There is much to be gained in this endeavour. This I consider an interventionist strategy by Rabassa as he intended to make the translation even more 'literary' than the original. Another important issue does not have simply theoretical impact but carries itself the recognition of the role of translators in society. Gregory Rabassa, in a short essay marked by refined sense of humor, gives some useful indications useful for sweeping away any pretence to equivalence in a light but clear-cut way within the framework of all languages including, he says, artificial languages like mathematic languages. While in our reality the two triangles face one another, and the only vertex they don't share, but have very close, is the sign vertex, through which pass, first the interpretive act and, then, the translation act. On the one hand, an overall communicative purpose can be identified according to the text type. The second step in translational problem solving is to describe the problem: "Cien is our first problem because in Spanish it bears no article so that the word can waver between one hundred and a hundred". (ibid., p. 98), An immediate consequence of Rabassa's stance towards respecting the original and its comprehensibility for the TL readership is his advocacy of using what we would call a foreignizing strategy when translating apparently 'untranslatable' terms, i.e. September 15 -- no reading this week. Eds. Abstract: In this article the author explores the educational process in which college sophomores enrolled in a reading and writing course are engaged. be. Only after that can you come to come to know it in the full sense. Within this framework, a first aspect to bear in mind is that translation is a linguistic operation, as George Mounin and John C. Catford used to put it. Translation Norms in Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad translations into English, German, French, Portuguese, and Russian. 70: Translation and Tradition in Paul Celan. domesticate any foreign proper name in the original (instead of using Mark in the Spanish translation, use Marcos). Undoubtedly, "Out of sight, out of mind" could well mean that too, but the metaphor activated by the translator is not the same as that implied by the author, so, produces a serious communication problem. Numbers exist inasmuch as the relations between them exist, so we are not amazed at the fact that 9 ¸ 3 is 3, since 3 + 3 + 3 is 9. In French the captain's last name was not translated and, as its meaning is not transparent, an explanatory footnote was added (carnicero: boucher). Rabussa, No Two Snowflakes Are Alike: Translation as Metaphor, in THE CRAFT OF TRANSLATION 12 (1989); see Kannar, The Constitutional Catechism of Antonin Scalia, 99 YALE L.J. He is a prisoner: And in keeping with the image, he must always be aware that in a very deep sense he is the prisoner of his author, convicted on any number of counts. Whenever one reads a text it is done mainly for informative or aesthetic purposes, whereas when one reads a text for translational purposes a special type of reading is performed where an additional purpose is added: the translator attempts to find out how the text has been constructed. I eschew “target language” because when I was in the infantry a target was something to shoot at and, ideally, kill, which does, indeed, often happen in the matter of translation. What translation is/ should be, 2. This is a unique opportunity to understand the translational ideas of one of the most outstanding contemporary English translators and to contrast them against the way they were put into practice in his English translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude. (Rabassa 1971/ 1987, p. 85). At the semantic level, it is crucial to maintain the same and/or culturally equivalent meaning relationships in the translated texts. I argue that most of Rabassa's stances towards translating can be explained and are still valid within the framework of a modern translation approach. Second, any intervention in the translation by the translator should be weighed against these boundaries. Mona Baker (advisory editor). RABASSA G. No two snowflakes are alike: translation as metaphor, in The Craft of Translation, edited by John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte, Chicago, London, The University of Chicago Press, 1989, ISBN 0-226-04864-3, p. 1-12. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. n.d. December 2009, Dallas, TX. By Latin standards it could be (and is) both. Obviously, within this perspective the textual transformation may be a translation or any other textual product such as an adaptation or a parody. Translated by Eliane Zagury. W. Luis and J. Rodríguez-Luis. Cook-Sather, A (2003) Movements of mind: ‘The Matrix,’ metaphors, and re-imagining education. Estos aspectos se ilustran a partir de un corpus paralelo multilingüe de la traducción de Cien años de soledad de Gabriel García Márquez a las lenguas inglesa, francesa, alemana, portuguesa y rusa. Therefore, any attempt is fruitless to force them into rigid formats of meaning, or to use pseudo-mathematic expedients in an attempt to say that "run = walk + fast". A Memoir. In this respect, the translator emulates the intended effect the translation is likely to have on the target audience. [ Links ], House, J. pragmatically oriented communicative and interlinguistic activity that aims at recreating the communicative purpose of the author of the Source Language Text by taking into account the instructions by the translation commissioner and the intended effect on the audience of the Target Language Text and by paying attention to the translational norms valid in the sociocultural sorrounding of the target community. Also, there was no cavil on his part over the title in English" (ibid., p. 96). Most of the time, however, the translator has been left aside