10 Questions for Anna Vilner
- By Edward Clifford
My dad, who liked confusing little kids, used to sing: "Of all the creatures who have wings, I prefer the flying pig." At first, I was suspicious of the song, and later on it annoyed me. When I was about six, he would take me for walks around the outskirts of Moreno, a town that turned into pasture if you strayed eight blocks from the main street and where, behind a wire fence, stood the plumpest cows I had ever seen.
—from "My History with Animals," by Hebe Uhart, translated by Anna Vilner, Volume 61, Issue 1 (Spring 2020)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
I lived in Santiago, Chile for some of my early twenties. It’s where I first began to consider translation as a possibility. One day a former professor emailed to ask if I had any translated Chilean poetry I might send him for an online publication he’d started. I didn’t—not anything serious at least—so I went to a bookstore and picked up a few titles. I translated some poems by Cecilia Vicuña and sent them along. I rattled them off in a few days—I haven’t translated anything that quickly since. I was just beginning and had a false sense of confidence. I didn’t know anything about translating prose, let alone poetry. But maybe you need that kind of confidence when you start anything new.
The first short stories I translated were from Juan Pablo Roncone’s collection Hermano Ciervo. There’s one called “Death of the Kangaroo”. The narrator is on a road trip with his best friend and his girlfriend. He knows the two of them have been sleeping together, so there’s a growing tension as the three of them ride in his truck, all squeezed together in one row. And there’s another important detail: a plane has just crashed in the South of Chile, which is where they’re headed. It was carrying kangaroos, and one of them escaped. So you’re gripped by the narrative of these three characters, but also occasionally pausing to ask yourself—when is the kangaroo going to show up? I never published this, or any of the other translations, but it didn’t matter—I was learning.
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Los Detectives Salvajes is the first book I read in Spanish, so that one has always felt special to me. Chris Andrews and Natasha Wimmer are both excellent translators of Bolaño into English.
I remember reading Lydia Davis for the first time and feeling so excited, like I’d finally figured out a secret: stories don’t all have to look the same. They can look like this, too. They can be a few lines if you want them to be.
More recently, I’ve been influenced by Gabriela Wiener, Rachel Cusk, and Anne Carson. And I really admire the work of Edith Grossman. Her translations of the Garcia Marquez stories in Strange Pilgrims certainly made an impact on me as a reader and writer of translations.
What other professions have you worked in?
Teacher, camp counselor, server at a Lebanese restaurant. I had this wonderful job in Toronto as a caregiver. I would go to apartments around the city and help people cook, clean, do whatever they needed to do, but couldn’t manage by themselves. I’m attracted to intimacy in whatever work it is I do—perhaps that’s why I like literary translation, because I give myself the excuse to spend so much time with the same author, the same voice.
What drew you to write a translation of this piece in particular?
I love Uhart’s work—her strange observations, her humor and meditations on language. My History with Animals posed some challenges because of its sayings and colloquial expressions. For example: Qué sabe el burro ‘e confites, si nunca fue confitero, translated literally, would be: "What does the donkey know ‘bout confections if he never was a confectioner." I wanted to both preserve the idiomatic sound and stay, of course, in the realm of sweets. My translation reads: "What’s a donkey know ‘bout cakes if he never been a baker."
I played around a lot with these sayings, changing them many times before my final draft. Sometimes I’m tempted to map Uhart’s saying directly onto existing English ones, but I try to avoid doing so whenever possible. I want to preserve as much of the original image as I can.
I’m also interested in the way children interpret the world. The stories and crónicas where Uhart revisits her childhood, like this one, are some of my favorites.
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
When it comes to translating Uhart, it’s Buenos Aires. But it changes depending on the project. When I first began my MFA, I translated a story by the Russian author Marina Palei. It was set in Père Lachaise, so I had to imagine what it might be like to walk alongside those famous graves. I’ve never been to Paris, but after working on that translation, it sometimes feels like I have.
Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
During, no, but I take many breaks. Nicola Cruz, Jamila Woods, The Gebharts, and Aldous Harding have been on repeat for the past few months.
Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
When I revise, it helps me to see the page a few different ways. So I’ll generally start by handwriting a trot, then typing it up. The editing process begins there—I like being able to manipulate lines on a computer, and seeing the translation come together at a faster pace. I’ll usually print out the story and do final corrections by hand.
Who typically gets the first read of your work?
I’m lucky to have several friends who help me with line-level questions in my early drafts—native speakers, usually. If I’m translating from Russian, I call my dad.
I’ve also been in almost four years of translation workshop at the University of Arkansas. So my professors and fellow translators here in Fayetteville have been invaluable to me as readers.
What are you working on currently?
My thesis. More stories and essays by Uhart!
What are you reading right now?
I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum. I appreciate the way Nussbaum elevates television, which has so long been regarded as lowbrow, to the level of other visual arts. Dubravka Ugrešić has been on my own list for a while. I hope, this weekend, to begin with Fox or an essay from Karaoke Culture.
ANNA VILNER is a Russian-born American translator. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Arkansas, where she also serves as Nonfiction Editor for The Arkansas International.
