You know, one of the beautiful things about learning Spanish or learning another language

as an adult is that you're always learning and your Spanish is your Spanish, you know?

Like my Spanish is a layer of Chilean with like a little bit of Mexican sprinkled in there

and a little bit of some Argentine and now some Spanish. Like, it's always growing.

Welcome back to Working. I'm your host, Nate Shenen.

And I'm your other host, June Thomas. June, whose voice was that at the top of the show?

Nate, that was Meghan Dowell, a translator of literary fiction from Spanish. Her translation

of Samantha Schweblin's Seven Empty Houses won the 2022 National Book Award for Translated

Literature. But today's show actually has two guests. Meghan is joined by Carlos Fonseca,

one of the writers whose works she translates. Oh, so we get two for one. That's right. I love it.

And why did you want to talk with the two of them? Well, the English translation of Carlos's

latest novel, Austral, was published in May and I wanted to take this opportunity to talk with

a writer and their translator to explore that relationship and learn how they work together.

And I have a hunch that you also grab some bonus content for our slate plus members. What can they

expect to hear? Oh, you know me so well. I asked Carlos why translation is important to him.

Why does he want his books to appear in languages other than the one it was written in? I also

asked about translating non-textual elements. Austral includes some, I guess you could call them

artistic artifacts that include words and they too were translated. And it turns out that the

story of how that came to be was really interesting. I am definitely intrigued. And if you are too,

please consider being a slate plus member. If you are already a member, make sure to stick around

for that conversation at the end of the show. Now, how do you become one if you're not? Well,

you can sign up today at slate.com slash working plus. You'll get exclusive members only segments,

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