and neither his role in the translational process nor his ideas have been taken into proper consideration. However, respect of the original author's ideas does not mean literalness. Likewise, the original's communicative purpose, what the author wants to say, should always be the key translating parameter. Translation and its dyscontents. Köln: Kiepenheur & Witsch. E. p. 4 That was the period in which he acquired the habit of talking to himself, of walking through the house without paying attention to anyone, as Ursula and the children broke their backs in the garden, growing banana and caladium, cassava and yams, ahuyama roots and eggplants. The Art of Poetry. Nowadays when the equal sign is placed between two numbers mathematicians are more careful than some time ago (although, fortunately, accountants and book-keepers continue their business as usual), and prefer the word "approximation" to "equivalence", a stronger reason yet that we should use a grain of salt when expressing certainties about the meanings of words. Rabassa, Gregory; In The Craft of Translation. Remote might have aroused thoughts of such inappropriate things as remote control and robots. It can only be a felicitous choice of words and structure which not only conveys the meaning in English but enhances it by preserving the tone of the original. Any required textual adjustments must be made at the lexical and syntactic levels taking into account the expressive means of the target language. The Craft of Translation. The conduit metaphor -- a case of frame conflict in our language about language. In other words, the translator should refrain from modifying arbitrarily the contents of the original, its message i.e. Read a literary translation article: No two snowflakes are alike: translation as metaphor by Gregory Rabassa 1. [ Links ], García Márquez, G. (1969/1994). Words Cannot Express ...The Translation of Cultures. This confirms the view we expressed above that Rabassa's overall translation strategy approached him very closely to a translation that respects the original's content at all times, but that when it comes to stylistic matters, it displays a clear foreignizing strategy, by using calques, that attempts to show English readers that the original was written in Spanish. n.d. Weinberger, Eliot. E. p. 10 José Arcadio Buendía had built traps and cages. New York: First Perennial Classics edition. [ Links ], Rabassa, G. (1971/1987). Translated by Curt Meyer-Clason. One of the first problems Rabassa identified had to do with the translation of the novel's title: "A simple declarative title like Cien años de soledad should offer no trouble whatever [...] ". Sticking with mathematical notions, what translation aims at is not the equals sign but, rather, the more useful one of approaches. The other translators adapted the word to the corresponding grammatical plural forms in their languages: (3) S. p. 8 Mediante el pago de cinco reales, la gente se asomaba al catalejo y veía a la gitana al alcance de su mano. The only occasion when he had to interfere in the original text, was when the publisher had him concoct a family tree of the Buendía family that was to be added at the beginning of the English translation of the novel. Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzykoplädie. Eds. As is clear in the above examples, the meaning 'feeling of low temperature (cold) by speaker (first person singular)' can be expressed equivalently in different languages by keeping the core meaning and using the corresponding expressions, which are pragmatically (for the same/ similar communicative purpose) and eventually also semantically/ grammatically (same/ similar, meaning/ structure) equivalent. Finally, semantic networking was used extensively and successfully by Rabassa and the other translators to ensure the coherence and consistency of the overall translation. (1989). [ Links ], García Márquez, G. (1970/1997/2001). London & New York: Routledge. It requires peeling back the layers that contribute to the effect of language on the reader—not just feeling the effect, or even naming it, but naming the small, under-recognized factors that create it. [Modern Translatology]         [ Links ], Mounin, G. (1963). 125: On Trying to Translate Japanese. It is generally assumed that translation should have some kind of preparatory stage where the totality or at least the first paragraphs of the original are read. I would say that it should be regarded from a modern translational/scientific approach. The decoding of the communicative purpose of the original is twofold. In the next example, Rabassa and Mayer-Clason, the German translator, maintained the original word reales, which evokes the Spanish historical heritage depicted in some parts of the novel. G. p. 8 Gegen Zahlung von fünf Reales preßten die Leute das Auge an das Fernrohr und sahen die Zigeunerin zum Greifen nahe. Pragmatic Approach: Original's Pre-eminence. For instance, in the case of literary texts one tends to assume that they fulfil an aesthetic communicative purpose that intends to move the target audience and make it experience the world depicted in SLT. Hundert Jahre Einsamkeit. For example, 3 is the result both of 2 + 1, and of 1 x 3, and of 1+1+1 etc. 4, völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage. As to the role of the translator, in Rabassa's approach the translator should 'have an ear in translating' that I understand as his competence to emulate the intended effect the translation is likely to have on the target audience. ), The Translation Studies Reader (pp. [ Links ], Kade, O. In Spanish you ARE not cold, you HAVE cold: 'TENGO frío', as well as in French 'J´AI froid' and in Italian 'Io HO freddo', whereas in other languages such as German and Russian one IS neither cold nor HAS cold. Towards an Integrated Translation Approach. If García Márquez had wanted such a table he would have put one in the first Spanish edition. