|
Article Excerpt
This article compares the strategies used in the French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese translations of Hemingway's only play, The Fifth Column. Assuming that culturally relevant features present in the source text tend to be lost in translation and taking into account the four categories of mode of address, semantic congruence, off-color language, and representation of speech--this article considers how systematic comparison of translations clarifies the relationship between a translation and the source text. The results obtained suggest that comparative translation is a viable interdisciplinary field combining elements from literary criticism, translation theory, stylistics, and cognitive linguistics.
**********
THIS ARTICLE ANALYZES THE STRATEGIES used in the French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese translations of Hemingway's regrettably neglected play, The Fifth Column, set in Madrid in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. (1) An underlying theoretical tenet is the idea of translation loss, the fact that a translation will always lack certain culturally relevant features that are present in the source text (Hervey et al. 16). By expanding this theoretical perspective to include other kinds of information--phonological, syntactic, semantic, or lexical--that contribute to shape an author's distinctive style, (2) this essay explores the notion that systematic comparison of translations casts light on the relationship between a translation and the source text. I will consider four categories, namely mode of address, semantic congruence, off-color language, and representation of speech.
The first category, mode of address, is a particularly thorny issue in translating from English into Romance languages which make mandatory distinctions involving formal and informal treatment, a sociolinguistic dimension of language. In English, the second person pronoun you makes no distinction between formal or informal address and is unmarked for morphological categories of gender, number, or case. consequently, it does not differentiate masculine from feminine, singular from plural, or subject from object. In contrast, Romance languages require choosing among second-person pronouns that vary according to gender, number, and syntactic function, each of which calls for a specific verb form.
Peninsular Spanish, the variety used in the Paolera and Noguer translations of The Fifth Column, contrasts informal tu (sing.) / vosotros (pl.) and formal usted (sing.) / ustedes (pl.). There is also a gender distinction between vosotros (masc.) and vosotras (fem.). In French, addressing a single individual requires a choice between informal tu or formal vous. The latter pronoun, morphologically plural, is also used in generic plural address, unmarked for formality. Italian distinguishes in the singular between informal tu and formal Lei and in the plural between informal voi and formal Loro. Like Spanish usted / ustedes, Lei and Loro take third-person verb forms. Furthermore, like French vous, the pronoun voi may be used for deferential address to a single interlocutor, though it is less formal than Lei / Loro. While not used in standard Italian, deferential voi was widespread in the first half of the 20th century and still occurs dialectally. Finally, standard Brazilian Portuguese, the variety used in the Silveira translation, distinguishes between informal voce (sing.) / voces (pl.) and formal o senhor (masc. sing.) / os senhores (masc. pl.), a senhora (fem. sing.) / as senhoras (fem. pl.), always with the verb in a third person form. (3)
For the translator, these distinctions mean that a sentence like "You speak English" has a fourfold translation into Peninsular Spanish. Even more variations are possible if we consider that the subject pronoun, as indicated by the parentheses, is optional: (tu) hablas ingles [sing. informal], or (vosotros) [masc.] / (vosotras) [fem.] hablais ingles [pl. informal], (usted) habla ingles [sing., formal], or (ustedes) hablan ingles [pl.. formal]. Choice between informal or formal address depends on social factors such as the context of the speech and the degree of intimacy or deference between the interlocutors. For the translator, effective communication requires that dialogue follow the norms of the target language regarding informal and formal address. Because a translation should reflect the decisions speakers would make in the contexts depicted, the task of translating entails an on-going cross-cultural analysis of variables such as gender, age, social class, occupational status, relative standing of characters, and the context of the communication (House 54-71). To make the right choice between formal or informal treatment, the translator has to keep in mind the variables involved in the choice between tu / vosotros and usted / ustedes and interpret the relationship between the interlocutors in each case.
Forms of address in The Fifth Column involve the categories of friendship/camaraderie, business, and professional relationships. The two Spanish translations agree to a large extent when the relationship involved is one of friendship/camaraderie, as among Philip, Preston, and Dorothy. The two men call each other tu, but in the Paolera translation Dorothy, while addressing her lover Preston as tu, at first calls Philip usted (no podria ponerle un bozal a la camarada [P 14]). Later on she shifts to tu (Contigo yo me siento segura [P 20]), probably to reflect the transfer of her allegiance to him. In the Noguer translation, Philip, Preston, and Dorothy call one another tu throughout, usage closer to end-of-century Spanish practice among three adults who are closely associated and share a similar social background. Plural treatment is consistent: Philip addresses Preston and Dorothy with vosotros in Noguer (?Que tal os va, camaradas? [N 16]) but with ustedes in Paolera (?Que tal lo pasan, camaradas? [P 13]), a usage more typical of parts of southern Spain and Latin America than Madrid.
As the following passages show, in French the three characters call each other vous, thus creating a lack of intimacy that is neither implied in the original nor present in the Italian and Portuguese versions, which use informal tu and voce respectively:
[Dorothy] Philippe, mon tresor, vous ne pourriez pas vous arranger.... (R-D 322)
[Philip] ... mais vous etes vraiment de mauvais poil, Preston. / [Preston] A votre place, je ne parlerais pas de choses que je ne connais pas. (R-D 322)
[Dorothy] Philip, tesoro, non potresti metterle la museruola ... (T 13)
[Philip] Preston, sei noioso. / [Preston] Al tuo posto non parlerei di cose che non sai. (T13)
[Dorothy] Philip, querido, sera que voce nao podia colocarlhe uma focinheira ... (S 10)
[Philip] Voce e tenebroso, Preston. / [Preston] Se eu fosse voce, nao falaria de coisas que ignoro. (S 10)
Naturally, the use of tu is to be expected between Philip and his occasional lover, Anita, the Moorish tart. (4) Address forms between Anita and Dorothy, however, vary somewhat. In the Noguer translation and in French they respectively use reciprocal usted and vous, suggesting more distance and less solidarity:
[Dorothy] You keep it.... [Anita]...
|
