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Translated success
After an initial rejection, Kathy Leonard tried and succeeded in
getting at National Endowment for the Humanities grant.
When the rejection letter came, Kathy Leonard, associate professor of foreign
languages and literatures, wondered to herself what she had to do.
After all, each reviewer rated her application for a National Endowment
for the Humanities (NEH) grant very high.
"I thought 'how can I improve the application. Was it worth a another
try?'" she said.
Leonard was listed as an alternate for a NEH grant in translation for 2000.
Her application for funding to provide an English translation of the Bolivian
novel Bajo el oscuro sol by Yolanda Bedregal was one of nearly
1,500 applications submitted. Only 178 NEH grants were awarded overall and
only a handful in translation.
There was a silver lining however to the rejection letter.
"They encouraged me to try again the next year," Leonard said.
The letter also included suggestions of how Leonard could make her application
more appealing.
"They suggested a research component, even though I was applying to
undertake a translation, so the second time around I included a more extensive
biography of the author," she said.
Leonard's persistence paid off. In December, the NEH announced its latest
round of awards and Leonard has received a six-month, $24,000 research fellowship
to translate the novel and write a biography of Bedregal. She will spend
the 2003 spring semester in Bolivia working on the project.
Leonard has spent the last seven years of her professional life researching
Bolivia women authors like Bedregal. At the beginning of that process, she
began working on translating Bajo el oscuro sol. She soon put the
project on hold.
"I felt it was a project that deserved some funding," she said.
"It's a wonderful novel, but it is virtually unknown in this country,
as is much of the literature written by Bolivian women."
Bedregal wrote Bajo el oscuro sol, which Leonard describes as an
early feminist work, in the early '70s. The novel's plot focuses on a young
woman caught up in a revolution in a South American country. After she is
killed in a crossfire, the rest of the novel tells the woman's story through
her writings.
Bajo el oscuro sol is the only novel written by Bedregal, who was
a famous Bolivian poet. In the novel, she tackles many of the family issues
faced by women in Bolivia including incest.
Leonard interviewed the author twice before she died in 1999. She will work
with Bedregal's daughter in La Paz to complete the translation.
"The novel is very difficult to translate," Leonard said. "Since
Bedregal was a poet, her prose reflects this. Her writing is filled with
imagery and metaphorical cultural references which are nearly incomprehensible
to a non-Bolivian. Her syntax is often convoluted, reflecting Quechua syntax,
which she also frequently utilizes. I'll work on the project in Bolivia
so I can collaborate with native speakers to produce an accurate translation."
This isn't the first book that Leonard has translated by a Bolivian author.
In 1999, she published Aurora, an award-winning novel by Giancarla
de Quiroga. The original title of the novel is La flor de "La Candelaria."
She has also edited and translated two anthologies of short stories by Latin
American women writers.
In March of 2001 she published Una revelacion desde la escritura: entrevistas
a narradoras/poetas bolivianas. The two-volume set contains 23 interviews
with Bolivian women narrators and poets accompanied by a sample of the author’s
writing. Also included are a brief biography, a complete primary and secondary
bibliography of each author, and a photograph.
Leonard expects to have the translation of Bajo el oscuro sol completed
by August 2003 and a publisher lined up prior to that.
Around LAS
January 21-27, 2002
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