It has no resolution. That is what it is for — not ending, holding on. And sometimes it is terrible to be the one who is held, and mostly it is just irritating, because the object of anxiety is not, after all, you. We slip like phantoms from our parents’ heads, leaving them to clutch some Thing they call by our name, because a mother has no ability to let her child go. And then, much later, in need, or in tragedy, or in the wearing of age, we slip back into her possession, because sometimes you just want your mother to hold you, in her heart if not in her arms, as she is still held by her own mother, even now, from time to time.
Anne Enright, ‘Worry’ in Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, London: Vintage, 2005, 177-79.
Siempre has de estar pendiente de los silencios, no porque el bebé se haya atragantado, sino porque esté destrozando algo, a conciencia, sin prisa, con un gran placer secreto. Es importante recordar lo siguiente: vuelves corriendo a la habitación, pero no para ver si el bebé necesita que lo reanimen, sino para salvar tus disquetes. Una vez te das cuenta de dónde está realmente el quid de la cuestión, puedes liberarte de la angustia que te tiene presa. Yo lo sé. Soy experta. Algunas personas, al subir las escaleras, tratan de oír el sonido de un juguete aún en uso; en mi caso, era el sonido del bebé aporreando botones al tuntún en un ataque repentino de asfixia o epilepsia. Me leía una y otra vez el apartado «Emergencias» de los libros de «Cómo matar a tu bebé». Los libros de «Cómo matar a tu bebé» son tan populares que supongo que precisamente eso es lo que quiere hacer una parte de nosotros. Si el subconsciente funciona por opuestos, entonces dar a luz es también un acto asesino.
Cómo matar a tu bebé: la lista
Demasiada sal, miel infectada por hongos, una bañera escurridiza, mascotas repentinamente celosas, hermanos siempre celosos una niñera estúpida o desequilibrada, las escaleras, una casa que se incendia mientras tú estás «fuera moviendo el coche», un secuestrador de niños, un pequeño juguete de plástico, un meneo jugando que acaba provocando un traumatismo craneal, un cajón de los cubiertos abierto, un collar, una cuerda, una bolsa de plástico, el pedazo de un globo que ha explotado, un cable eléctrico, el cable de un teléfono, una piruleta, el cordón de una cortina, una chuchería que se ha ido por el otro lado, una almohada que provoca asfixia por accidente, una habitación llena de humo, un colchón inadecuado, una ventana abierta, la alergia a la leche, la alergia a los frutos secos, una picadura de abeja, un virus, una infección bacteriana, un andador mal equilibrado, una botella de lejía, todo tipo de herbicidas, tanto en el césped como en el bote, pesticidas, gases diversos, todos los agentes cancerígenos incluidas las manzanas, el protector solar que no le has puesto, la gorra que se ha quedado en casa, los huevos de gallinas criadas en jaulas, la carne industrial, los coches. También puede que tengas, sin saberlo, el síndrome de Münchhausen por poderes, así que de vez en cuando deberías mirártelo.
Por lo que puedo ver en las noticias, una de las criaturas más peligrosas en la vida de un niño es un padrastro, pero los libros no parecen mencionarlos. Advierten del eterno descuido de las madres con los objetos domésticos peligrosos, pero nunca mencionan sus gustos en cuanto a hombres.
Cuando la bebé tiene ocho meses, llora cada vez que desaparezco de su vista. Esta ansiedad provocada por la separación puede ser muy desgastante… es tan grande y tan ilógica. Además, no necesito que me recuerden que no voy a ningún lado: estoy todo el tiempo con la bebé. Pero me pregunto si parte del problema es mi propia ansiedad por dejar la habitación. ¿Seguirá con vida cuando regrese? Incluso me imagino el caso en los tribunales.
«Y, ¿por qué, le ruego explique a este tribunal, dejó usted sola a la bebé?»
«Yo… pues, por una llamada de la naturaleza, su señoría».
