Kayla S.

El Extraño

Hay un extraño que visita mi hogar.

Viene a las mismas horas en que él solía venir.

Habla un parecido lenguaje, aunque con acento distinto.

No sé de dónde viene, cuánto tiempo piensa quedarse.

Me trata con afecto y a veces con ligero cansancio.

Le preocupan mis cosas — sabe mucho de mí —.

Pienso que debe ser amigo suyo,

pero sin duda es un amigo desleal:

presiento que lo odia.

A mí me asusta todo esto.

No sé cómo lo he de tratar,

cómo habré de decirle que no es ésta su casa.

No quisiera llegar a ofenderlo:

hay demasiado parecido en él con el otro, que amo.

Y cuando está callado hasta yo misma los confundo.

Estoy muy asustada:

tengo miedo a que se quede para siempre.

Porque si éste se queda

yo sé que nunca más volverá el otro.

-Francisca Aguirre

The Stranger

A stranger comes and visits my house

They always come at the same time

I don't understand them sometimes but they seem so familiar to me

I don't know where they come from or when they will leave 

They treat me with love mostly, but sometimes they are exhausting

They know a lot about me and worry about all the little things 

I think I’m their friend 

But without a doubt they are not my friend 

I think they hate me

I am scared about all of this

I don’t know how to handle them

How can I get them to leave

I don’t want to offend them

They are very similar to the other me

When I'm quiet I get confused between them

I am very scared:

I am scared my other side will stay forever.

Because if this one stays

I know my other self will never return.

-Translated from Spanish by Kayla S.

The Stranger

There is a stranger that visits me at my home

He comes at the same time 

He has an accent but I recognize the language

I don’t know where he came from or when he is going to leave 

But he treats me very well but he is sometimes very tired

He knows a lot about me and worries about my stuff

I think we should be friends

But he is not a loyal friend to me

I kind of think he hates me

I’m scared to talk to him

I don’t know how to tell him

This isn’t his house

I don’t want to be rude

He is very similar to someone else I love

And when it gets quiet and dark I get confused between the two

I am very scared:

I’m scared he will keep coming back forever

If he does 

The other one I love will never come back. 

-Translated from Spanish by Kayla S.

Translator’s Statement

Francisca Aguirre (1930 – 2019) was a famous poet from Spain. She was known for her emotional poems with much symbolism, deep meanings, love, nostalgia, and her appreciation for life. She won several awards like the Leopoldo Panero Poetry Award, and the National Prize for Spanish Literature in November of 2018.  

The poem that I translated is called El Extraño. It is from her first collection called Ithaca. 

We recognize how translation has been used, is used 

and might still be used as a tool of conquest, assimilation,

 or domestication. We are committed to creating translations

 that are racinated in the cultures, dialogues, conflicts, 

battles, struggles, hierarchies, gossip of their 

communities of origin. (Antena)

The poems I translated are very different in meaning. It was a very easy and smooth process of translating it into English. Working with my mom was very fun as well. While originally translating it I faced some challenges trying to change the words to make the interpreted poem make more sense.

The first translation poem takes the perspective that it is a love story and focuses more on the more literal translations. I made it seem more like this stranger was someone that she sort of loved. The second translation poem focuses on a deeper possible meaning of the struggle with different personalities. At first, I changed the gender to it so that it would have a more mysterious sound. But it made it seem like an object so I changed it to they to make it seem more like it was a person and it was this person's other side to them.

My back-out poem was fun and simple to make. I added a flag of the Dominican Republic on the bottom right to really let the reader see where I am from. For my blackout poem, I used both my mom's words and from an article because I needed a full page of words to black out. I chose to use shorter phrases to really help my poem make sense and flow nicely. I focused on the theme of the importance and how Spanish makes me feel. The fun part about this blackout poem is that it is mostly my mom's words and her thoughts. But while interviewing my mom it brought up a lot of questions and how I wish I really did know my true heritage language and how I wish I could actually interview someone from that Spanish side of my family.

One of the few small challenges I faced in these translations was in the process of originally translating it to English. This poem switches genders and was not very specific as to what it was. This made it difficult to fully know and understand which gender to choose. 

Bibliography:

1.  “Francisca Aguirre.” Wikipedia, 27 Feb. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisca_Aguirre. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023.

2. Arévalo, Mariola Díaz-Cano. “Francisca Aguirre Dies. 4 Poems for Your Memory.” Actualidad. Literatura, 14 Apr. 2019. www.actualidadliteratura.com/en/Francisco-Aguirre-dies-4-poems/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023.

3. Antena. "A Manifesto for Ultratranslation." The Capilano Review 3.23 (2014): 125-131.

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Kayla is 17 years old and attends Meridian Academy. She loves baking and sharing her baked goods with her friends and family! She loves her two dogs Jake and Izzy.