How do you capture the flavor and texture of another language in your writing? To find out we spoke to Alfredo José Estrada, Cuban-born author of the novel Welcome to Havana, Señor Hemingway and the forthcoming history, Havana: Autobiography of a City (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Both books lyrically convey Cuban culture and language across a span of historical periods. Alfredo explains how he makes this happen:
VT: How do you make the language of your novel accessible to an American audience?
Alfredo: Welcome to Havana, Señor Hemingway is set in the Cuba of the 1930s, an important but forgotten period of history. It was a violent time with a lot of political upheaval but it was also very vibrant culturally. I tried to convey the flavor of the time by using certain Spanish-language words from the 1930s. Back then there was a lot of slang whose meaning is lost in modern Spanish, which makes it difficult to translate. A good example is tangana, which was a slang word for the violent student demonstrations during the 1933 revolution. It's not used in Spanish in Cuba today but I thought it was just a fascinating word. So I incorporated tangana into my book because to say, simply, "demonstration" was just not the same thing. Some words like that are so loaded with vitamins that you have to include them.
VT: Is there a danger to using Spanish words in an English novel?
Alfredo: It's very easy to go too far with this. You have to be careful because too many Spanish-language words could get annoying to the reader. Occasionally I put the meaning of a word in brackets or describe the meaning in the text. But I think it's really important to get across the flavor of the language. When Hemingway lived in Cuba in the 1930s he spoke both English and Spanish -- the country was very bilingual at the time. Occasionally I even threw in lines of Spanish conversation to get this idea across.
VT: How do you avoid going too far?
Alfredo: That's like walking a tightrope, and hopefully the writer's skill makes it accessible. But it's easy to go overboard. So many words that to me are fascinating may not be particularly interesting to my readers. You have to carefully weigh this.
VT: What about capturing dialogue?
Alfredo: That's a real challenge. For example, I just read an interesting book of historical fiction by Robert Harris called Imperium, about the life of Cicero in ancient Rome. There's a conversation between Cicero and Julius Caesar, in Latin circa 64 BC. Now, how do you convey that in English? If you make it too stilted it's going to sound like Masterpiece Theater. If you make it colloquial it's going to seem goofy because you can't imagine Romans talking in modern slang. It's very tough. I faced the same challenges in conveying in contemporary English how my characters spoke in Havana in 1932. This is another place where your skill as a writer comes in.
VT: We talked about capturing the spirit of the language. How do you convey the spirit of the culture in your novel?
Alfredo: That aspect was a little easier for me because I was dealing with a culture that was fairly accessible. Most Americans have some familiarity with Cuba so I could describe how characters are seeing things and reacting to things. A big danger, though, is for the reader to fall into stereotypes or misconceptions. If you're a science fiction writer and describing a culture in another galaxy, you can write whatever you want. All the reader has to go on is what he reads. But if you're describing Havana, the reader thinks, I know about Havana -- even if they don't. You're dealing with what they bring to the table. For example, many people have an image of old Havana as a very sordid city dominated by the Mafia. You see this in films like Godfather II. But that's a stereotype; it doesn't begin to describe what Havana was like, even if there were elements of that. It's important to cut through these misconceptions to evoke what Havana was really like back then.
VT: Did you face the same challenges in your non-fiction?
Alfredo: With Havana: Autobiography of the City, I didn't have as much of a problem because it's nonfiction. It's more scholarly, and the reader is expecting to learn something. So there's no problem sticking in a footnote or citing historical sources. Many readers enjoy trivia and little-known historical facts. But you can fall overboard with something like this too, and go off on tangents that will take you away from the main thrust of the writing. So you have to be careful, as always.