Él hace una pausa. Una oleada de empatía recorre la sala del tribunal.
«Bueno, supongo que incluso las mejores madres deben de…ejem», aunque sabes que él piensa que no deberíamos. «Se desestima el caso. Supongo».
Las madres se preocupan. Los padres también, claro está. Pero de las madres se espera que se preocupen y de los padres se espera que tranquilicen. «Sí, la niña está bien en el columpio. No, el niño no se va a caer al agua. Sí, colocaré el cochecito bajo la sombra, ¡Oh, por favor, contrólate un poquito!».
¿Pero realmente se trata de un asunto de género? Quizás las personas que nos preocupamos más son las que pasamos más tiempo con los bebés, porque ellos nos entrenan para eso: la desesperación por tenerlos en brazos, caminar con ellos, cantarles, distraerles. Los bebés demandan todo tu ser, pero un tipo peculiar de tu ser. Es una rara mezcla del «todo» que un empleado de fábrica entrega en la cadena de montaje y el «todo» que un amante ofrece al ser amado. Conlleva, en ambos sentidos, un considerable grado de abnegación.
Por eso, la gente a la que le importan los niños se desespera; sucede de repente; se dan cuenta, de pronto, de que todavía existen. Tal vez es para mantener a raya ese núcleo esencial… esa es la razón por la que nos preocupamos. Porque preocuparse es una forma de no pararse a pensar.
Creo que preocuparse es una emoción poco valorada (algo que hace la gente estrecha de miras), aunque también tiene su lado existencial. Ahí está el fuego que arde, el botón que asfixia, ahí está la tetera, el coche, la bacteria, el hombre de la gabardina. Por otra parte, hay algo tan vulnerable y sin embargo tan enorme en un bebé, algo tan incomprensible... Y entre esas dos incertidumbres está el progenitor, único responsable, casi siempre indefenso, atrapado en un círculo cada vez más reducido de culpabilidad y actitud protectora, hasta que aparece una especie de fría pasividad. También hay en ello una forma de libertad; la transferencia del temor desde el yo al niño es tan absoluta… te hace desaparecer. ¡Chas! No estoy.
Una madre martirizada es una persona con mucho arrojo, alguien que lo ha dado todo. Es la razón por la que cada uno de nosotros estamos aquí. Es también, incluso para sí misma, peor que un dolor de muelas.
Yo creo que las madres se preocupan más que los padres porque la preocupación es lo que las mantiene embarazadas. Preocuparse es poseer, contener, aguantar. Es la emoción más tenaz de todas. Una preocupación (y una persona que se preocupa) siempre está ahí. «No termina nunca –dice mi madre–, no termina nunca», refiriéndose al amor, pero también a la zozobra.
Ya que la preocupación no tiene narrativa, no cambia ni muta. No cumple ningún propósito. Solo sirve para lo que sirve: no terminar nunca, aferrarse. Y a veces resulta terrible ser la persona a quien se aferra; es molesto, porque, después de todo, el objeto de esa ansiedad no eres tú. Nos desvanecemos como fantasmas de las cabezas de nuestros padres, y ellos se quedan agarrados a algo que llaman por nuestro nombre, porque una madre es incapaz de separarse de su hijo. Y, entonces, mucho más tarde, en la necesidad, o en la desgracia, o bien por el simple desgaste de los años, volvemos a su regazo, porque a veces lo único que quieres es que tu madre te abrace, con su corazón, si no con sus brazos, así como su propia madre, cada tanto, la sigue abrazando a ella.
You must always check a silence, not because the baby might have choked, but because it is in the middle of destroying something, thoroughly and slowly, with great and secret pleasure. It is important to remember this — you run back to the room, not to see if the baby needs resuscitation, but to save your floppy disks. Once you realise where the balance actually lies you can free yourself from the prison of worry. I know this. I am an expert. Some people, as they mount the stairs, might listen for the sound of a toy still in use — to me, this was the sound of the baby randomly kicking buttons in a sudden choking or epileptic fit. I used to read the ‘Emergencies’ section in the How to Kill Your Baby books all the time. The How to Kill Your Baby books are so popular that I assume some part of us wants to do just that. If the unconscious works by opposites, then it is a murderous business too, giving birth.
