19 April 2012

"Push" by Sapphire

I’m conflicted about the limits of translation as a way to convey culture. When I first saw the Spanish translation of “Push” by Sapphire, having read the original book, I was very annoyed. However, now I believe that the editorial decision made in this case was perhaps the right one to make. To what extent can translation convey cultural references related to the use of language? Can anyone tell me, is there a uniform “official” academic practice in translation in this case?


SPOILER ALERT If you haven’t read “Push” and plan to, continue at your own risk.




I haven’t actually read the whole translation of “Push”, but I did manage to notice that the illiteracy of the main character and first person narrator of the novel, Precious, was lost in the translation into Spanish. In a case similar to “The Artist” (see my earlier post), a significant part of the message conveyed by the words lies in the form, not the content. Yes, the story is important; it’s a novel after all. However, the novel relies heavily on the fact that Precious is, for the most part, illiterate. It is her story of overcoming social and family adversity to forge herself some sort of future. This is reflected in her expression, but most of all in how the words are written. Her writing is full of what should be considered ‘creative spelling’, mostly associated with how words sound, as opposed to ‘misspelling’, which is a convention, after all. Given the context of the book, this makes a lot of sense considering the general difficulty of the written English language.

So, originally I was disturbed by this. I thought the translation would be unable to convey the message. However, now I can understand the publisher’s or translator’s decision not to pursue that path. After all, misspelling the English and Spanish languages are two completely different issues altogether. Although there are exceptions to the following, Spanish misspelling is generally limited to mistaking “b” and “v”, “g” and “j”, “y” and “ll”, doubting whether a word has a silent “h” at the start or somewhere in the middle or leaving out your “tilde” (for an example of an increasingly common orthographical and grammatical horror, take a look here: http://tomasee.blogspot.com.es/2012/02/gramatica-profesional.html ).

However, as any student of the English language will testify, English spelling is, to put it mildly, unconventional. Especially since people aren’t usually interested in the origins of a language when they learn it. To be honest, I’ve never had much of a problem with it; I guess I have a good visual memory. However, I completely sympathise with people who complain about how difficult it is for them to grasp English spelling and pronunciation. For people brought up in a language like Spanish, which is pretty much written the way it’s spoken, with a letter for each phoneme (more or less), English spelling and pronunciation seem mostly unrelated. So, how can we translate misspelling, when misspelling in each language is rooted in a different thing?

Now I wonder, were Precious's social background and educational shortcomings reflected in the book at all? If not in the spelling, perhaps in the vocabulary used?

12 April 2012

Spotting the translation

In the case of English and American authors I avoid reading their works translated into Spanish, in the same way I avoid watching dubbed films. Call me a snob if you will*, but as a translator I understand the limitations of the task at hand. Besides, reading in English for me is a ‘must’: a language, like any other skill, is easily lost if not practiced regularly.

There are exceptions of course. I’m looking forward to reading Julio Cortázar’s translation of Edgar Allan Poe, which was given to me a while back but haven’t got round to reading yet. I guess I can trust a great writer to transfer the setting, the darkness surrounding Poe’s words, choosing the right words and expressions for every nuance in the original.

Anyway, I’ve occasionally read translated novels which have been given to me as a gift. One of them was “The Informers” by Bret Easton Ellis. The translation in general was fine. Not great, but at least it captured Ellis’s dynamic style of writing and so was easy to read. However, I suddenly read something that made me want to burn the book. I’d ‘spotted the translation’, or rather a mistranslation (if such a word exists).

 I don’t remember the details right now, the exact expression; it would have been something like suddenly reading “eligió pavo frío” and being certain that the original text would have read “he went cold turkey”, with regard to a drug habit rather than with choosing a cold turkey sandwich for lunch…a bit like reading “calluses” in a menu and knowing that they meant “tripe” (I’ve seen it!). This hasn’t been the only case, but is one I remember vividly.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens? I know I have my own limitations as a translator, but things like that really bother me. I find it disrespectful of the author and of any possible readers. If you’re not sure about something, if something just doesn’t seem to scan, please ask other translators or a native speaker of the language, the author even!!!


For my first ever translation job as a freelancer, before I had Internet at home, I visited the first cable DSL Internet café in Madrid. I was trying to locate priests and linguists online, hoping they could help me with a few words and expressions I couldn’t find anywhere else. There was an expression in that book which I’m still unsure of to this day. No one was able to give me a meaning for certain, though a good friend of mine gave me what seemed like a plausible answer. Given that those words didn’t seem to constitute a linguistic expression for something else, I opted for a literal translation, leaving it as ambiguous as the original. If my mind serves me right, those words were “black oak shop”.

Can you tell me of other instances of "spot the translation" you've come across?



*I wonder if the use of “will” in this expression has anything to do with the fact that ‘want’ in Dutch is “willen”?

4 April 2012

The Artist (2011)


I recently went to the cinema to see "The Artist", recent Oscar winner for best film, best actor and best director, if I remember correctly, and famous for bringing the silent film genre back into the 21st century.

As such, I guess you're wondering what a translator would have to say about it. Well...

SPOILER ALERT! Continue reading at your own risk...


So, for those of you who have seen this movie, you know what happens right at the end: the actor speaks. But, not only does he speak; he does so in a French accent, thus solving all the narrative tension in a single, short sentence, the content of which is actually unimportant.

This is where my comments as a translator come in. I'd gone to the cinema with a couple of Spanish friends who were left unperturbed by the film. They had missed the nuance of pronunciation, the raison d'etre of this script. Accent for me is the deal-breaker in this instance, the key information to be communicated.

Subtitling of this film should have therefore been approached like subtitling for the hard of hearing, with "[French accent]" (in the corresponding language) preceding whatever the character actually says.

I wonder if, in this case, it was a general shortfall worldwide, a poorly managed international project, or if this has been a local failure that has only occurred in Spain.
Happy Easter!