Between March and May 2024, writer Antonio Díaz Oliva and translator Lisa Dillman spoke virtually. The pretext for their conversation was Lisa’s English translation of Antonio’s story “Rabbits,” just published in Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories (Calico Series – Two Lines Press), which also includes writers such as Mariana Enriquez, Mónica Ojeda, and Camila Sosa Villada, and translators such as Sarah Booker, Megan McDowell, and Noelle de la Paz. What follows is some of their dialogue, from Chicago, Illinois to Decatur, Georgia, about horror as a genre, dictator Augusto Pinochet’s nicknames, and the increasing visibility of the translator, among other things. 

Antonio Díaz Oliva: Dear Lisa, greetings from Chicago, “that somber city” where I have been living since the pandemic. Allow me to start our dialogue by asking about your location: Decatur. What can you tell me about Decatur? And what brought you to the state of Georgia? The word Decatur has an interesting sound, a je ne sais quoi…

Lisa Dillman: Greetings, Antonio. I can tell this conversation is going to be fun. It’s funny that you mention the “sound” of Decatur: You can easily spot newcomers and telemarketers because they say: “DEK-uh-tour” rather than “Dee-KAY-durh,” which just has a better ring to it. Decatur is a lovely, literary part of town, with several indie bookstores (shoutout to Charis, Brave and Kind, Little Shop of Stories, Eagle Eye…). Pre-pandemic, the Decatur Book Festival was, I believe, the fourth or fifth largest independent book fair in the country. I am a fan. And what brought me here was Emory, where I’ve been teaching for over twenty years now. You’re teaching as well, aren’t you?

A.D.O.: Actually, I’m not! For the first time in my life since my early twenties, I’m not doing any teaching! It’s been a year plus since I started to work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (MCA) as an editor and translator. I can’t complain since, around the time when I started to feel academic fatigue, I published Campus, my latest novel, where, to put it mildly, I painted a not-so-nice (yet tragicomical and picaresque) fresco of your standard Spanish and Cultural Studies department in a US university….

Anyway, Decatur sounds lovely! Here I must disclose my ignorance when it comes to certain parts of this country (which to me feels more like several different countries glued together). That said, here and there I encounter cities with names like Decatur or Truth or Consequences (in New Mexico!) or a city that feels like a doppelgänger of a city that sounds familiar to me, like Valparaiso… in Indiana?

Apropos of doppelgängers, which can be considered like a translation of something or someone, I wanted to tell you about the first time I read “your words.” I’m talking about that beautiful volume that includes three novels by a friend we have in common, Yuri Herrera. First, tell me how you ended up translating Yuri’s novellas. And second, I just said “your words” to talk about your translations… and those are your words, aren’t they?  

L.D.: Editor and translator at MCA, that sounds incredibly cool. And I just laughed out loud about Campus, which I must read. I love academic satire and have never seen it applied to Spanish departments. I’m cringing already. But to answer your question, I lucked into translating Yuri. Many years ago, the wonderful Henry Reese at Sampsonia Way, the Pittsburgh City of Asylum magazine, wanted to publish an excerpt of Kingdom Cons. Yuri had been selected by Horacio Castellanos Moya, who was a writer-in-residence there at the time, as an example of an up-and-coming writer who people should know about. My friend Katie didn’t have time to translate the sample, which led to one of the happiest translatorial coincidences imaginable. Since then I’ve been lucky enough to keep translating his books. And yes, you did read my words (and since you know Yuri, you know how generous and open and vocal and down-to-earth he is with regard to both his writing and the role of translation), and also the words—or at the very least some of the suggestions—of editors and of the people I accost to ask about one quandary or another. So it’s not something I feel proprietorial about. My translations are an iteration, to use Karen Emmerich’s term, of an earlier text. Translation is far more collaborative than people often think. 

Anyway, let me ask you a couple of questions. You’ve written novels and short stories, satire and horror, and undoubtedly other things I’d love to hear about should you care to elaborate. Do you think of yourself as a certain kind of writer? And how did you get started?

A.D.O.: Before I answer, I want to tell you that last night’s event was a complete success! The book launch for the anthology (Through the Night Like a Snake) with our story was at Pilsen Community Books, a bookstore I love. It was me, translator Megan McDowell, and writer and translator Alejandra Oliva, who has a very interesting book about translation and migration: Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith and Migration.

L.D.: Oh, excellent. I’m so happy to hear that, and to learn about this book—we’re doing a unit on “interpretation” in one of my classes right now. Maybe I can incorporate it in the future.