How to Kill Your Baby: A List:
Too much salt, fungally infected honey, a slippy bath surface, suddenly jealous pets, permanently jealous siblings, a stupid or pathological babysitter, the stairs, a house that goes on fire while you are ‘outside moving the car’, a child-snatcher, a small plastic toy, a playful jiggle that is as bad as a shake, an open cutlery drawer, a necklace, a string, a plastic bag, a piece of burst balloon, an electric cord, a telephone cord, a lollipop, a curtain cord, an inhaled sweet, an accidentally suffocating pillow, a smoky room, the wrong kind of mattress, an open window, a milk allergy, a nut allergy, a bee sting, a virus, a bacterial infection, a badly balanced walker, a bottle of bleach, all kinds of weedkiller, both on the lawn or in the bottle, pesticides, miscellaneous fumes, all carcinogens including apples, a failure to apply sun cream, the lack of a hat, battery-produced eggs, inorganic meat, cars. You might also have Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy without knowing it, so it is a good idea to check yourself for this, from time to time.
As far as I can see from the news reports, one of the most dangerous creatures in a child’s life is a stepfather, but the books don’t seem to mention them. They warn against mothers’ endless sloppiness with dangerous domestic objects, but they never mention their taste in men.
When the baby is eight months old, she cries every time I move out of sight. This separation anxiety can get quite wearing — it is so large and so illogical. Besides, I don’t need to be reminded that I’m not going anywhere, I am with this baby all the time. But I wonder if part of the problem isn’t my own anxiety when I leave the room. Will she still be alive when I get back? I picture the court case.
‘And why, pray tell, did you leave the baby?’
‘I . . . A call of nature, your honour.’
He pauses. A ripple of sympathy runs through the courtroom.
‘Well, I suppose even the best mothers must er um,’ though you know he thinks we shouldn’t. ‘Case dismissed. I suppose.’
Mothers worry. Fathers worry too, of course. But mothers are supposed to worry, and fathers are supposed to reassure. Yes, she is all right on the swing, no, he will not fall into the stream, yes, I will park the buggy in the shade, oh, please get a grip.
Is it really a gender thing? Maybe the people who worry most are the ones who spend the most time with the baby, because babies train us into it — the desperation of holding, walking, singing, distracting. Babies demand your entire self, but it is a funny kind of self. It is a mixture of the ‘all’ a factory worker gives to the conveyor belt and the ‘all’ a lover offers to the one he adores. It involves, on both counts, a fair degree of self-abnegation.
This is why people who mind children suffer from despair; it happens all of a sudden — they realise, all of a sudden, that they still exist. It is to keep this crux at bay perhaps — that is why we worry. Because worry is a way of not thinking something through.
I think worry is a neglected emotion — it is something that small-minded people do — but it has its existential side too. Here is the fire that burns, the button that chokes, here is the kettle, the car, the bacterium, the man in a mac. On the other side is something so vulnerable and yet so huge — there is something unknowable about a baby. And between these two uncertainties is the parent; completely responsible, mostly helpless, caught in an ever-shrinking circle of guilt and protectiveness, until a kind of frozen passivity sets in. There is a kind of freedom to it too — the transference of dread from the self to the child is so total: it makes you disappear. Ping! Don’t mind me.
The martyred mother is someone uplifted, someone who has given everything. She is the reason we are all here. She is also, and even to herself, a pain in the neck.
I think mothers worry more than fathers because worry keeps them pregnant. To worry is to possess, contain, hold. It is the most tenacious of emotions. A worry — and a worrier — never lets go. ‘It never ends,’ says my mother, ‘it never ends,’ meaning the love, but also the fret.
