I recently had the opportunity to do some voice over work in a post production studio. It’s not something I’d ever done before but they needed someone with a Mexican accent, so I thought I’d give it a go. What followed was me doing 3 hours of channelling my inner lustful menopausal woman, to do the background voices of a crowd of hecklers—a hundred or so extremely enthusiastic female fans of a (terrified) English author at his book launch.
“What would an older Mexican woman say in this situation?” John asked me.
“Err… can I Google it?”
We didn’t have much time.
“Just yell ‘I want to have your babies’. How do you say that in Spanish?”
I tried a few different iterations of the phrase, but nothing felt convincing enough. Would a Mexican woman even say that? Is the straightforward “Quiero tener tus hijos” even grammatically correct, or is that just a bad translation? All I could think of were vague stationery metaphors and the long tradition of the Mexican albur, which is an entire language in itself, with the subtle filth of its endlessly generative double entendres. Unfortunately I was a very much prude growing up, so albur is a language I am not fluent in. (What was that thing about your paintbrush and my ruler? Or the avocado sandwich?)
I am so used to being able to Google those kinds of things for written translations and taking my sweet time crafting the perfect sentence, that I had forgotten the importance of improvisation and spontaneity when it comes to creating something believable and good. Blanking for several long minutes, feeling like a very un-Mexican prude, my body utterly frozen from the waist down, I was trying to be faithful and authentic to the social realities and sociolinguistic nuances of a country I care deeply about depicting accurately. Until it hit me: it just had to be funny. That was the whole point. Not so much the words themselves but the intention behind. Which is at the heart of the game of albureo anyway. So I sought deep within: come on, inner lustful menopausal woman, I know you’re in there somewhere! And I totally went for it. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had in any translation-related scenario ever. More of this type of thing, please.
Speaking of prude and frozen from the waist down, a Mexican slang word for a prude woman is “mocha” (pronouncing the “ch” as in “cheese”, not as in a type of coffee!). It means lopped, pollarded, stubby, mutilated, etc.
Standing at the mic I realised that the feeling of being frozen from the waist down has been present a lot recently, given that I have been existing and performing and conducting entire relationships through the screen. My disembodied head travelling alone to all sorts of places. No wonder I felt a bit mocha!
How do you bring your body into your writing or translation practice? I’m curious.
News
Speaking of lopped, one-handed and disembodied, I’m doing a book launch at Casa de México in Madrid, for my recently published Manca y más poemas, with Jorge Volpi, María José Bruña Bragado and Tomás Sánchez Santiago on the 13th of July. More info here and (free) tickets here: https://www.casademexico.es/literatura/presentacion-manca/
And in a more embodied and wholesome iteration, I will be teaching another walking and writing session at Linn park in Glasgow on 10th July. It’s free! Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-writing-linn-park-tickets-154272684753