Translation
Translation. September 2007
True to his word, the translation arrived from Salva this morning. The only mistake I see is that Salvador has translated "Ko au te awa ko te awa ko au" into Yo soy el rio y el rio es mio (I am the river and the river is mine). I change it back.
Article translated, check. Artist Bio translated, check. Invitation list, double-barrel surnames and accents in the right places, check. Invitation design and language checked, check. Ambassador Geoff up in Madrid is throwing a few bottles of NZ wine in the boot, checkity check.
Lourdes, the institute and consulate administrator tells me that the parents of one of my students would like to come to the opening. She's chuffed. This particular student's grandfather was the famous Seville bullfighter Manolo Vazquez. Her mother, prohibited by family tradition from ever going to watch her father torear, stole in to see his last performance before hanging up his cape, and watched from her secret position how her father was adulated by his home crowd and carried on shoulders through the Princes Gate. Javier thinks I should get myself something nice to wear and my father in law is asking me if I've invited the Cardinal...huh?!! A Palmy North show opening is feeling very far away.
I am flotsam and jetsam upon the river of Andalusia, heartland of bullfighting and roots twisted and deep, scared and blooded.
Just go with the flow. Lourdes smiles at me as I pass her office door. I've been contemplating the hanging of the work, based from a short ressidency spent by the mouth of the river Guadalquivir. Organising an exhibition here in Seville is part of my desire to be more involved in this community. The school where I work boasts a beautiful patio and upper gallery which is perfect for exhibitions - red and coral geraniums hanging on the black wrought iron balconies. The Institute, also moonlighting as the Australian Consulate, has been wonderfully supportive as the exhibition also provides them with an opportunity to do a little profile lifting.
The framer around the corner (recommended by Lourdes -a relative, nice little discount) is busy stretching some work for me. Half the framer's kids come here to English classes after school, so in between discussing stretcher weights, we talk about the new course books. Nothing like being a teacher.
I am a storyteller and my students laugh when they hear "Did I ever tell you about my great grandmother?" because they know an Emma story is beginning. They ask me how I know so many stories about my family. Because I need their company I say secretly to myself. My Grandmother was conjured in class yesterday, an ex beauty queen, dressed for the Awapuni races, shaking her head at me and warning me about Spanish men.
In the article for the local papers I wanted to speak of the spiritual presence of the land and connectedness from a New Zealand point of view. The idea of connection supposes two different entities and a point of joining and channeling; Ko au te awa ko te awa ko au. Translation is different. Umberto Eco says that a translation faithful to the author is not one that seeks exactitude because faithfulness and exactitude are not the same; between translation and original idea, there is a space. The similes of faithfulness are loyalty, piety and devotion to convey an idea, nut not be it, which we employ as artists and communicators in the seeking to convey the deep sense of something.
I am the falling between a whakatauki and its English translation,
I am the crawling up, and the falling again between that and its Spanish cousin,
I am the falling between translations, into the Arab named river.