Translator's Note | Rajah Versus Conquistador
I'm happy to present this new English translation of "Ang Bana Ug ang Nagdala sa Niño," which we have entitled in English as "Rajah Versus Conquistador."
This novel was originally written in classical Sinugbuanon by my aunt Camy for my aunt Lupe (Sr. Margaret of the Precious Blood, OCD) on the tenth anniversary of her perpetual vows. The Magellan sections were written in Spanish by Uncle Greg, the husband of Aunt Camy.
Since I grew up in Hong Kong, I did not undergo language lessons that women in binukot families take as part of our internal studies. This novel has been circulating in my family for years, so I always felt left out when they would talk about this book and other binukot literature.
Thankfully, the rise of large language models (LLM) has made translations much easier. The first attempt at translation using an early model of Claude AI was "too much." Cebuano words whose meanings play a role in the story lost their nuance as they were mapped into Western concepts represented by English words. Yet even with that rough translation, a new world was opened to me.
I shared that translation with my classmates in USC, where I am a senior high school student. It turns out that even those who grew up in Cebu find it hard to read text in Binisayâ. My aunt Camy explained the sad events of the past century that led to this. But rather than dwell on the past, we worked on this project of bringing this novel to a wider audience. I used the latest model of Claude AI, Sonnet 3.7, and Aunt Camy made some manual suggestions and edits.
A little warning: there's quite a bit of violence in this book. Nothing that would surprise those who read works of fiction from the likes of Flannery O'Connor or Cormac McCarthy. But if the only novels you've read have been Harry Potter and "Young Adult" fiction, you might find some passages disturbing.
We made this translation primarily for Cebuano speakers educated in English and who find it hard to read Cebuano text. So we chose to retain many Cebuano words in their original form. We also chose to retain the binukot orthography, whose most obvious difference from "Filipino" is the upward pointing arrow that denotes the glottal stop.
Our secondary audience are non-Cebuanos. So we included translations of Cebuano words and sometimes explanations in the footnotes. We also do the same for phrases we chose to transliterate. Explanations are also offered for historical and cultural references that non-Cebuanos may not be familiar with.
My more nerdy friends (you know who you are!) wanted some scholarly references, so I asked my aunt. We have included these as footnotes in relevant areas. Aunt Camy also wrote an epilogue and an afterword especially for those unfamiliar with binukot (and baylan) lore and history.
So with that, I present "Rajah Versus Conquistador"!
Samantha Gonzales
Argao, Cebu, Philippines
May 1, 2025
Available on May 1, 2025:
International paperback and ebook: amazon.rvcbook.com
Philippine paperback: lazada.rvcbook.com