Hello everyone,

So Laura and I are diving into our translations of Pulgar Vidal's Peruvian Geography work
and it's been an exciting journey so far. We've met and exchanged our first projects, peer edited,
and have officially handed them over to our faculty colleagues, Manual Fernandez, Paul Kaldjan,
and Eric Torres. As an entire group we've met to discuss our process and ensure that we
are taking steps in the same direction. Part of the fun has been figuring out what to do if we,
as student translators, have a question. We've created a Google Doc that's a live document,
allowing us to add in our questions as they arise and allowing Manny and Eric to consider
and help resolve them. Here's a couple that Laura and I have identified so far:


Question 1
If there’s a identified English “equivalent” to a fruit/vegetable/animal...etc. but it
may not be common knowledge to every English speaker, should we lean towards that?
Context: pg. 203 of Siete Canastas

Examples:
1. tumbo vs. banana passion fruit


2. Nisperos vs. loquat/medlars/Japanese plums

Manny's Response:


For the purpose of a class, we should ask the instructor (Paul?) what he prefers.
For the purpose of publication, it might be decided by an editor, possibly in conjunction with us, but they have editorial norms.
From my perspective, I lean towards having Spanish in italics with the English within parentheses; we could also go with an English - Spanish and Spanish - English glossary; I think having the names in Spanish in some way would make the book useful for anyone undertaking any kind of research in the country. MF 3/25/18

Reflection:

I really appreciate this flexibility that we have when considering that if we desire to preserve the native language, we could potentially construct an argument that hopefully the final editors will take into account. This is part of the reason why this blog is going to be so vital to the project. It will allow collaborators to glimpse into the working progress of this translation project starting at the very beginning. I, like Manny stated above, lean towards keeping both the Spanish and English present, for clarity sake, because anyone undertaking any kind of research (perhaps on the Nispero) would be able to identify their subject or keywords in both languages. 


Question 2
If there’s a list of fruits/vegetables/animals etc., should we group the English language
together (same with the Indigenous language), alphabetize them after translating
what we can, or keep the original formatting?
Context: pg. 203 of Siete Canastas

Example:
Option A, Original Format: avocados, chirimoya, lĂșcuma, passion fruit, papaya,
tumbo/banana passion fruit, friar plums, palillo, prickly pear, dragon fruit

Option B, Grouped by language: avocados, passion fruit, papaya,
banana passion fruit, friar plums, prickly pear, dragon fruit, chirimoya, lĂșcuma, palillo

Option C, Alphabetized:
Avocados, banana passion fruit, chirimoya, dragon fruit, friar plums,
palillo, papaya, passion fruit, prickly pear

Manny's Response:
I say keep them in the order they were presented in the book; I don’t see an issue with doing that. MF 3/25/18

Reflection:
Awesome. Especially due to my unfamiliarity of how a typical geography textbook would handle bilingual situations like this, I really do appreciate the decisiveness of Manny. We will definitely be able to adhere to this guideline, especially since Pulgar Vidal uses many lists to describe Peru.

On to Project #2! A las Yungas! 

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