This Darkness Light is a 2014... horror? Thriller?... novel by Michaelbrent Collings. One of the main characters is Portuguese/English bilingual nurse Serafina Cruz. In contrast to Kill the Beast, which I discussed last time, the multilingualism in this book exists both at the level of the text and intrafictionally.
Although she is perfectly comfortable operating in an Anglophone environment, Serafina's point of view exposes us to memories in Portuguese, and she naturally prefers her native Portuguese over English in stressful situations. Our first exposure to Portuguese is in the following lines:
ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺSerafina stopped walking. Motionless as she had been that day as words spoke through time.ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺWhere is my daughter?
At the lowest level, this is using simple narrative translation (i.e., "the subtitle method")--you show the second language, then you show the explicit translation. This is a slight variation on the basic pattern, as the first instance of second-language text is separated from the translation; i.e., you aren't meant to understand or focus on the literal meaning immediately (or if you do, it's a small-scale Easter Egg). Rather, the first repetition of the Portuguese text serves solely to remove the reader from their familiar context and show Serafina's Portuguese background. That characterization is more important than the literal meaning of the text.
This first exposure to Portuguese also begins a larger-scale pattern of Teaching the Reader.
This same sentence--ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ--is repeated on the very next page without translation. At that short remove, the reader can be expected to remember what it means, and additional exposure, exercising the reader's memory, helps to cement that in their mind.
We encounter the sentence again several chapters later. And a few chapters after that, a second instance of narrative translation:
ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺWhere is my daughter?
Later on, we have an instance of Making It Obvious:
(ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ)ʺSheʹs here, Mom,ʺ said Serafina. ʺYour daughterʹs here. Not running anymore.ʺ
And another unmarked usage:
Serafina had never felt like this in a church. Her mother–(ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ)–had taken her every week, often two or three times a week, until she ran away.
With the context of these usages helping to establish this particular sentence in the reader's mind as a motif for Serafina's memory of her mother.
Throughout the book, Collings has thus used a variety of comprehension tactics (narrative translation and Making It Obvious) along with unmarked usages of the target phrase to enact a very simple program of spaced repetition--present the information, force recall of the information, present the information again, etc.--to teach this phrase to the reader, as well as teaching them the emotional context with which it is associated. And that allows Collings to execute this scene:
John touched her cheek. ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ he said. Isaiah didnʹt understand the words, but he felt Serafina start trembling. More so when John continued, ʺEla espera por você ainda.ʺ Then she was weeping as he finished, ʺYou have always been a good daughter. She loves you.ʺ
The character Isaiah doesn't understand the words, but you do, and you know what they represent for Serafina beyond their literal textual meaning. (Note that we also have an instance here of Make It An Easter Egg; you don't need to understand ʺEla espera por você ainda.ʺ for the scene to make sense, but it's fine if you do.)
Mixed in with all that, we have a another minor instance of Making It Obvious when Serafina thinks about her mother:
Serafina knew her mother would not approve of such language. Even mentally.Sorry, mamãe.
If the similarity in form weren't enough, the context makes the meaning of "mamãe" abundantly clear, and continues to establish the association of Portuguese with Serafina's memories of her family.
Interleaved with the spaced repetition of the ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ theme, Collings introduces another bit of thematic Portuguese with a variation on explicit narrative translation:
Pai Nosso, que estás no céu….The Lordʹs Prayer was so beautiful in Portuguese. She looked down at Hershel. He always wore a white lab coat. So proud of that. He was a doctor, and he never let anyone forget it. The lab coat was no longer white.Santificado seja o Teu Nome….Then over him. She landed in a puddle of blood. Almost slipped and wished madly that she had some FiveFinger shoes–good traction!Venha o Teu Reino….She was past him. Room 752 was at her right. Room 753 coming up on her left. John Doeʹs room.Seja feita a Tua Vontade….That was where the prayer stopped in her mind. Thy Will be done.
In the first two lines of this passage, Collings could have simply employed the subtitle method to directly translate the opening of the Lord's Prayer--but in this case, the literal meaning of the text is of almost no importance. What matters is that the reader identify the cultural significance of the text, regardless of whether or not they remember the actual English words--and for that, implicitly telling them that this is part of the Lord's Prayer does the job.
At the end of the passage though, the literal meaning of the last line is significant. The prayer transitions from a simple mantra to an expression of the character's intentions. Thus, rather than relying on the reader to be keeping track of where we are in the text by the time we get to that point (which you probably haven't been doing even if you do have the English version memorized, since it was implicitly established as unimportant at the beginning), Collings employs explicit translation to transition the text from mantra to plan in the reader's mind as well as the character's.
Later on, we see another identification of the opening of the Lord's Prayer (along with explicit narrative translation of a one-off variant):
Pai Nosso, que estás no céu….The words of the Lordʹs Prayer, begun in the Portuguese of Serafinaʹs mother and her motherʹs mother, the prayer that had always comforted her, failed this time to give her comfort or any hope. Instead of hearing the words continue as they should, she heard others.Pai Nosso, onde você está?Our Father, where are you?
Now, this theme is not as important as ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ, so Collings doesn't spend as much time on it. But given these two labelled repetitions, the reader can be expected to recognize the theme when it shows up for a third time:
She just kept on whispering, over and over.ʺPai Nosso, que estás no céu….ʺ[...]ʺ…santificado seja o Teu Nome, Venha o Teu Reino ….ʺʺSHUT HER UP!ʺ
And in this case, if you have forgotten the identity of the text, that's OK; unlike with the ʺOnde está a minha filha?ʺ theme, all that is necessary for the intended effect here is that you can recognize this bit of Portuguese as something Serafina has memorized, so the spaced repetition patterns does not need to be as well established throughout the book.
This Darkness Light is available in Kindle or Paperback formats; and as usual note that as an Amazon Associate I will get a cut of purchases made through links in this post.
If you liked this post, please consider making a small donation.
No comments:
Post a Comment