Quixote and the windmills of translations
Translations are never to be trusted, and yet we need them. Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote ’s famous beginning words go like this in the original Spanish: En un lugar de La Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo… Twenty simple words that, seemingly, would offer no problem to a translator. Twenty words of common use, with a simple word order. But let us read some famous translations into English and I suggest you be the judge: Thomas Shelton “There lived not long ago since, in a certain village of La Mancha, the name whereof I purposely omit, a gentleman… Charles Jarvis : “In a village of La Mancha, in Spain, there once lived one of those gentlemen…” John Ormsby : “In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long ago since one of those gentlemen…” Samuel Putnam : “In a village of La Mancha the name of which I have no desire to recall, there lived not so long ago one of...