Because worry has no narrative, it does not shift, or change. It has no resolution. That is what it is for — not ending, holding on. And sometimes it is terrible to be the one who is held, and mostly it is just irritating, because the object of anxiety is not, after all, you. We slip like phantoms from our parents’ heads, leaving them to clutch some Thing they call by our name, because a mother has no ability to let her child go. And then, much later, in need, or in tragedy, or in the wearing of age, we slip back into her possession, because sometimes you just want your mother to hold you, in her heart if not in her arms, as she is still held by her own mother, even now, from time to time.
Anne Enright, ‘Worry’ in Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, London: Vintage, 2005, 177-79.
Siempre has de estar pendiente de los silencios, no porque el bebé se haya atragantado, sino porque esté destrozando algo, a conciencia, sin prisa, con un gran placer secreto. Es importante recordar lo siguiente: vuelves corriendo a la habitación, pero no para ver si el bebé necesita que lo reanimen, sino para salvar tus disquetes. Una vez te das cuenta de dónde está realmente el quid de la cuestión, puedes liberarte de la angustia que te tiene presa. Yo lo sé. Soy experta. Algunas personas, al subir las escaleras, tratan de oír el sonido de un juguete aún en uso; en mi caso, era el sonido del bebé aporreando botones al tuntún en un ataque repentino de asfixia o epilepsia. Me leía una y otra vez el apartado «Emergencias» de los libros de «Cómo matar a tu bebé». Los libros de «Cómo matar a tu bebé» son tan populares que supongo que precisamente eso es lo que quiere hacer una parte de nosotros. Si el subconsciente funciona por opuestos, entonces dar a luz es también un acto asesino.
Cómo matar a tu bebé: la lista
Demasiada sal, miel infectada por hongos, una bañera escurridiza, mascotas repentinamente celosas, hermanos siempre celosos una niñera estúpida o desequilibrada, las escaleras, una casa que se incendia mientras tú estás «fuera moviendo el coche», un secuestrador de niños, un pequeño juguete de plástico, un meneo jugando que acaba provocando un traumatismo craneal, un cajón de los cubiertos abierto, un collar, una cuerda, una bolsa de plástico, el pedazo de un globo que ha explotado, un cable eléctrico, el cable de un teléfono, una piruleta, el cordón de una cortina, una chuchería que se ha ido por el otro lado, una almohada que provoca asfixia por accidente, una habitación llena de humo, un colchón inadecuado, una ventana abierta, la alergia a la leche, la alergia a los frutos secos, una picadura de abeja, un virus, una infección bacteriana, un andador mal equilibrado, una botella de lejía, todo tipo de herbicidas, tanto en el césped como en el bote, pesticidas, gases diversos, todos los agentes cancerígenos incluidas las manzanas, el protector solar que no le has puesto, la gorra que se ha quedado en casa, los huevos de gallinas criadas en jaulas, la carne industrial, los coches. También puede que tengas, sin saberlo, el síndrome de Münchhausen por poderes, así que de vez en cuando deberías mirártelo.
Por lo que puedo ver en las noticias, una de las criaturas más peligrosas en la vida de un niño es un padrastro, pero los libros no parecen mencionarlos. Advierten del eterno descuido de las madres con los objetos domésticos peligrosos, pero nunca mencionan sus gustos en cuanto a hombres.
Cuando la bebé tiene ocho meses, llora cada vez que desaparezco de su vista. Esta ansiedad provocada por la separación puede ser muy desgastante… es tan grande y tan ilógica. Además, no necesito que me recuerden que no voy a ningún lado: estoy todo el tiempo con la bebé. Pero me pregunto si parte del problema es mi propia ansiedad por dejar la habitación. ¿Seguirá con vida cuando regrese? Incluso me imagino el caso en los tribunales.
«Y, ¿por qué, le ruego explique a este tribunal, dejó usted sola a la bebé?»
