Ella Konefal

on translating Karina García Albadiz

Karina García Albadiz writes with an urgency that does not waste time. Her prose is beautiful in that it has force. It is not decorative. In Spanish, this passage reads like a quick-moving stream: wide enough to make you nervous, consistently turbulent, emphatically directional. There are several efficient and elegant moments of parallel meaning. One, in the fifth sentence, is a dense knot: “el mañana es agua ante la lengua ojo que en-calla en los silencios bien guardados.” Ojo, as a command, means “look out!” And ojo de agua is a “spring” or a “watering hole,” the focal point of oasis. For me, agua and ojo reach towards each other across the phrase and vibrate between those two gestures: towards alarm and towards paradise. Encallar means “to run aground” or “to crash-land,” the verbal aftermath of a shipwreck. Callar means “to shut up.” The hyphenation of en-callarse conjures silence that is wreckage. A silencing that demolishes form, that doesn't even have an aftermath. That destruction of narrative or meaning is caused by silencios bien guardados, “well-kept silences.” After the interpretive whirlpool of this winding sentence, Albadiz’s language is more direct. Towards the end of the passage, I focused on conveying pace and existential urgency. Right now, Chile is in the midst of popular uprising and retaliatory crackdown over issues of extreme economic inequality and state repression. I read and write with this in mind. These words were published seven years ago. To my ears, in this moment, they call out a steady, pulsing beat towards insurrection.