“Translators are Finders”: Sara Lissa Paulson on Translating JOHNNY, THE SEA, AND ME
Hello everyone! My name is Sara Lissa Paulson. I am the translator of Johnny, the Sea, and Me, originally written in Spanish as Johnny y el Mar by Colombian author Melba Escobar de Nogales and published by Tragaluz Editores, based in Medellín, Colombia. I am a former school librarian and worked in public schools for 28 years before retiring last year, and currently a member of ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association.
In this post, I will take you through some of the steps I took to translate Johnny y el Mar into English. Johnny, the Sea, and Me is a sparsely-told, character-based adventure, a coming-of-age middle-grade novel with a fascinating pirate story-within-the-story narrated by a smelly 330-year-old parrot. Truly original stuff!
Translators are finders—and we are often finders of books!
The Feria del Libro, held every year in Guadalajara, Mexico (photo supplied by Sara Lissa Paulson)
You might think I found Johnny, the Sea, and Me through the White Ravens recognition it received in 2015. Those annual lists published by the International Youth Library in Munich are a great source for finding exceptional international books. But I happened to find this book in the fall of 2014 while working full-time as a NYC public school librarian and searching for books to share with the 2nd–4th grade members of my lunchtime Spanish club. I had spent time in my 20s reading books in children’s libraries in Mexico so I knew they were out there, but I couldn’t find many. So I decided I would attend FIL. FIL (pronounced “feel”) is short for the annual Feria del Libro, the world’s most important Spanish language book fair, held each November in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Translators are finders. Not only are translators finders of le mot juste, but like publishers, we are often finders of books. An academic librarian had told me about FIL many years prior to 2014, but being a single mother made my attendance at conferences and professional events spotty at best. However, I was really enjoying teaching Spanish with fun songs and picture books during my lunchtime library club. Inspiration kicked in. I decided to celebrate Thanksgiving with my son and fly to Guadalajara the next morning.
At FIL, there are publishers and books from all over Latin America and Spain, as well as workshops and presentations. I found myself most interested in the independent publishers and small publishers based in countries where my students’ families were from, such as Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. I’ll never forget Aisle JJ. That is where I found Tragaluz editores. They displayed exquisite book design: all sizes and shapes of books, books for all ages with hand-sewn, embossed, letterpress printing books with place-holding ribbons and vellum pages. Their puesto was amazing.
Translators are readers, and we connect to books in deep and untold ways
Johnny y el Mar was featured at that Tragaluz stand I visited in 2014. I looked inside the book, and I immediately loved the light hand and big heart in Elizabeth Builes’s watercolors, and the mysterious chapter headings such as “On every island lies a hidden treasure.” My son’s grandparents had taken a vacation picture of him in a snorkeling mask—just like Pedro, the main character of this middle-grade coming-of-age story, who is teased for his smallness and fights to feel strong and understood. I also understood being little and teased like Pedro, as the fourth of five children. I thumbed through the pages and realized that I knew someone named Manuela, who is Pedro’s mother, and could empathize with her self-reflective inner dialogue as she grapples with her changing relationship with her son. After I returned with a suitcase full of books for myself (in addition to the ones I bought for the school library), and continued to read, I realized I knew someone A LOT like Johnny, who is a local fisherman, jack-of-all-trades—and maybe even a pirate!—who becomes a sort of father figure to Pedro while the boy comes to terms with his own father’s absence and his mother’s lack of transparency.
I also grew up loving trees. I remember climbing and hiding in the massive Southern Magnolia in my grandparents’ front yard. And a majestic breadfruit tree happens to be a character in the book! While the tree doesn’t talk, it is a true force—it has agency. For me, the deep ecological message in the book sealed my love for it. I won’t spoil the book, but if you care about nature, and the right to a healthy environment, please read and share this book. There is a careful decision made in conversation between Pedro and Johnny about the island’s age-old breadfruit tree, and the care and consideration for that tree becomes mysteriously healing for all. In short, I connected with the book. Translators are also readers, and we connect to books in deep and untold ways.
I am grateful for all the years of studying world literature, reading aloud exquisite and nuanced picture books, and telling stories and teaching storytelling as a school librarian. That, and keeping a second language alive by living with Spanish speakers and among speakers of other languages, helped me become the translator that I am today.
Translators are researchers: Uncovering the facts about pirates woven into the book’s magical realism
Here is a little bit of the ACTUAL PIRATE HISTORY which made its way into the magical realism of Johnny, the Sea, and Me. While on vacation with his mother, Manuela, Pedro meets Johnny, a local fisherman, and learns that Johnny is a descendant of English pirate John Taylor. I was curious: is this middle-grade novel based on the history of a real pirate, or is it all fictional? Could there really be a never reclaimed treasure buried somewhere on a small Caribbean Island? I needed to find out. Translators need to feel, hear, and understand the historical and geographical context of the books we translate, whether it directly relates to a word we must translate or not.
So, I looked up John Taylor, and it turns out he IS a real pirate! A little known “Pirate of the Caribbean,” the real-life John Taylor was active for only five years, but in that short time, he captured a ship containing exceedingly rare treasures of a Portuguese viceroy (more on that treasure later…). Interestingly, he was one of the pirates who raised the Jolly Roger flag, indicating that the ship under attack had better surrender. The flag basically means: “please, let’s not fight.” In Johnny, the Sea, and Me, Johnny’s great-great-great-grandfather is a cook on board a pirate ship, not a swashbuckling swordsman. The author Melba Escobar did a fantastic job of melding the true story of legendary 18th-century English pirate John Taylor with bits and pieces of pirate history and lore. She makes references to other pirates and privateers, like Sir Francis Drake—also a famous captain, but from the 17th century. She also gives a nod to Salgari, who was no pirate at all but an Italian writer who pretty much founded the genre of adventure writing (Salgari wrote a novel about the real-life pirate Henry Morgan, also mentioned in the book, called Captain Blood).