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1989; On translating Günter Eich's poem 'Ryoanji' Middleton, Christopher; In The Craft of Translation. (Rabassa 1971/ 1987, p. 84). P. p. 14 Posto que a sua casa fosse desde o primeiro mo­mento a melhor da aldeia, as outras foram arranjadas à sua imagem e semelhança. For instance, in discussing the translation of Portuguese words 'jeito' and 'saudade', Rabassa considers that, These words are really only impossible when the concept behind them is hard to find in the second language and this is really what the translator is up against most of the time. Berkely: University of California Press. It is clear that Rabassa, in discussing the translational problem posed by the title, weighed up not only the original author's intent but also the TL readers' effect. In: Biguenet, J, Schulte, R (eds) The Craft of Translation. P. p. 9 Mediante o pagamento de cinco reais, o povo se aproximava do óculo e via a cigana ao alcance da mão. What part of reality is apprehended i.e. [ Links ], Vermeer, H. (2000). The key aspect to bear in mind here is that translation is an equivalent i.e. Less known are his views on translating. One particular area of blindness that these two metaphors encourage is that toward the centrality of the lives, thoughts, and critiques of students, who are the most centrally poised to understand and to offer ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Sticking with mathematical notions, what translation aims at is not the equals sign but, rather, the more useful one of approaches. Signo y pensamiento, 55, 108-123. E. p. 2 When José Arcadio Buendía and the four men of his expedition managed to take the armor apart, they found inside a calcified skeleton with a copper locket containing a woman's hair around its neck. Another interesting case of the application of the foreignizing strategy has to do with the conservation of the names of the novel's main characters in the original spelling -albeit with minor adaptations- in all the translations. E. p. 4 He spent several days as if he were bewitched, softly repeating to himself a string of fearful conjectures without giving credit to his own understand­ing. The Portuguese translator had no inconvenience in leaving the captain's last name in Spanish as it is phonetically and graphemically very close to the Portuguese word for 'butcher' (carniceiro). The first is foolish, the second is silly. I would say that translation can be defined as an intercultural and interlinguistic communicative activity that aims at re-creating (re-writing) the communicative purpose of the sender of the Source Language Text (SLT), by taking into account the instructions by the translation commissioner and the intended effect on the audience of the Target Language Text (TLT), and by paying due attention to the contextual socio-cultural aspects surrounding the translation communicative event. This has to do with the specifics of reading a text for translation purposes. Rabassa reiterates this same idea in his 1989 article "No Two Snowflakes Are Alike: Translation as Metaphor": Wishful thinking and early training in arithmetic have convinced a majority of people that there are such things as equals in the world [...] In this sense, then, a translation can never equal the original; it can approach it, and its quality can only be judged as to accuracy by how close it gets. New York Times. In C. Fabricius-Hansen and J. Ostbo (Eds), Übertragung, Annährung, Angleichung. Such words can be left in the original, thus giving the translation a deliciously exotic flavor which it should not have; or a footnote can be added. In a sense, allowing that 2 is equal to 2 makes sense from many points of view, and this is not surprising since numbers were created by man within tan isomorphic framework - one consisting of elements that have a form similar or comparable to that of the other elements. [ Links ], Venuti, L. (1995). This fact has also been highlighted by Russian translation scholars such as Federov, Shveitser, and Komissarov, among others, and by German authors from the Leipzig school, such as Kade and Jäger, as well as other modern representatives of this approach such as House, and Koller. "The Immigrant or 'Outsider' Experience As Metaphor for Becoming an Educated Person in the Modern World: Mary Antin, Richard Wright, and Eva Hoffman." A Linguistic Theory of Translation. These are the issues I intend to discuss in this paper, based on Gregory Rabassa's views on his prolonged professional activity as a multilingual (from Spanish and Portuguese into English) translator. Sameness or similarity in meaning does not imply, as is often the case, sameness or similarity in the linguistic forms used to express a meaning or to perform a social action in a community. Menos conocidas son sus opiniones sobre la traducción. For Rabassa, equivalence in translation is not to be confused with equivalence in mathematics: There seems to be a demand on the part of critics and readers for the version in another tongue to be the absolute equivalent of what it had been in the original language. In other words, the fictionalizing strategy consists in the use of a more 'literary or 'colorful expression' in the Target Language Text that does not appear with that stylistic mark in the original. Since we are used to thinking of an expression like 2 = 2 as correct, we do not realize that "the second 2 is obviously a hair younger than the first and therefore not its equal"2. [ Links ], Jäger, G. (1968). F. p. 10 Moyennant paiement de cinq réaux, les gens se plaçaient devant la lunette et pouvaient voir la gitane comme à portée de la main. I have called this special type of reading approach for translation purposes 'surgical reading' (Bolaños, 2003). 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