Strange Harbors (2008)

John Biguenet and Sidney Wade's anthology of writing in translation was published in 2008 by the Center for the Art of Translation as a volume of its Two Lines series, and is dedicated to the translators Gregory and Clementine Rabassa. Among its stories is Claribel Alegría's "Paradise", translated from the Spanish of Nicaragua by Michael Henry Heim, whose note explains that he made the translation about twenty years earlier for an anthology of erotic literature that never appeared, and that he has been unable to trace the original, "Paraíso", among Alegría's collected stories. (Open Library)

Watches

Pulsar watch: In "Paradise", Debora sits in the driver's seat of her Ford Fiesta outside the Motel Paraíso one Thursday evening, reading a mystery she cannot concentrate on, while her nineteen-year-old friend Claudia is inside with Giuseppe, an Italian in his forties who was Debora's own first lover. She checks her pulsar watch: forty-five minutes. Waiting, she remembers the years just after the Revolution, her father's death and her teaching in the mountains. The English translation prints the maker's name in lower case; the model is not named.

Source text: Forty-five minutes, she said to herself, glancing at her pulsar watch. I hope they won't be much longer. But Claudia's only nineteen. I'm sure she's a virgin. (John Biguenet and Sidney Wade, eds., Strange Harbors, scan cataloged as Center for the Art of Translation, 2008, p. 207, in "Paradise" by Claribel Alegría, translated by Michael Henry Heim, which begins on p. 204, with a note on the author on pp. 204 to 205 and the translator's note on p. 206; Debora is named on pp. 207 and 209; Internet Archive scan OCR)