‘Alphaland and Other Tales’ by Cristina Jurado

My good friend, Cristina Jurado, has a new collection of short stories available, Alphaland and Other Tales. It includes a story I translated from Spanish into English, “Embracing the Movement.”

I met Cristina when I was living in Spain, and I’ve collaborated with her on a number of projects. She’s an award-winning author, enthusiastic editor, and cheerful promoter of speculative fiction. You can recognize her from across a room by her wide, warm smile.

This collection includes nine short stories, and the back cover describes them this way: “Otherness is the idea that permeates all these speculative stories, full of characters troubled by the misconstruction of their identities, and in permanent search for answers in the margins of reality.”

I translated “Abrazar el movimiento” (Embracing the Movement), an intense first-contact story whose beautiful images hide horror.

Every translation has delightful problems. Many words never have exact equivalents. In this case, the challenge started with the first sentence: No somos tan diferentes, forestera. “We are not so different…” and then there’s that word: forestera. It is used repeatedly throughout the story, and I had to get it right.

The Real Diccionario Española defines forastero/a as someone or something que es o viene de fuera del lugar: “that is or comes from another place,” a stranger, an outsider. But there’s more: forastero is male, forastera is female. In the context of the story, it matters that the person being addressed is identified as female. I needed to find a way to preserve that sense.

Thesauruses listed close-but-not-quite words like foreigner, nonnative, outlander, alien, nonresident, drifter, transient, wanderer … which led to nomad, rambler, roamer, rover, stroller, vagabond, wanderer, wayfarer … Wait. The word rover suggested something … the Mars rovers, Perseverance, Curiosity, Spirit, Opportunity, and Sojourner. The Sojourner was named after Sojourner Truth. In 1797, she was born into slavery as Isabella Bomfree in New York State, and after she became free, she chose a new name because she felt called to travel and testify for the abolition of slavery and for the improvement of women’s rights.

“Sojourner” means someone who stays as a temporary resident, who comes from another place. The word in English has associations with space exploration, and it’s a name still being used for baby girls today.

I decided I’d found the word for forastera, although I needed to reinforce the female meaning in the first reference, and I realized that I could do so by introducing an important element from further within the story. Finally, I had the opening line in English:

“We are not so different, sister sojourner.”