Did not send Luis Esparza pages last week as I continued to revise certain scenes. (Also his academic work load on a project he is doing with Antonio Prieto is very heavy right now, so I didn’t want to be overly demanding…)

Hm. To keep it simple how about this: Just translate the dialogue first — later as his time increases, then maybe translate the whole of the scene.

Oliver Cantú arrives tomorrow — and it is Oliver who provides the 3rd and final level of translation on this project. In the same way that we are flexible with actors in English; discussing the dialogue and open to improvisation, so we will be working with the actors in the Spanish scenes. That’s why the final translation goes through Oliver as a young Mexican actor; to finalize colloquialisms, vernacular and the playability of dialogue in the scene.

It was their expertise I wished to have on the dialogue in the first 2 sets of translations — the first was done by an elderly academic gentleman from Spain, Alejandro Rabazo; the 2nd by Luis, also an academic, but younger and from Mexico; and the 3rd by Oliver, younger still (the age of the characters in the story) also from Mexico, but an actor as opposed to an academic.

In this way I believe we end up with much more lively dialogue that has been thoroughly explored. (In discussing a term like caretaker-handyman for example, we discussed whether or not it should be a term considered more general to Mexico or one that is regional to the Yucatan. In the end we made the regional choice.)
SS