But “the underdogs” may not be the best translation of the title. On the one hand, it has a strong sports resonance that seems somewhat out of place for such a story. On the other, although Demetrio Macías and his men are unquestionably those from below—at the most basic level, in an economic and social sense—it is not clear that the English expression “the underdogs” captures this same meaning. Macías and his men are peasants, subjects from the lower classes; they are in many ways archetypal characters representing the mostly rural masses who had been excluded from the gains and benefits of Porfirio Díaz’s modernizations, and the very classes who rose up in the revolution—first against Díaz, then against Madero, and finally against Huerta (see “Chronology of the Mexican Revolution,” p. xxi).

And yet, “the underdogs” is not entirely an incorrect translation, either—and besides, as is often the case in literary translation, it is not exactly a matter of “correct” or “incorrect. ” A better translation may have been “those from below” or “those from the lower depths,” but neither of these sounds that great, and it would be extremely disconcerting to English-speaking readers who already know this novel as The Underdogs. In addition, and perhaps most interestingly, although prior to being translated as “the underdogs” this term did not have the same meaning in Spanish as los de abajo, now that it has been translated as such, it seemingly does have the same—or at least a parallel—meaning. In other words, translation has not only brought a new work of literature into our culture, it has also affected our language. “The underdogs” now means what it has always meant in English, but it also connotes what los de abajo denotes and connotes in Spanish—at least in the context of the novel in question. For these reasons, Azuela’s classic of the Mexican Revolution remains, in my translation in the pages that follow, as The Underdogs.

Furthermore, the novel not only has a title that refers to the economic and social condition of its main characters, it also develops a vertical (up/down) metaphor throughout the text that repeatedly plays off of the title. The reader sees this in a number of scenes in which different characters are literally above or below each other—a physical representation meant to reflect or contrast with their economic and social standing. Therefore, I have made every effort, through several details in the translation itself, to re-create the key moments in which the vertical metaphor is operating as a defining subtext of the novel. Similarly, I have sought some new ways, again through specific details of the translation, to make “the underdogs” function as an appropriate title in English.

After the title, the largest challenge the translator faces is that the majority of the novel is written in dialogue, as Azuela has his characters use a variety of regional and colloquial expressions and idioms, and speak in idiosyncratic accents, all of which reflect their different economic and social classes—in addition to their individual personalities. It is crucial that the translator try to re-create at least some of this orality, as it constitutes a defining element of the style. Thus, the manner in which the characters speak is also meant to give the reader a sense of Azuela’s characters themselves, and more broadly of the kinds of participants in the Mexican Revolution. In particular, the peasants and the poor in The Underdogs are marginal, characters who have not traditionally had a voice—not in history, not in politics, not in literature. The author’s careful use of dialogue reflects his intention of having different characters speak for themselves and having the reader hear a variety of voices, some perhaps for the first time. This intention, this oral element of the novel must somehow be re-created by the translator. As the reader will see, I have sought to re-imagine and re-create in English the voices of Azuela’s characters, who speak in a very specific kind of Mexican Spanish.

A related challenge for the translator is that most of the characters in the novel are referred to by some sort of nickname, while very few are addressed by their given names. These nicknames—sometimes monikers, other times epithets— often provide the reader a mental image of the characters, of their looks, their personalities, and of how they are seen by those around them. For this reason I have opted, wherever possible within the flow of my version, to render the majority of these nicknames into English. Although translators are usually advised to avoid translating proper names, I believe my decision will give English-speaking readers a more immediate sense of the importance of these nicknames in context. For those interested, each time a nickname first appears in the text, an endnote informs the reader what that nickname was in Spanish. Finally, one nickname simply does not translate well: that of the curro Luis Cervantes. In this case, not only is there no direct English equivalent available, but I actually deemed it important to maintain the term curro—a derogatory label applied to someone from the upper classes precisely because this individual thinks too highly of himself and looks down with contempt at poor, rural, mestizo, and/or indigenous Mexicans. In addition, as the reader will see, the meaning and the various connotations of curro begin to emerge from the text itself, whether one reads the novel in Spanish or in English.

Along these lines, another issue the translator faces is the extent to which certain words should be left in Spanish, perhaps to gain a foreign flavor. In this regard, I have chosen to leave relatively few words in Spanish—and have always provided the definition and my reasoning in the endnote accompanying each such word. On the other hand, I have opted to leave untranslated some words that come from the Spanish but have already been incorporated into English (e.g., “rancho, ” “señor,” “muchacho”). In these cases, I use these specific terms not only because they allow the reader to get a bit closer to the original text, but also because these words are somehow more descriptive, and at times more accurate, than their English equivalents. A good example of this is the word sombrero. A sombrero in Spanish is a hat, but within the context of the Mexican Revolution, and of the pages of The Underdogs, readers may get a better image of a Mexican character wearing a sombrero—those wide-brimmed palm-leaf hats made famous by Villa and Zapata and their followers during this period—than if they read simply “hat.”

As is often the case, the main challenges a translator faces when seeking to bring a literary text from one language and culture (and, in the case of The Underdogs, from one historical period) into another are the very elements that make that text important, worthwhile, and pleasurable to read.