Today former World Kid Lit Co-Editor Claire Storey tells us about one of the most exciting projects she’s had the chance to work on to date, Never Tell Anyone Your Name by Federico Ivanier, the first Uruguayan YA author to be translated into English…

Johanna McCalmont WKL: Thanks for joining us on back on the blog. I recently finished reading an advance review copy of Never Tell Anyone Your Name and I have to admit that I was kept guessing right to the end! It’s a bit of a thriller, amongst other things, isn’t it? Would I be right in describing it like that?

Claire Storey: Yes, absolutely. It’s a very suspenseful short novel and the author Federico Ivanier really builds the tension all the way to the end.

The story is set on the France-Spain border in the town of Irun. A sixteen-year-old unnamed Uruguayan boy has accidentally booked the wrong train from Bordeaux in France to Madrid in Spain and finds himself marooned in Irun on one of the busiest travel days of the year. He manages to get the last seat on the midnight service but now has eight hours to kill. The novel follows him as he explores Irun and is befriended by a Spanish girl. It’s hard to describe what happens next without giving away the big twist at the end, but needless to say, the evening doesn’t pan out quite the way either of them planned.

WKL: Is this typical of Uruguayan kid lit or other YA from Latin American? It’s amazing to think that this is the first Uruguayan YA writer to be translated into English!

CS: I’m not sure I would particularly want to try and define Uruguayan or Latin American YA for fear of shoehorning it into a pigeon-hole of what is or is not expected. NEVER TELL ANYONE YOUR NAME forms part of a broader undertaking as part of a project I proposed and for which I received funding from Arts Council England (ACE). My project focused on Young Adult Literature from Latin America and the scarcity of books published in English translation from the region for this age group.

I researched and selected books to present to English-language publishers with a view to them publishing the books in English, and hopefully commissioning me to translate them. Needless to say, it was a tough task to whittle it down. In my proposal I had planned to choose two books; I ended up with four!

While I was searching for suitable books, I kept thinking back to an interview I carried out for World Kid Lit with Uruguayan publisher Manuel Soriano from Topito Ediciones. His words have perhaps influenced me more than he might have imagined when he mentioned that he struggled to sell rights for titles that were not books that English language publishers expect from a South American country. His words were: “The message was: give me something about your “local culture”; if we want a book about yoga or rock and roll, we can make it ourselves!”

This really made me think carefully about the books I was choosing and while I very much believe we should be translating books about the ‘big’ issues – and ensuring these stories are written from authentic or well-researched perspectives – I am also convinced that we should be translating books that are just good books. And this is where NEVER TELL ANYONE YOUR NAME comes in.

WKL: What made this particular story stand out?

CS: The way Federico builds the suspense from the beginning really had me hooked. In my initial reading, I missed many of the clues he drops throughout only to have a lightbulb moment at the end. I was really drawn to his use of the unusual second-person present tense. The ACE grant was from their Developing Your Creative Practice fund and one of the joys of that was that it gave me an opportunity to challenge myself as a translator. When I first started working on the text, it took me a while to get into the swing of it and really find the narrator’s voice.

WKL: I’m curious about the translation process. As a translator myself, I always find it fascinating to hear about linguistic puzzles that other colleagues have faced. Were there any specific challenges in bringing Ivanier’s work to an English-speaking audience?

CS: Yes, it was also interesting from a language perspective. Uruguayan Spanish, like Argentinian Spanish, is notable for conjugating the “you” form of verbs differently to most other forms of Spanish – it is very distinctive. They use vos instead of tú and decline the verbs differently. Federico plays on this by introducing a character from Spain who conjugates her “you” verbs in the European way. In the original text, this is inherently obvious from the way they speak to each other, but how could I recreate that effect when in English we don’t decline our verbs in the same way?

