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Here we have a very interior story, a distant narrative voice, as an educated, middle-class man recalls his past relationship with Delia, a young factory worker that he may have loved and whose child he fathered. What I was struck by especially in the novel was the level of abstraction I found���Ĵ�ý�when I encounter abstraction as I translate, I feel like groaning; it is incredibly hard to render in English without sounding stilted and clumsy. But there is nothing clumsy about how Cleary handles abstraction here. Consider the gorgeous opening lines of the novel:

It has always unsettled me that geography does not change with time, with the changes that take place within it, within us. We retain something immaterial, similar to that something retained by geography, also immaterial. And yet, though it remains unaltered, geography is the measure of change. Just as happens with the temperature of a body, the trace it retains of its former heat allows it to continue being itself, yet this trace marks a difference. Bodies are and are not; they are at once more and less than.

I can only imagine how much work Cleary put into these lines; the opening of a novel is so important and to be faced with all of this abstract reflection besides!
In the case of the Chejfec, I did take a peek at the Spanish, and just as I thought, Cleary was true to what was there in terms of meaning and sentence structure, yet she also created something new in the English that was extremely effective. Consider the first two lines in the Spanish:

Siempre me ha inquietado que la geografia no cambie pese al tiempo, pese a nuestros cambios y los cambios que se producen en ella. Conservamos algo immaterial, equivalente a lo que conserva la geografía, también inmaterial.

My (very) rough translation of this would be:

It has always worried me that geography does not change despite time, despite our changes and the changes that are produced in it. We conserve something immaterial, equivalent to that which conserves geography, also immaterial.

I���Ĵ�ý�m very impressed with that first line in Cleary���Ĵ�ý�s translation, what she���Ĵ�ý�s done to control a potentially flat sentence, by incorporating the repetition of ���Ĵ�ý�with���Ĵ�ý� (���Ĵ�ý�with time���Ĵ�ý� and ���Ĵ�ý�with the changes���Ĵ�ý�) instead of the repetition of a rather awkward-sounding ���Ĵ�ý�despite���Ĵ�ý� (���Ĵ�ý�despite time���Ĵ�ý� and ���Ĵ�ý�despite our changes���Ĵ�ý����Ĵ�ý�), and then echoing this ���Ĵ�ý�with���Ĵ�ý� again, at the end of the sentence, with the rhythmically sensitive ���Ĵ�ý�within it, within us.���Ĵ�ý� Here, Cleary got the sense of Chejfec���Ĵ�ý�s words, but the sound of her ending and her use of repetition are much more effective for the English. That Cleary chose to break that first sentence down with that final brief phrase (���Ĵ�ý�within us���Ĵ�ý�) is perhaps also speaking to Chejfec���Ĵ�ý�s second sentence that makes use of this technique, with the small additional phrase at the end, ���Ĵ�ý�también inmaterial.���Ĵ�ý� She also very wisely reversed ���Ĵ�ý�nuestros cambios���Ĵ�ý� and ���Ĵ�ý�los cambios que se producen en ella���Ĵ�ý� in her first sentence so that she doesn���Ĵ�ý�t both begin and end her first line with a pitiful little ���Ĵ�ý�it.���Ĵ�ý� My own fumbling explanations don���Ĵ�ý�t do the opening lines of the translation justice; they are beautiful, and they are Cleary���Ĵ�ý�s.

Ultimately, I don���Ĵ�ý�t know if Oz/Silverston���Ĵ�ý�s Between Friends and Chejfec/Cleary���Ĵ�ý�s The Dark will make my long list or not. I like both books very much, but I also have an enormous pile of books to get through. In any case, I���Ĵ�ý�m very impressed with the work of the two translators, who have made the complicated, challenging voices of the original authors seem so effortless in English.