When Alberto Ferreras was in kindergarten in Caracas, his class was rehearsing Jingle Bells for the annual Christmas show. Sister Mary, the music teacher, came over to him. She bent down and said, “Honey, don’t sing. Just move your lips, but DON’T SING!”
“I was five years old, she was a nun, and it was a lot like having God come down from heaven to tell me that I was not allowed to sing – ever,” he recalls.
So instead, he began to write.
Born in Spain, Alberto’s family had moved to Caracas when he was just four years old. There, he had to “learn to be a Venezuelan”. He developed a keen awareness of how people behaved and communicated in his new country. This ability to observe human action and interaction helped him adapt in order to blend in. It would also serve him well as a writer.
Nearly twenty years later, Alberto moved from Venezuela to the US and the process started over again: first learning to be an American and then, in his own words, “learning to be a Latino in America – which was a very conscious decision.”
It is this deliberate awareness and respect for the intricate symbiosis of language and culture that stands out in Alberto’s work.
He moved to New York City in 1990 and within six months found himself working at MTV as their new, Spanish-speaking writer. There, he worked with host Daisy Fuentes to find a voice that would connect with Spanish-speakers of all origins without losing authenticity in language or culture. Given the vast number of words that are unique to a given Spanish-speaking region – or the fact that some words may be innocuous in one country but offensive in another – this was a potential minefield, and one that they navigated successfully.
There were other issues, as well. When the Hispanic media in the 90s insisted that anyone in front of the camera speak “proper” Spanish, Alberto found that unfair and discriminatory. It wasn’t how Latinos in the US spoke naturally. Natural expression is at the heart of good writing, good storytelling, and good music, and Alberto saw the value in that authenticity.
He learned, through the MTV show, the significant difference between being a “Latino in the US” and being a “Latino in Latin America”. This cultural distinction has been a recurring theme in his work, as seen in the show he created entirely in Spanglish, titled Habla (Speak Up), which he produced for HBO US from 2003 to 2022. Among his recent projects are a video installation titled Somos (We are) for the Smithsonian Institution, and a media project with pictures from the Library of Congress titled “American Latinos 1935-1945.” This latter endeavor premiered at Instituto Cervantes in New York this past May.
But let’s put other mediums aside and go back to words.
In 2009, Alberto Ferreras won the International Latino Book Award for Best English Fiction, for his debut novel B as in Beauty. This was no small achievement by any measure, but especially for someone who did not speak English fluently until the age of 28.
When it came time for B as in Beauty to become B de Bella, he decided to do the translation himself. This was due, in part, to memories of himself as a teenager, comparing translations of Kafka’s short stories and being horrified by the very different results that were all based on the same German text.
I asked Alberto about translating his own work. His answer will resonate with interpreters and translators everywhere: “…I was amazed to see how—in order to express the same idea—I had to use a completely different set of words […] Understanding the intention behind my words helped me make sure that I was conveying the same idea, regardless of the words I had chosen for the original.”
B as in Beauty was later translated into Italian as Una Favola a Manhattan. Always aware of the importance of culture in art, Alberto asked that his Italian translator work from the Spanish version since his translation already had context built in for non-US readers.
His family, which includes three siblings, is proud of him and his work—if surprised that he has managed to make a living in the arts. (His mother, Alberto shares, insists he should become a travel agent “to have something to fall back on”!)
In February of 2024, Alberto put on an interactive play titled The Miracle. The show ran for 12 weeks in Theater for the New City in New York. It retells the story of his little five-year-old self being told to NOT SING… and then finding his voice.
Writer, producer, director, artist, actor, and now (despite Sister Mary), singer: if there’s a story to be told, Alberto Ferreras will somehow find a way to tell, translate, or interpret it.
-Carol Shaw, Editor
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Alberto Ferreras is the ATA Interpreters Division Distinguished Speaker for the 65th Annual Conference. He will give his presentation, “When the Same Is Not the Same: Adventures in Media Translation and Interpreting” in two sessions on Thursday, October 31 (from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.) For more information about this dynamic speaker, visit https://www.alberto-ferreras.com/
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