Leylâ Gediz, Camada a partir do Plano de Fundo/Layer from Background

Leylâ Gediz, Camada a partir do Plano de Fundo – Layer from Background (Lisbon, 2022)

This was a really unique project and one that tested the limits of my translation technique: I’m an intermediate speaker of Portuguese, so translating from Portuguese meant translating experimentally. I began with a literal 1:1 (and hence largely incomprehensible) translation into English, then repeatedly reworked and revised anything that remained obtuse in the target text while returning frequently back to the Portuguese to engage with still-unclear sentences until, slowly, a sense began to emerge—a process accelerated by occasionally breaking off to research secondary definitions of words used in novel or non-standard ways, or that just deviated from the primary dictionary definition.