FRANKFURT, GERMANY – At the 2025 Frankfurt Book Fair, advertising legend and author David Guerrero took to the stage not to sell a brand, but to revisit one – the brand of the Filipino soul. Before a crowd of readers, academics, and descendants of national hero José Rizal, Guerrero traced the creative, political, and personal journey of his father, Leon Ma. Guerrero, the diplomat-scholar who brought “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” into modern English.
For David, the story of translation is also a story of inheritance – one that connects the son of an adman to the son of a nation.
The translator who made Rizal speak to the world
Leon Ma. Guerrero was a statesman, biographer, and translator who, in 1961, rendered Rizal’s Noli and Fili into English so lucidly that The New York Times hailed them as “the best of them all.” His aim was clarity — to make the novels readable for modern audiences, even at the risk of smoothing out their revolutionary edges.
But as David recounted, his father’s life went beyond words on a page. From translating Rizal’s Spanish to serving as ambassador in London, he fought another kind of battle – one for visibility. “Our problem,” Leon once wrote, “is not so much bad publicity, but no publicity at all.” As a Filipino diplomat in post-war Europe, he was often explaining a country that few knew existed. “It gave him,” David read, “the uneasy feeling that he was the ambassador of a country that may never have been there at all.”
Advertising, authorship, and the power of reframing
It’s perhaps poetic that the son of a translator would himself become one – not of languages, but of culture into communication. As Chairman of BBDO Guerrero, David helped craft the globally recognized It’s More Fun in the Philippines tourism campaign – another act of translation, this time of Filipino humor and warmth into a brand narrative the world could feel.
Yet in Frankfurt, David stood not as an adman but as a literary heir, unpacking how his father’s work became both celebrated and contested. He recounted how scholar Benedict Anderson, in his 1998 book “The Spectre of Comparisons” critiqued Leon’s translations for being too comfortable, too nationalistic, even describing him as an “alcoholic anti-American diplomat” – a claim David found not only unfair but unsubstantiated. In a later email exchange, Anderson apologized, conceding that the description was “insulting.”
David handled it not as an affront but as a creative problem: how to defend truth while honoring debate. “I’m not about defending everything he’s done at all costs,” he said. “There’s a responsibility both to preserve and protect, but also to be open to genuine discussion.”
Legacy as living dialogue
The panel, Rizal and Remembrances, brought together several generations of Rizal’s descendants from Europe and the Philippines. They spoke of memory as a form of duty – from Sunday recitations of “Mi Último Adiós” before lunch to discovering their lineage in adulthood. David, ever self-deprecating, joked about being an “unpaid trustee” of his father’s estate, but the weight of that title was clear: to keep the work alive, accessible, and relevant.
That effort continues in new forms – eBooks, audiobooks voiced by Oscar-nominated actors, and reissues designed by contemporary Filipino artists. Even the witty ad lines for the 1990s reprints (“The critics didn’t shoot down the book, just the author”) earned Cleo Awards – proof that wit and history can coexist in the same sentence.
The ongoing translation of Rizal
David’s presentation wasn’t just about the past. It was a meditation on what it means to translate – a language, a legacy, or a life’s work — across time. “Most people today read Noli in Tagalog,” he observed. “Who’s checking those translations?” His question was both a challenge and a call: that Rizal’s words, like the nation he imagined, must continually be reinterpreted, re-examined, and reimagined.
For David, whose professional life has revolved around giving voice to the Filipino story, the line blurs beautifully. To translate Rizal – or to translate the Philippines – is to keep both alive.
adobo magazine is with the National Book Development Board of the Philippines at the 2025 Frankfurt Book Fair.
