Luis Verano

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to follow up on my presentation with two more things I found interesting in my investigation of Luis Verano's translation.

The first is something I noticed in the manuscript but forgot to mention in class. I wanted to highlight how meticulous Luis was with his translation. One of the comments in the manuscript was in regards to the use of the name "Macbeth" in the original text. To resolve doubts about whether the use of the "Macbeth" referred to the play or the character, Luis read the entire play to check if the context applied to any specific line. It turned out that the usage in the text referred to Macbeth as the title of the play.

The second is something Luis said to me in email correspondence. I contacted him with several questions about translating, especially the editing process, and he responded with the following:

"I don't really know what the relationship between a translator and an editor is because any translations I ever did that involved an editor were accepted exactly as I presented them without any changes, including one of a book that was more than 500-pages long and required over a year to complete. This book required considerable research, consultation, and input from many people, and when I turned the translation in, it was reviewed by three editors from three organizations in different countries. They did not change a single word."

At first my heart sank when I read this because I've never written anything that couldn't benefit from editing, especially not a translation. Having now seen the manuscript for his translation in Manoa Magazine, I'm still a little confused. I'm not quite sure how to feel about his answer, but I thought I would share his response with all of you for your consideration.