But what about John Taylor’s hidden treasure? The historic John Taylor was one of the captains that captured the Nossa Senhora de Cabo, a Portuguese ship loaded with rare treasures belonging to a former viceroy of the Portuguese colony of Goa. They then divvied up the treasures once they safely landed in Madagascar, burned their ship, and split up. Some of these details are present in Johnny, the Sea, and Me. A few years later, as in the book, John Taylor settled in the West Indies, now known as the Caribbean islands, and apparently there IS a treasure that went missing… But aren’t there hidden treasures everywhere? After all, it is hard to find long-buried treasures with cryptic, creased, stained, and frayed maps.
Most 18th-century naval history comes to us today as oral history. There is a very thin historical record. And in Johnny, the Sea, and Me, Victoria, the novel’s oral historian and storyteller, is a parrot! (Interestingly, Victoria was also the name of John Taylor’s ship.) At 330 years old, Victoria the parrot has seen it all and tells Pedro the story of present Johnny’s great-great-great grandfather, the famous English pirate John Taylor. And there begins the magical realism!
As far as I could tell, Melba Escobar based the story-within-the-story that Victoria tells Pedro on the historical capture and subsequent burning of the Nossa Senhora de Cabo, but creates her own story to tell the story of greed, its own inherent destruction, and what happened to pirates once they decided to settle down and create families of their own, and who sometimes, as in this unnamed island, practiced other cultural, familial and religious customs when they married. In the novel, when Pedro asks Johnny if he is a pirate, Johnny replies that many people on the island are descended from the English pirates who settled there and married local women. In the book Pirate Enlightenment, the late David Graeber describes his research in the later lives of some pirates who settled in Madagascar and married into matriarchal societies, who gave them protection from the kings who sought to prosecute them. These pirates came to live outside western forms of government and helped to develop different types of societies formed by the convergence of people from multiple cultural backgrounds who learned to live and govern together in new ways.
In Johnny, the Sea, and Me, Melba Escobar juxtaposes the violence and greed of some pirates with the joyous laughter, delicious food, and deep friendships that characterize Johnny’s ancestor and his friends, creating this wondrous, magical resonance with the challenges we all face today. It made me reflect on what our real treasures are: can we strive to keep some treasures—like fossil fuels, that cause more harm than good—buried in the earth, and instead seek out the treasures that renew the hearts and souls of all living creatures—good friends, folk knowledge, and confidence? Confidence is what Pedro learns to cultivate from beginning to end. And telling your own story is one way to start—it is no coincidence that Pedro is practicing his vacation-adventure storytelling as he lives it. Johnny, the Sea, and Me is a treasure to be shared, not hidden! I hope you can read it and find someone to whom you can read it aloud!
Translation in action: The challenging—and fun!—task of translating word play
The chapter headings for Johnny, the Sea, and Me were interesting to translate, and one was especially tricky. Victoria is the unforgettable parrot who tells Pedro the history of Johnny’s great-great-great grandfather, and in the Spanish text, she is introduced with the chapter heading: “¡Que Lora la de Victoria!”
My first translation of the heading was “What a storyteller, that Victoria!” I crossed that out. “Victoria the Storyteller” was my second attempt, after considering “Victoria the Talker,” and “Victoria, Gifted with the Gab.” I wanted to retain the internal rhyme, rhythm, and cadences of the original Spanish. Then, looking at the definitions of “lora,” I realized that in Colombia, the word not only meant “parrot” and “chatterbox,” but had yet ANOTHER meaning: something infected and smelly (and in the passages describing the parrot, the narration indeed emphasizes how smelly Victoria is and the lengths to which Pedro goes in trying to ignore the odor!). After brainstorming with my mother, I came up with: “Victoria, the Smelly Chatterbox,” “Victoria Is One Smelly Busybeak!” (my favorite), “Victoria is One Smelly Bird!”, and simply, “Victoria Is Such a Busybeak!” But “busybeak” was not making traction, and that is when I thought of “motormouth.” We also considered “chatterbox,” but I felt that Victoria was telling a story, not chattering about this and that and the other thing. In the end, we decided on… “Victoria Is a Motormouth!” And I think you now grasp how difficult it is to translate word play!
Word play is a hallmark of children’s literature, and it makes its translation challenging. Translators try to indicate word play in some way: to mimic it in form, and if not in form, at least in spirit. I am not sure I was successful, but “motormouth” succeeds in describing the relentless pace of the story Victoria tells, which ended up being too much for even Pedro to keep up: Pedro is a fervent lover of pirate stories, but he’s so wiped out that he struggles to stay awake to hear Victoria’s all-night tale. But don’t worry, he doesn’t leave the parrot hanging: the next morning, he promises to return to hear Victoria out and celebrate her 331st birthday the following year. You heard that right—that means Victoria never finished her story! Let’s hope Melba has a sequel in her sails…
I hope YOU get a chance to slosh around in Pedro’s saltwater-soaked shoes, hear the tale Victoria tells, and imagine (if you dare!) the smells Pedro must endure! A 330-year-old bird who rarely bathes? Eww! Good thing it is difficult to imagine smells...