A.D.O.: Anyway, thinking about myself as a specific kind of writer is, most of the time, a slippery subject. These days, because of “Rabbits,” and also because of “Little Animals” (another short story that’s coming out soon, translated by the wonderful Charlotte Coombe), I have to think of myself as a “horror writer”! I will take it (for now), in part because last night confirmed to me that horror fans are, let’s say, sometimes “more emotionally invested” than others. One reader came up and told me that my story reminded her of escaping an intense rural/religious community (she used the word “cult”) somewhere in Pennsylvania, but also that these days she works in a company that uses… rabbits as therapy pets. I was of course happily horrified to hear all of this! 

L.D.: Ha!

A.D.O.: And to answer your other question, I try not to think too much about myself as a writer. When I’m writing, I’m a writer. When I’m not, I’m an editor and a translator and a parent… and certainly a procrastinator. I suspect this is my way of dealing with the “figura del escritor,” which was one of the collateral damages of the Boom: a time when Latin American writers projected a serious intellectual persona who provided serious intellectual opinions on all possible topics.

L.D.: It’s funny, this image—the “figura,” the posturing—is something I associate with being an “author” but not a “writer.” Maybe because of authority, authoritarian.

A.D.O.: I mentioned this last night, at the event, when Alejandra asked me about our story, “Rabbits,” which I wrote like ten years ago, in Spanish, although the idea was in my head way before that…

Speaking of this story, I would like to ask you something that neither myself, nor my editors, nor my therapist (lol), have helped me to come to terms with: Why rabbits? Why did I choose that specific animal? Who knows! Maybe you can tell me about your experience from the other side of the glass: What was it like seeing these rabbits as a reader and then translating them into English?

 L.D.: One of the things I love about translation is being subsumed by a text, that period when you think about it all the time and it sort of haunts you—pun intended. And, for me, rabbits actually became creepy through and because of your writing. I started thinking of their beady little eyes. And the quick, jerking thumps of those legs. Unpredictable! What will they do next? The constant nervous twitching. Of course, it’s hard not to apply them to the “formative experience” that’s at the core of “Rabbits.” How many things might it allude to, how polysemous is it? To me, “fucking like rabbits” was a formative part of what Raquel and the protagonist did in their time on the outside, right? I think there’s something central to good horror—and I’m just reflecting on this now—that involves taking something that’s not inherently horrifying and making it so. Which means that taking the cute little bunny-wunnies and making them terrifying is a testament to your writing.

A.D.O.: I do have to confess that I have a lot of fun (in an evil way?) trying to take things that are cute or twee and turn them into weird and/or eerie little monsters. So, thank you for your words. They made me giggle (also in a very evil way!). I love your reflection on horror as a genre, which tackles what I did in other stories from the same short story collection. Because isn’t horror (el terror, as we say in Spanish) in its most interesting vein when something we think is familiar suddenly becomes a reminder that everything in this life can become eerie? 

At least for me, this thing we call reality has always been a strange and uncanny affair… I guess good horror is like an alarm telling us that.

Now I want to ask you something that’s less horrific (I hope). I’m curious about some of the challenges that the translation offers to you. I remember we exchanged a few emails about some very specific things. And what to leave in Spanish or not. As a Chilean (that is, as someone who is not sure if what he speaks is actually Spanish or just mumblecore, lol), I’m always curious about how Chilenidad is perceived through writing.

L.D.: You know, it’s interesting. I remember my interview for grad school in the UK, where I did an MA in Translation under Peter Bush. I told him I wanted to specialize in Spanish Civil War fiction. Can you imagine? The naivete. This was the late nineties, I’d just done an MA in the US on Carmen Martín Gaite’s fiction and there was so much Spanish Civil War fiction that I loved. And Peter said, basically, “Ummmmm. That’s not how it works.” At the time I clearly had little concept of how much of translation is research. Each and every project. And not just subject matter, i.e., researching the backstories of what you translate, learning about the epoch and events and so on, but also the linguistic variation. And I remember checking some terms with you when I was unsure of whether they had a different meaning in Chile (e.g. guagua being not a bus but a baby!). But the most memorable Chilenism, I think, was guacho. What to do about guacho. I had never heard it used to mean “alone,” and in Chile it seems to be used in a number of other ways, too. But the fun of the translation quandary with guacho was that Raquel remembered a song: “Toda la gente guacha.” And in the story, when this first happens, it’s just a song lyric. And perhaps because guacho is quite polysemous in Chilean, it could suggest several things. But in English, anyone hearing “All the lonely people,” immediately thinks of “Eleanor Rigby,” which of course is the song Raquel is remembering, but we don’t know it yet at the time. So in the translation, I changed it to “Where do they all come from?”—the following line in the song, which is less of a giveaway. That way we get to hold on to the mystery until it’s later revealed that this memory referred to a cover version of the Beatles song. Another clear marker of Chilenidad is the main character using Pinocchio instead of Pinochet. I really wanted to keep that casual barb; it’s got so much flavor. 