I had thought about overtly playing with UK English and US English. Rather than someone telling me whether they thought that would work, the project gave me the freedom to try it out for myself – to take risks, as they say in the application notes – and I realised I needed to approach it differently. The funding also allowed me to reach out and pay expert colleagues to talk to me and give me feedback, and so World Kid Lit co-editor Jackie Friedman Mighdoll and I spent a wonderful couple of hours discussing the differences between UK, US and Canadian English.

Similarly there is one exchange where the Spanish girl comments on his accent and then puts on a mock Uruguayan accent. In the Spanish it doesn’t need explaining, but I felt I needed to expand on it in the English.

—Eres argentino, ¿verdad?
—No, no, uruguayo.
—Ah, uruguasho.
La pronunciación, forzada, sale irreal, graciosa, te hace sonreír, te pone de buen humor, te vuelve optimista.
—Sí, uruguaio —Es tu respuesta

You’re Argentinian, aren’t you?”
“No. Uruguayan.”
“Ah, uruguasho.”
Her pronunciation, forced and mocking, sounds fake, and funny. It makes you smile, putting you in a good mood. You feel optimistic again.
“Yes, uruguaio,” is your response, putting on a false Spanish accent to counter her Uruguayan one.

WKL: What was your relationship with Federico like? Did you have the chance to collaborate with him much?

CS: From the off, Federico has been utterly supportive and respectful of the translation process. He speaks excellent English and teaches English in high school in Uruguay; however, early on in our collaboration, he spelled out that he would respect my decisions and that the English translation was my text to do with as I saw fit. Other than where I had a few queries, I was very much given free rein. He actually hasn’t read the full translation yet; he wanted to wait to have the physical book in his hand – I really hope he likes it!

In very exciting news, we will actually be meeting in person in November as he is travelling to the UK to participate in the Young Adult Literature Convention in London. In 2022, I proposed and took part in a panel in 2022 about Translating YA. Keen to build on this, I suggested to Rosemarie Hudson at HopeRoad Publishing that we apply for Federico to appear – I love how Rosemarie supports my wild ideas! I think we both thought it was a bit of a long shot, so we were thrilled to discover the application was successful.

Federico will be appearing on a panel to discuss writing thrillers alongside Holly Jackson. Kalyann Bayron and Kathleen Glasgow. He will then appear again later that day in a panel with Rosemarie and me to talk about translating YA from our different viewpoints as author, translator and publisher.

WKL: Were you guided by an editor or the publisher when finalising the English translation?

CS: Other than having to change all my double speech marks to single speech marks, there were surprisingly very few changes the editor Rosemarie Hudson insisted upon. I remember back when I began to pursue a career in translation, I would shrink away from feedback, doubting myself and thinking I’d done it “wrong”. This is still only my second experience working with an editor on a full-length novel, but through talking to colleagues and exchanging drafts and pitches over the years, I’ve really come to appreciate someone else’s perspective and their eyes on a text. Sometimes you get so involved with the minutiae of something that you can lose the overview. It’s incredible that you can spend hours agonising over a word or a phrase, only for it to go completely unnoticed by the person reading it.

WKL: Can we expect to read more Latin American writers in English? Any other projects in the pipeline?

CS: Yes! I’m thrilled to say that Rosemarie Hudson at HopeRoad has acquired the rights to three of the four YA books that I presented to her. The next book they publish from my project will be a historical novel by Martín Blasco, set in turn-of-the-century Buenos Aires and based on a chilling social experiment. The third novel is a heart-wrenching story about a marginalised family living in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, written by Antonio Ramos Revillas.

WKL: What advice would you give to any translators wanting to get into literary translation and work on children’s books in particular?

CS: Build your networks and get involved – you need your community around you

Apply, submit and suggest – people can only say no

Have patience with yourself and with the industry – knowledge takes time to grow, and the industry can move slowly

*** HopeRoad Publishing is currently crowdfunding. Donate, if you can, to secure their future as they approach their 15^th Anniversary. Click here to support HopeRoad