Hannah Skoonberg

and it’s true they are both South American authors so I suppose some of the style would be reminiscent but I still feel Marquez is unique. He has a different pace, much longer chapters and a much slower read. But his language is so beautiful you want to take your time and I find myself rereading paragraphs now and then as I go. As strange as this may sound I think some of the beauty of books translated from Spanish comes from the beauty of Spanish itself. I feel that Spanish has a slower evolution than English. Where in English our vocabulary is shrinking and we use more general words and forget that there is a better more precise word out there. Even if you are well read it has to do with the current state of modern English. We are the future of the worlds languages (simplification, abbreviation) and it isn’t always a pretty future. In Spanish that beautiful precise word is the common word. To give you an example grande technically means “big” but if you look at it grande is closer to grand which also means big but in a more specific way. Or the word pensar = “to think” but the word makes you think of the English pensive, undeniably a more aesthetic choice. Spanish is beautiful, the whole language is like this. Now when you are translating into English from this (at least in a good translation) the translator draws on this intrinsic beauty and you find more less common English equivalents in the translation than honestly if the book was written in English in the first place. I know this sounds a little strange but I swear pick Marquez up some time and see what I mean. I have seen this in all the Spanish authors I’ve read although Marquez is the best. I know enough Spanish to see where it’s coming from.