The most important one is … most of that English flavor? It’s on purpose. But there are some things you should definitely know before you leap to judgment. I’m not going to actually claim there’s no truth to the critique. Specifically, a couple of reviews-in Kirkus and elsewhere-fault the Spanish used in the translation as occasionally a “word-for-word” echo of the English, replete with Anglicisms.įair enough. Some people just don’t like the translation. I’ve discussed the particulars of our collaborative process on the Lee and Low Blog as well as in the journal Bookbird, but here I want to focus on a particular post-publication issue. As I translated, she was always available as a sounding board.

I was excited at the chance to translate a book that I loved and had been teaching at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley, one written by a great friend, to boot! Ideally, that vision meant hiring a Mexican-American from the Texas-Mexico border to translate the novel.įive years later, Stacy approached me (full disclosure: she’s publishing a graphic novel that Raúl the Third and I created, Clockwork Curandera). The novel is narrated by Odilia Garza, oldest of the sisters, and it was important that her voice stay true to that of border girls like Guadalupe, even in Spanish. This story of Mexican-American sisters who go on an odyssey into Mexico, confronting obstacles both supernatural and all-too-human, resonated with Latinx readers, and teachers especially wanted immigrant children and other Spanish-dominant ELLs to have full access to the narrative.īut author Guadalupe García McCall (and editor Stacy Whitman) had a very specific vision for the translation. Pretty soon after Summer of the Mariposas was published by Tu Books in 2012, teachers in the US started asking for a Spanish translation.

Summer of the mariposas full book