A.D.O.: Yes, back in the early nineties we had so many nicknames for Pinochet. Pinocchio, as you say, or Pinocho. The Pinochetistas, those not-so-closeted-fascists that still exist to this day, used to call him “el tata” (grandpa or pop), or “mi general” (my general). Pinocho made a lot of sense to me because he was a puppet and the CIA was, well, Geppetto. We nineties kids, in the process of being brainwashed by US pop culture and slang, made up another nickname for him: Pino-shit!

L.D.: That’s fantastic. You’ve got to love a single-word, code-switching, expletive nickname insult. 

A.D.O.: I love the first part of your reply. Your answer to Peter Bush was somehow naif, as you say, but also brimming with enthusiasm and stamina! I don’t know how you feel about this, but when I translate, I do some research and I also need to remain ignorant, precisely to keep my stamina alive. I want to be surprised, especially in the first pass. I’m glad you touched on these topics related to translating, and the start of your career, since I wanted to ask you this. Have you noticed that translator’s notes have become like a genre in itself these days? I personally love this—it’s like the translator, who used to be invisible, now is willing to open the door to his/her/their house and welcome you with something like: “Let me tell you the story of how I translated this other story.” I know of someone who recently translated the Chilean writer Diamela Eltit and at the same time published a whole book (!) about translating Diamela Eltit. It’s like a Borgesian tale: the translator’s note becomes the real and only possible book. What do you think? Are translators’ confessions becoming a literary genre? Besides your words accompanying Yuri Herrera’s trilogy, have you ever penned a translator’s note?

L.D.: Ah, you’re referring to Daniel Hahn’s Catching Fire, yes! It’s an amazing book—and clearly spoke to a whole community of people who are hankering for this kind of writing. And are now very excited about Jennifer Croft’s new novel The Extinction of Irena Rey, which two of my book clubs have chosen for their July reads! But I digress. Danny and I have co-translated a couple of books together, and though none of them have translator’s notes, we did do a Lit Hub piece on co-translation and how it works. And yes, I do think translators’ notes are becoming more common, whether as paratext or published in another venue (on the publisher’s website, or an online journal, for instance). As far as my personal forays, in addition to writing about Yuri’s trilogy, I did a note for Ten Planets, his most recent book to appear in English, which is a sci-fi (for lack of a better word) story collection. And I wrote a translator’s note for Such Small Hands, the first Andrés Barba novel I translated (working on the seventh this summer!). In general, I really do think people want to know more about what goes on behind the scenes, about hitherto invisible or invisibilized processes and people and manipulations and the subjectivity therein. And that goes for translators talking about their own work, but also for books like Corine Tachtiris’ Translation and Race and Karen Emmerich’s Literary Translation and the Making of Originals and Kate Briggs’ This Little Art and the fact that Emily Wilson has been interviewed so extensively. And I assume and hope that the role of editing will be the next iteration of this deep dive into the multilayered process of publication. Speaking of which, ADO, are you writing at the moment? You mentioned earlier that you are now thinking of yourself as a “horror writer.” So, in between being papá and the museum, what are you working on? 

A.D.O.: As always, I’m in between several (and, most of the time, contradictory) projects at the same time. They are like my children, asking for my attention. But lately I have spent more and more time on two projects. 1) A non-fiction compilation of some of my journalism, which includes forty interviews with US writers (from Don DeLillo to Junot Diaz), from when I worked at a magazine in Chile, and 2) a horror-translation-nouvelle which takes place in a museum. It features a character, the translator, who kind of isolates himself from the world by translating contemporary art… until one day he becomes his own translation—or doppelgänger. I must confess that I’m writing this nouvelle in English, although with the promise that I will self-translate into Spanish and first get the book out there in that language. Just like Manuel Puig in Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages. In fact, the work-in-progress title of the project is “Eternal Curse on the Translator of These Pages.”

L.D.: Wow, what a brilliant title. I love it! And since you’re going to self-translate, I guess cursing yourself is acceptable, because you’ll have the perfect “spell” to remove the curse as well. I’ll look forward to both books in the future.

A.D.O.: I hope this conversation will be the beginning of a friendship, or the continuation of the friendship we have already established with “Rabbits” and this exchange. I would love to visit Decatur in the next few years, and of course you can always come visit me in Chicago.

L.D.: Deal! And I feel the same way. Thanks, ADO, this conversation has been a real pleasure, and the start, rather than the end, of something. 

Read a preview of “La experiencia formativa” from ADO’s book Las Experiencias,
available in the US via SED, here.

Read a preview of “Rabbits,” Lisa’s translation of ADO’s short story included in the anthology
Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories,
available in the US via Two Lines Press, here. 

Photo: Kim Menikh,  Unsplash