Rashmi Chaudhary's Blog
August 31, 2026
The word that wouldn't translate
Rooted & Rising is out in Spanish now. Before it went out, one line nearly went wrong, and I've been thinking about it ever since.
In English, one of the ninety affirmations reads: You carry more grace than you give yourself credit for.
Grace felt like an easy word. It isn't. In Spanish, gracia mostly means funny — tener gracia is what you say about someone who makes you laugh. Translated straight across, that line would have told a woman she was funnier than she realised. Kind, I suppose. Not what I meant.
It ended up as serenidad. Composure you're holding without noticing you're holding it. Which, now that I've sat with it, might be closer to what I meant in English than "grace" was.
That happened more than once.
This is your season became esta es tu temporada — except a temporada in Spanish is a television season. A whole line about a chapter of your life, reading like a broadcast schedule.
And in the sample entry, where I'd written that my favourite song came on shuffle, the literal Spanish is en aleatorio — the label printed on the button in a music app. Nobody writes that by hand in a journal. It became sonó mi canción favorita sin buscarla: my favourite song played without my looking for it. Longer. Truer.
The title changed too. The Spanish edition isn't called Rooted & Rising. It's Florecer desde mis raíces — to bloom from my roots. Not a translation. It says my, which the English never did, and I think that's the better version for a book you write yourself into.
What I expected was a translation job. What it turned out to be was writing the same book again, in a language that makes you say things differently.
Same three minutes. Same ninety mornings. Different words, chosen the same way.
In English, one of the ninety affirmations reads: You carry more grace than you give yourself credit for.
Grace felt like an easy word. It isn't. In Spanish, gracia mostly means funny — tener gracia is what you say about someone who makes you laugh. Translated straight across, that line would have told a woman she was funnier than she realised. Kind, I suppose. Not what I meant.
It ended up as serenidad. Composure you're holding without noticing you're holding it. Which, now that I've sat with it, might be closer to what I meant in English than "grace" was.
That happened more than once.
This is your season became esta es tu temporada — except a temporada in Spanish is a television season. A whole line about a chapter of your life, reading like a broadcast schedule.
And in the sample entry, where I'd written that my favourite song came on shuffle, the literal Spanish is en aleatorio — the label printed on the button in a music app. Nobody writes that by hand in a journal. It became sonó mi canción favorita sin buscarla: my favourite song played without my looking for it. Longer. Truer.
The title changed too. The Spanish edition isn't called Rooted & Rising. It's Florecer desde mis raíces — to bloom from my roots. Not a translation. It says my, which the English never did, and I think that's the better version for a book you write yourself into.
What I expected was a translation job. What it turned out to be was writing the same book again, in a language that makes you say things differently.
Same three minutes. Same ninety mornings. Different words, chosen the same way.
