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| No one can reproduce Cervantes'
style in English. Not only is his prose uniquely magnificent, but the
very music of Spanish, its syntactical structures, and the thrust and
flavor of its words, are literally untransportable into another
language. -- Burton Raffel, "Translator's Note": xvii. |
SOUND Probably the most challenging problem for the translator of Don Quixote is to convey the sound of Cervantes' unique prose style. Every serious prose writer has a distinctive style of writing -- a way of using words, arranging the parts of a sentence, and putting the sentences together in a paragraph -- that is impossible to reproduce in another language. This is usually true even when the languages (such as Spanish and English) come from the same language family and follow many of the same grammatical rules. Once again, the translator must make a difficult choice: either to attempt to capture the sound of the original writing in English, with possibly some loss of the sense of what is being said, or to concentrate primarily on sense at the expense of its distinctive sound.
Translators of Don Quixote make different choices, as the example below will indicate. This is a passage from Book I, Chapter 14, where a young woman, Marcela, answers the accusations of the shepherds who have blamed her for causing the death of Grisostomo, the man whose love she refused to return. As you read it, pay particular attention to the sentence structure and punctuation that is used to express Marcela's thoughts.
|
ORIGINAL Yo nací libre, y para poder vivir libre escogí la soledad de los campos. Los árboles destas montañas son mi compañía, las claras aguas destos arroyos mis espejos; con los árboles y con las aguas comunico mis pensamientos y hermosura. |
LITERAL I was born free, and to be able to live free I chose the solitude of the fields. The trees on those mountains are my company, the clear waters of those streams my mirrors; with the trees and with the waters I communicate my thoughts and beauty. |
Now look at two translations of this passage and compare them to the literal version (or the original version, if you read Spanish) with particular regard to sentence structure and punctuation. Which of the translations below, Translation A or Translation B, most closely follows the way in which the passage was originally written?
| TRANSLATION
A I was born free, and that I might live free, I choose the solitude of these fields: the trees on these mountains are my companions; the transparent waters of these brooks my looking-glass: to the trees and the waters I communicate my thoughts and my beauty. (Translated by Charles Jarvis) |
TRANSLATION
B I was born free, and to live free I chose the solitude of the fields. The trees on these mountains are my companions; the clear waters of these streams my mirrors; to the trees and the waters I disclose my thoughts and my beauty. (Translated by J.M. Cohen) |
If you said Translation B, by J. M. Cohen, is closer in sentence structure and punctuation to the way in which Cervantes originally wrote this passage, you're correct. Cohen translates the passage in two sentences, the same as in the original version. Jarvis's version, however, translates it in one long sentence. This makes a difference because Cervantes' use of two sentences emphasizes Marcela's first statement, "I was born free and to live free I chose the solitude of the fields," by separating it distinctly from the second part. Cohen's version is also closer to the number of words used in the original writing (44 as compared to Cervantes' original 40), follows the syntax (word order) of the original very closely, and has only one minor variation in punctuation, a semi-colon instead of a comma after the first phrase in the second sentence. As a result, if Cohen's version is read aloud, it will sound more like the version that Cervantes' originally wrote -- although, of course, there's no way of translating the sound of Spanish words into English.
To give you some practice in analyzing the style of different translations, you'll see below four versions of another part of Marcela's speech in Book I, Chapter 14. After you've read them, the exercise at the bottom of the page will help you to analyze the differences in sound among these versions.
| VERSION
A: ORIGINAL Y, así como la víbura no merece ser culpada por la ponzoña que tiene, puesto que con ella mata, por habérsela dado naturaleza, tampoco yo merezco ser reprehendida por ser hermosa; que la hermosura en la mujer honest es como el fuego apartado o como la espada aguda, que ni él quema ni ella corta a quien a ellos no se acerca. |
VERSION
B: LITERAL And, just as the viper does not deserve blame for the poison that it has, which she kills with, because it was given to her by nature, so I do not deserve blame for being beautiful; since beauty in an honest woman is like the distant fire or like the sharp sword, that neither does one burn nor the other cut those who do not come near it. |
| VERSION
C: PUTNAM As the viper is not to be blamed for the deadly poison that it bears, since that is a gift of nature, so I do not deserve to be reprehended for my comeliness of form. Beauty in a modest woman is like a distant fire or a sharp-edged sword: the one does not burn, the other does not cut, those who do not come near it. |
VERSION
D: RUTHERFORD |
EXERCISE C. 
In the boxes
immediately
above, look at the sentence structures and punctuation of
the two translations, VERSION C
by PUTNAM
and
VERSION D
by
RUTHERFORD.
Then compare these translations -- looking mainly at sentence structures and punctuation -- to VERSION B, the LITERAL translation of the same passage.
Which of these two translations, VERSION C or VERSION D, do you think is more alike in its sentence structures and punctuation to the LITERAL translation of the passage? Give a brief explanation (two or more sentences) to support your reasoning.
Note: If you know Spanish, you can compare the translations to VERSION A: the ORIGINAL version of the passage, instead of the literal version.
Click on
these links to review the selections:
VERSION A:
ORIGINAL
VERSION B:
LITERAL
VERSION C: PUTNAM
VERSION D: RUTHERFORD
When you've finished the exercise, go to Page 4.
comments to: vpoulakis@nvcc.edu
05/26/05