«Yo… pues, por una llamada de la naturaleza, su señoría».
Él hace una pausa. Una oleada de empatía recorre la sala del tribunal.
«Bueno, supongo que incluso las mejores madres deben de…ejem», aunque sabes que él piensa que no deberíamos. «Se desestima el caso. Supongo».
Las madres se preocupan. Los padres también, claro está. Pero de las madres se espera que se preocupen y de los padres se espera que tranquilicen. «Sí, la niña está bien en el columpio. No, el niño no se va a caer al agua. Sí, colocaré el cochecito bajo la sombra, ¡Oh, por favor, contrólate un poquito!».
¿Pero realmente se trata de un asunto de género? Quizás las personas que nos preocupamos más son las que pasamos más tiempo con los bebés, porque ellos nos entrenan para eso: la desesperación por tenerlos en brazos, caminar con ellos, cantarles, distraerles. Los bebés demandan todo tu ser, pero un tipo peculiar de tu ser. Es una rara mezcla del «todo» que un empleado de fábrica entrega en la cadena de montaje y el «todo» que un amante ofrece al ser amado. Conlleva, en ambos sentidos, un considerable grado de abnegación.
Por eso, la gente a la que le importan los niños se desespera; sucede de repente; se dan cuenta, de pronto, de que todavía existen. Tal vez es para mantener a raya ese núcleo esencial… esa es la razón por la que nos preocupamos. Porque preocuparse es una forma de no pararse a pensar.
Creo que preocuparse es una emoción poco valorada (algo que hace la gente estrecha de miras), aunque también tiene su lado existencial. Ahí está el fuego que arde, el botón que asfixia, ahí está la tetera, el coche, la bacteria, el hombre de la gabardina. Por otra parte, hay algo tan vulnerable y sin embargo tan enorme en un bebé, algo tan incomprensible... Y entre esas dos incertidumbres está el progenitor, único responsable, casi siempre indefenso, atrapado en un círculo cada vez más reducido de culpabilidad y actitud protectora, hasta que aparece una especie de fría pasividad. También hay en ello una forma de libertad; la transferencia del temor desde el yo al niño es tan absoluta… te hace desaparecer. ¡Chas! No estoy.
Una madre martirizada es una persona con mucho arrojo, alguien que lo ha dado todo. Es la razón por la que cada uno de nosotros estamos aquí. Es también, incluso para sí misma, peor que un dolor de muelas.
Yo creo que las madres se preocupan más que los padres porque la preocupación es lo que las mantiene embarazadas. Preocuparse es poseer, contener, aguantar. Es la emoción más tenaz de todas. Una preocupación (y una persona que se preocupa) siempre está ahí. «No termina nunca –dice mi madre–, no termina nunca», refiriéndose al amor, pero también a la zozobra.
Ya que la preocupación no tiene narrativa, no cambia ni muta. No cumple ningún propósito. Solo sirve para lo que sirve: no terminar nunca, aferrarse. Y a veces resulta terrible ser la persona a quien se aferra; es molesto, porque, después de todo, el objeto de esa ansiedad no eres tú. Nos desvanecemos como fantasmas de las cabezas de nuestros padres, y ellos se quedan agarrados a algo que llaman por nuestro nombre, porque una madre es incapaz de separarse de su hijo. Y, entonces, mucho más tarde, en la necesidad, o en la desgracia, o bien por el simple desgaste de los años, volvemos a su regazo, porque a veces lo único que quieres es que tu madre te abrace, con su corazón, si no con sus brazos, así como su propia madre, cada tanto, la sigue abrazando a ella.
Translation commentary
Denisse Almeyda, Ana Amérigo, Alberto Canto, Ángel Ferrer, Ana Grandal, Corina Hurtado, Rosina Iglesias, Joaquín López, Laura Moreda and Ana Mongelos
In general:
- We needed to know the context of the entire book. Certain translation decisions were made considering the rest of the essays in the book:
- The title (“Worry”) was translated as "Preocupación", since the rest of the essays are titled like this, with a single word that is an abstract noun.
