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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
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      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
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      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
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  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
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      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
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    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
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      • e Fall 2022
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      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
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      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
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      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
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      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
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    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022

Carolina Faller Moura

Give Me Your Tongue


                                                                                                                   1
 
Hearing the sound of a language is an ability lost once you turn mechanical waves into intelligible words. Your brain stops hearing sound and starts hearing meaning.
Eu queria poder ouvir o som da minha língua como música. Ouvir as notas
e as nuances sem o julgamento que vem com a compreensão de palavras. Se entendêssemos a língua dos pássaros, estaríamos imunes à sua melodia?

Not knowing a language is also a talent. It means never getting to meaning, but staying with music.
 
                                                                                                                   2
 
How long does it take to recognize Portuguese in such an American movie? How long does it take to recognize Bowie in such a Brazilian song?
 
Seu Jorge said he received a call and did not understand a word from the other end. It was filmmaker Wes Anderson inviting him to make versions of David Bowie songs and perform them as a character in Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. I had a similar experience when I heard him play “Life on Mars” in the beginning of the movie: I could not understand the words. I had that feeling of hearing Portuguese I often have on the train, when I only catch a few sounds and intonations from English or Spanish speakers.
 
                                                                                                                   3
 
In Brazil, I once heard a cover band play a song in Portuguese that sounded both familiar and strange. It took me a while to realize it was actually “Starman.” I had probably heard that version of the song even before I knew who Bowie was — it was released the same year I was born. But this was the first time I noticed it. And I hated it.
 
Seu Jorge created his versions of “Rebel Rebel,” “Changes,” “Lady Stardust,” “Five Years,” and many others. But he plays the 1988 version of “Starman,” originally recorded by Nenhum de Nós. Is it necessary to translate again what has already been translated?
 
                                                                                                                   4
 
I’ve been listening to Seu Jorge’s Life Aquatic recordings, waiting for the point where I’ll be able to sing the Portuguese lyrics.
 
 
Things I can’t translate to you:
Deu formiga no mel, marimbondo e cupim, que que eu vou fazer de mim?
Não vou misturar cachaça e café só pra te agradar
A sua chama está ardendo de saudade
Já conheço seu dorso
E o seu beijo amargo de jiló
 
 
Things I will:
 
The fool fears the night, how will the night fear fire?
 The make-up will come apart for your fear to show
 So come here, give me your tongue
 Protect your eyes against the salt
 If it will go with jeans, that I don’t know
 
 
                                                                                                                   5
 
Bowie said: “Had Seu Jorge not recorded my songs in Portuguese, I would never have heard this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with.” Did Bowie, or even Anderson, know what Seu Jorge sang?
 
 
Seu Jorge did not translate words, he translated music.
 
He turned a Bowie song into Brazilian music.
 
                                                                                                                   6
 
 
                                                                                 How does one begin to translate oneself?
 
                                                                                                                   7
 
I have translated my writing in Portuguese into English before. It feels like writing again. It seems that having the words already laid out in one language would be a shortcut to the final text, but it feels more like a detour. The original meaning had to bend to the curves of this one language and now I am trying to bend it back and then into yet another shape.
 
 
                                                                                                                   8
 
When I was a child, I used to play a computer game in which a Brazilian comics character talked to me out of the screen. I could make her talk in different languages, too. What struck me was that her voice was different when she talked in French or in English. I did not grasp the concept of voice acting. That’s how I came to believe you become someone else in a different language.
 
In ways, I have become someone else. I am a person with no ownership over language. I feel that all I say is borrowed.
 
                                                                                                                   9
 
The year David Bowie died, Seu Jorge went on a tour with his Life Aquatic album. I sat on the fifth row at the first of two consecutive Chicago concerts, head uncovered among a crowd of red beanies.
 
The two men sitting next to me were surprised when I told them his lyrics were not the same as Bowie’s. They had never thought about that. They took translation for granted.
 
 
                                                                                                                   10
 
Visiting Brazil after two years, my friends told me I have a foreign accent.
 
I keep asking: “sabe?” — “you know?”
 
My intonation is different.
 
I am ineloquent. Words and expressions come to me in English and I know I can’t just translate them literally. I open my mouth but nothing comes out.
 
One time my jaw locked while I spoke, as if my bones were rejecting my own language.
 
                                                                                                                   11
 
Seu Jorge spoke in a clear but labored, heavy-accented English. I could hear Rio through his sentences. I envied that, the crystalized identity that persisted even under translation.
 
“I didn’t speak a word of English. I still don’t, but I am trying to communicate here,” he said. And he perfectly succeeded: at every interlude, he told stories about the songs, about the movie, about his life. In those interludes, he addressed every English speaker in the concert hall. During the songs, it felt as if he addresses only me.
 
My ears still welcome Portuguese.
 
                                                                                                                   12
 
After 3 years of English-living, I moved to Berlin.
 
My German is good enough to: order black coffee, make change, converse with the man behind the döner counter who tells me my name is beautiful.
 
Other than that, all I hear is music.




--
Carolina Faller Moura is a writer and artist from Brazil, living in Berlin. She earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received the 2016 MFAW Writing Fellowship Award. She is the founder and editor of Homonym Journal, an online publication focused on multi-lingual and translation-minded art & writing.

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  • Home
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022