Assignment 8 ( Heidi W. Durrow, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky)

Heidi W. Durrow, born June 21^st 1969, is an American writer and the author of a novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, a novel that brought Heidi Barbara Kingsolver Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change (2008).

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either white or black. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is a novel that reveals an unfathomable past and explores issues of identity at a time when many people are asking “Must race confine us and define us?”

Before starting my translation I read an excerpt two times. Once I read it, it was not hard to conclude what it was about: Rachel, a little girl, retells the situation in which she found herself one day. Tamika Washington doesn’t like Rachel and constantly pulls her hair and threatens to beat her up. In the second paragraph we find out that people tell Rachel all kinds of staff about black people (she is uncertain whether she is white or black) and she learns that she herself is black. Text is very interesting as we have child as a main character. In order to make the translation as effective as the original, we have to find appropriate equivalents to illustrate the image the author was trying to create.

During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8^th ed.), Wikipedia.com, HeidiWDurrow.com and the notes from the class. There weren’t many unfamiliar words, those that were, I found in the dictionary. Much bigger problem was adjusting Rachel’s and Tamika’s speech as it needed to look transparent and obvious to the reader that two little girls are talking. Here are some problems that I had:

Mor - upon the first reading I wasn’t sure what this word means. I thought it was the name of her friend or cousin. Fortunately, the notes from the class made me do a little research and I found out that Mor is a Danish word for mother (suddenly everything made sense) so I translated the entire sentence Ni mama nije znala. 

As I already mentioned, Tamika’s speech did cause me a lot of troubles during the translation but I managed to find appropriate equivalents in Serbian and here they are:

“ You think you so cute” – Mis’iš da si mnogo slatka a?

“ I am fixin to kick your ass”  Ima da te prebijem!

“ Dang”  - this was a little bit problematic. Dictionary definition of this word is: a mild swear word used instead of damn. I did not want to translate it as Dodjavola or Prokletstvo as it didn’t sound as something that child would say. So I think that more appropriate translation would be: E svašta!

“ I am light-skinned-ed” This is a good example of how children are speaking. Various things came to my mind as options for this translation: Ja sam belokožac. or  Belpurasta sam.

“ I put all these new facts into the new girl” – I sva ova nova otkrića će da budu deo nove devojčice. or I sve ovo novo će da bude jedna nova devojčica.

Before posting my translation I read everything twice. I didn’t make any changes. I enjoyed translating the text as it was very interesting and I didn’t find it hard at all. Therefore, my final grade would be 3.