- Special attention was paid to gender issues and, in particular, a decision about the gender of the baby had to be made (in the end it was translated as feminine because earlier in the book the author mentions "daughter"). "Parent" was translated by "progenitor," not "padre," so we don't just name the male figure. It was also noted that the author sometimes uses "they" and "them" to refer to a gender-neutral.
- The title (“Worry”) was translated as "Preocupación", since the rest of the essays are titled like this, with a single word that is an abstract noun.
- The impersonal "you": translating it into impersonal in 3rd person or preserving impersonality with the 2nd person in Spanish is a very important decision because it can influence the rest of the text. It forces the translator to review it in its entirety and check to what extent the decision is right or not. It was chosen to keep the 2nd person of the singular (“tú”) because it gives a sense of trust between the author and the reader, and creates a more intimate, closer atmosphere.
- The author creates a very specific universe (concern in all aspects of motherhood) and expresses it with a distinctive tone (halfway between dissertation, autobiographical drama, and black humor) and with abundant cultural references. Sometimes it is somewhat cryptic, and it is difficult to unravel what exactly she means and how to express her images with the same effectiveness in Spanish.
In particular (difficulties in order of appearance in the text):
- How to translate the word "room"? In the end it was decided "habitación" because in the text it is said that she keeps the "floppy disks" (“disquetes”) there, so the word "dormitorio" did not match altogether (it is not frequent to have floppy disks in the bedroom; however, "habitación" is a term that in Spanish can be used as bedroom as well as other types of room in the house).
- We were not sure if "floppy disks" (disquetes) required an adaptation to present times (they are no longer used and younger readers may not understand the situation suggested by the author), but finally adaptation was discarded and "disquetes" were left for greater fidelity to the text.
- The end of the first paragraph was difficult to translate because of the complexity of the paradox proposed by the author: "The How to Kill Your Baby books are so popular that I assume some part of us wants to do just that. If the unconscious works by opposites, then it is a murderous business too, giving birth". It was translated as follows: «Los libros de «Cómo matar a tu bebé» son tan populares que supongo que precisamente eso es lo que quiere hacer una parte de nosotros. Si el subconsciente funciona por opuestos, entonces dar a luz es también un acto asesino». This difficulty is related to a cultural reference: the huge number of manuals whose title begins with "How to" in English (as in Spanish by «Cómo + infinitive»), also on motherhood. The title is a parody of those manuals that aim to solve everything in life. Anyway, reading the next paragraph of the text helped to understand the paradox.
- In the list of "How to kill your baby" a problem of nominalization was found: English can be more synthetic than Spanish and can nominalize virtually any word. The list contained expressions that were difficult to translate into a Spanish noun, for example: “a failure to apply sun cream”, “the lack of a hat”, which were translated as «el protector solar que no le has puesto» y «la gorra que se ha quedado en casa».
- Returning to the subject of the author’s peculiar universe, she included in the list the following: «a playful jiggle that is as bad as a shake», «an inhaled sweet» y «an accidentally suffocating pillow». These were the expressions in the list that entailed the greatest difficulty for their translation into Spanish, especially «an inhaled sweet»: one must decode, even imagine, what exactly the author is referring to. The verb «to inhale» is not a “false friend” of the Spanish verb «inhalar» (=vacuum, not to swallow a solid), but the author plays with its meaning to create a very synthetic, untranslatable image. It was translated as: «una chuchería que se ha ido por el otro lado», and the others as: «un meneo jugando que acaba provocando un traumatismo craneal» and «una almohada que provoca asfixia por accidente».
- In the same list, we decided to add a definite article instead of the indefinite one in the original to the word "allergy", which appears twice, in order not to break the rhythm of the enumeration. The other options were to keep the original indefinite article (but in Spanish it sounds strange to say "una alergia") or to write the noun without any article (which is the most usual in Spanish, but totally breaks the structure of the enumeration).
