Doug Weatherford releases a new English translation of Mexico’s most well-known novel.
When Professor Doug Weatherford (20th-Century Spanish American Narrative) first began learning Spanish as a young man, he never would have guessed that he would eventually serve as translator for one of the most significant authors in the history of Mexican literature. Weatherford recently released a new translation of the late Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo. In a review for The New York Times, renowned Mexican-American author Valeria Luiselli heralded Weatherford’s translation as “the best of Rulfo in English,” solidifying the magnitude of the accomplishment.
Becoming a Translator
At the end of his full-time mission in northern Mexico, Weatherford asked his native companion which Mexican authors’ works he should read when he got home. The pair took a trip to a bookstore, and without hesitation, his companion pulled three books of fiction off the shelf—two of which were written by Juan Rulfo, and one of which was Pedro Páramo. As he read those two books, Weatherford fell in love with Rulfo’s work. He says, “In many ways, Juan Rulfo helped me get into the humanities.”
Rulfo’s writing and storytelling is legendary in Mexican literature. Pedro Páramo, first published in Mexico in 1955, has been translated into over 30 different languages. At just 150 pages, it stands as “Mexico’s most important novel,” according to Weatherford. It formed part of the inspiration behind Gabriel García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude and “challenged readers in ways that Latin American novelists had not done before.”
Driven by his personal love for the author’s writing, Weatherford has studied and published about Rulfo’s work throughout his career. He first became a translator for Rulfo when he realized that the author’s lesser-known novella El gallo de oro (The Golden Cockerel) had never been translated into English (unlike Pedro Páramo, which had been translated in 1959 and 1994). With permission from the Rulfo family and the Fundación Juan Rulfo (the Juan Rulfo Foundation), he translated El gallo de oro, which was released for publication in 2017. Weatherford says, “I was kind of an accidental translator . . . I saw a need, and I worked to fill it.”
Impressed by his translation, the Rulfo family later approached Weatherford and asked him to translate Pedro Páramo. He remarks, “They felt that a new translation in English was necessary, and they thought based upon the other translation I did that I would be the perfect candidate. So, with a bit of anxiety and a lot of gratitude, I got to work and spent a lot of time on this novel.”
Translating the Novel
Described by Weatherford as a “ghost story,” Pedro Páramo follows a young man on a quest to find his long-lost father. It’s often touted as a masterpiece of surrealism because of the way it questions reality and frequently employs metaphor and symbolism. Weatherford says that the novel is full of interpretive possibilities and “depends heavily on readers who can become participants in the creation process.” Consequently, translators must be careful not to unintentionally erase any important metaphors as they attempt to convey the story of Pedro Páramo in a different language.
During the translation process, Weatherford felt the need to stay as close as possible to the original voice of Juan Rulfo. This meant choosing to keep certain features of Rulfo’s writing that may seem strange to English readers—such as his use of French quotation marks, dashes, and italics to mark dialogue. Weatherford says, “The more that I committed myself to following the spirit of his narrative, the more successful I was. As a translator, I wasn’t the most important part of the equation. Juan Rulfo has a very particular voice that needs to be respected and preserved.”
Looking to the Future
Through his new translation of Pedro Páramo, Weatherford hopes that more readers will discover this historic piece of literature. He comments, “The reality is that Juan Rulfo is a very important Latin American and Mexican author who unfortunately has never gained the broad readership in the English-speaking world that he deserves.”
Weatherford’s next project is to translate Rulfo’s book of short stories El llano en llamas (The Burning Plain). Upon completion, he will have translated all three of Rulfo’s works of fiction. Though the process of translating Pedro Páramo took several years of intense work, Weatherford says, “It’s the highlight of my career as an academic, and it’s something that I will always be very proud of. [I’m] grateful for the opportunity to translate one of the most beloved novels of the Mexican literary tradition.”
Check out Weatherford’s translation of Pedro Páramo.
Juan Rulfo was not only an author, but a photographer, too—learn about the 2006 MOA exhibition Photographing Silence: Juan Rulfo’s Mexico that Weatherford spearheaded as a faculty curator.