Other cultures are simply inaccessible to monolingual people without the help of a good translator. I am fully committed to the value of learning and embracing other cultures and am willing to do the work to bring cultures to those who cannot go to them.

The only language I am fully qualified to professionally translate is Portuguese. That said, I have worked extensively with Castilian Spanish (on my work with Gil Vicente) and various Iberian dialects. I have some passing ability with other Romance languages having done some translation from French in the past.

Like many translators, my initial drafts are often long, tedious processes, with a host of dictionaries by my side.

Where my process may differ however is that I focus very strongly on the use of conceptual metaphors in the source language. Cognitive linguistics explains how much of our ways of thinking can be found in experiential metaphors encoded into our language. When we as translators ignore where those metaphors differ, focusing solely on meaning, we lose pieces of the culture attached to the original work that could benefit our target audience.

My long term project to translate the complete works of Gil Vicente is the greatest challenge and joy I have in translation. Translating something that comes from not only another place but such a drastically different time allows me to play with language and meaning in ways that other projects do not. In addition, his plays are all in verse, and my translations attempt to keep both meter and rhyme for the whole process. This slows down the project, but adds so much quality and joy.

I met Lucienne Guedes Fahrer in 2010 when I saw her in a production called Banda Hamlet in which the cast of Hamlet came back from the dead to put on a rock show featuring popular music from England, the U.S., Brazil, and Argentina. I had seen a short play of hers days before and asked that she send me other examples of her work. After reading the first few she sent me, I was hooked and will translate anything she gives me now.

As a translator, what I choose to translate is as important as how I translate it; if I choose plays that already look too American, I’m not bringing something new to those around me. Her style is sparsely poetic, and she explores everything ranging from memory and family to allegory and society.