- Another term that sparked debate was "inorganic meat." Although the term exists in Spanish and it is possible to translate it as "carne inorgánica”, in Spanish it is used much less frequently than in English and can also have other connotations. It was translated by the more widespread term "carne industrial".
- The expression «their taste in men» also raised doubts about its meaning. Eventually, we decided to translate it as «sus gustos en cuanto a hombres» (“their taste concerning men”).
- Prepositions often cause translation problems. In this case “of” was translated as “por” but not “de”, as usual: in “ansiedad POR separación”, but not “DE separación” (since separation is causing the anxiety).
- The typical problem arose of how to transpose in Spanish the English dash in the middle of a sentence. In this case we decided to replace it with ellipses: "This separation anxiety can get quite wearing — it is so large and so illogical" = «La separación puede ser muy desgastante… es tan grande y tan ilógica». In the rest of the cases, we chose to replace the English dashes with parentheses.
- There was also a difficulty in translation that had to do with the dialectal variants of Spanish: the word "corte" to refer to a court of justice. In the Spanish used in Spain, «corte» seems to refer more to the "royal court" of the monarchy or to the institution of the Cortes (parliament). That is why we decided to choose the word of more general use: «tribunal», although in some Latinoamerican countries “corte” is used with that meaning.
- Sudden change of register. On the dialogue after the 4th paragraph, some translators commented: "The difficulty was the appearance in the essay of two new characters (with their new voices): the judge and the father. How to give them their place but keep the tone?". We opted for a formal register and legal language («desestimar un caso» = "case dismissed") to give voice to the judge in the courtroom.
- False friends: the meaning of “sympathy” in English is often closer to “compassion”, “commiseration”, “pity” or even “empathy”. However, the Spanish word «simpatía» usually means “liking”, “affection” and “friendiliness”.
- Translation of dialogues. In the judge's speech appears this sort of onomatopoeic expression: "er um". It does not have a fixed translation, but one must imagine how the character would say it in Spanish according to who he is and the context. It can be translated by "ejem", by "... en fin...", etc. Later in the text there is another onomatopoeia ("Ping!") that tries to represent a magic pass. In Spanish it didn't sound like that, so it was changed to "Chas!".
- Excessive fear that there is nothing left untranslated: this sometimes leads to translate words that in Spanish do not need to be repeated. For example, in "Mothers worry. Fathers worry too, of course" («Las madres se preocupan. Los padres también
lo hacen/se preocupan/…) it is enough to add "también", but we tend to translate each word perhaps for fear of not forgetting a phrase along the way. - The phrase "its existential side too" created a great deal of philosophical debate, but in the end the solution was simpler than we expected and happened to be translating literally ("its existential side"), without giving it too much thought, in order to preserve in Spanish the same ambiguity that the term has in the original.
- In «there is something unknowable about a baby», the word «unknowable» caused a certain confusion. We decided to translate it as «Hay […] en un bebé, algo tan incomprensible…»
- The use of the word «Worrier» in English is quite frequent, but there is no exact equivalent in Spanish, except in a rather informal register («preocupón/a», «agonías», etc.). We chose a simple translation for it: «una persona que se preocupa» (literally, “someone who worries”).
- In the last paragraph two difficulties were found: the first, the multiple meanings of the English verb "to hold" (used several times in the paragraph), which is also complicated by being combined with the phrasal verb "to hold on". In Spanish it was finally translated by different verbs due to the impossibility of making sense using only a single verb. It was translated as «aferrarse» (“to hold on”), and, at the end of the text, as «abrazar» ("to embrace" = “to hold in sb’s arms”). There were also difficulties in understanding who was the subject of the sentence "And sometimes it is terrible to be the one who is held" that ended up being translated as «Y a veces resulta terrible ser la persona a quien se aferra…».