LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

I am reviewing a translation, ostensibly to root out possible mistakes or misunderstandings. Neither of the two translators is a professional. Apart from the usual faux pas, typos, and misspellings, I have detected a tendency to ad lib: to introduce remarks that do not appear in the original, to “clarify” passages that need no clarification, and even to append material that is simply uncalled for. Moreover, these translators handle syntax as they see fit, moving phrases to the end of a paragraph when they occur at the beginning in the original. We are dealing here with two languages that have much in common; this is not a translation from Urdu into Japanese. In the end, readers will be none the wiser, since they will have no opportunity to compare the translation with the original.

  ¿Qué leemos cuando leemos una traducción? (Article by Delfín Carbonell) This article examines a brief passage from Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice through four different translations -three in Spanish and one in English- and compares them with a contemporary translation produced by artificial intelligence. By analyzing the translators’ divergent lexical, stylistic, and interpretive choices, a fundamental question is explored: what do we actually read when we read a translation? The comparison illustrates how each version preserves certain elements of the original while reshaping it in accordance with the translator’s linguistic preferences and cultural assumptions. The discussion also touches on the growing role of artificial intelligence in literary translation and argues that, regardless of whether a human or a machine produces a translation, it remains an interpretation rather than a direct reproduction of the source text. Readers of translated literature, therefore, encounter ...

No creamos que el problema de las malas traducciones sea un mal hispánico. Ocurre en todas las lenguas. El problema no es la traducción en general, sino los traductores. Si uno se da un paseo por San Francisco, por ejemplo, encontrará traducciones al castellano en espacios públicos verdaderamente alucinantes. Ahora bien, no siempre se recurre a profesionales cualificados: con frecuencia se da por hecho que cualquier hablante de origen hispano en los Estados Unidos está capacitado para traducir, lo cual dista mucho de ser cierto. El código deontológico del traductor, en su apartado 1, dice: «El hecho de ejercer la profesión de traductor equivale, para quien la ejerce, a afirmar que cuenta con un firmísimo conocimiento de la lengua que traduce». Sin más comentarios, pero recalcando firmísimo . El monolingüe, ajeno por completo a los problemas lingüísticos, cree que cualquier inmigrante, o hijo de inmigrante, por el hecho de serlo, puede traducir del inglés cualquier cosa.

  Let me muse about a situation where an English friend of mine is a well-known dresser, dandy, and fop who sets the standard of men's fashion in the English-speaking world. His suits are impeccable and true works of art admired by all. As his reputation as a dapper has crossed borders and even reached Spain, I asked him to let me borrow one of his suits to cut a good figure at a soirée in Madrid where King Felipe VI would be attending. My friend lent me one of his best suits and I flew back to Spain and went straight to a good tailor to make some adjustments. At the fitting, I asked for the pants to be slim-cut, and lappels narrowed to conform to modern taste. The tailor agreed to shorten the jacket and sleeves as well. At the soirée, people commented that although the suit was okey, it was nothing to write home about and some dared remark that they were baffled by my friend's reputation as a dandy. Of course, I never mentioned my alterations to it. Translations may compare to...

Oigo hoy a un norteamericano decir a otro, en traducción española, "métetelo por donde no luce el sol." Estas expresiones irrumpen en la lengua castellana de la mano de traductores inexpertos e ignorantes de su propia lengua. "Where the sun don't shine" supongo que es el original, equivalente a "por donde la espalda pierde su casto nombre" que, en ambos casos, es eufemismo por "ass", "culo".     

  I am very skeptical about AI as far as translations are concerned, which may come as good news to professional translators all over the world. AI translations are introducing artificial changes into languages, and making up new ways of expression alien to languages. Language evolution has its own laws and peculiarities that can be studied in the evolution of Romance Languages from Latin, for example.  In the change or evolution of language, a new tool has been invented that is totally artificial. The Spanish phrase "qué Dios te oíga" expresses that the wish just said may come true. The English equivalent is "from your lips to God's ears". AI gives me, "May God hear you" and "I hope God hears you." Of course, I may be mistaken but I think not. When using artificial translations, please check the result with a knowledgeable human. Be cautious, especially when it comes to preserving the subtleties and cultural nuances of language.         

Supongo que cuando Televisión Española adquiere una serie o programa originalmente en lengua inglesa, el proceso es contratar a un traductor, o empresa traductora, para que vierta al castellano el guion inglés. Ese guion acaba en posesión de una empresa de doblaje que tiene actores que son los responsables de leer y dramatizar la traducción. Y al final nosotros somos los recipientes últimos de todo el proceso. Pues bien, está claro que no hay responsable de calidad lingüística alguna. Oímos traducciones literales del inglés que no tienen sentido en español y ahora son las que verdaderamente están cambiando el curso, el devenir normal del idioma. Esto se nota mucho en la fraseología, donde hoy he escuchado en un programa sobre Alaska que "toda actividad aquí requiere trabajo de hombro" que intuyo es "elbow grease" y que debería haberse vertido al castellano como "toda actividad aquí requiere sudar la camiseta", por ejemplo. Otra "traducción" que o...

  El mayor enemigo de cualquier idioma es la creencia de que lo que sabemos del nuestro es todo lo que hay que saber de él. Lo que ignoramos, no existe. Y así nos va, porque dejamos en manos de los que todavía están aprendiéndolo el oficio, escribir en público y traducir de otros idiomas. Así oigo en el mercado que "al perro viejo no se le puede enseñar trucos" que es una traducción del inglés ajena al castellano, "you cannot teach an old dog new tricks." La creencia de que los viejos no pueden aprender se refleja en la expresión "loro viejo no aprende a hablar." No me cansaré de repetir que antes de traducir expresiones a la ligera, convendría rebuscar y hacer algo de investigación por si en nuestro propio idioma ya tenemos frase similar, que normalmente "habelas, hailas." --"Loro viejo no aprende a hablar." Tomás Carrasquilla, La marquesa de Yolombó , 1928. Colombia. --"Como decía mi madre: loro viejo no aprende lengua." Lui...

  In Muir 's translation of Kafka 's The Trial , there is a suggestion that someone must have been traducing Joseph K., as I paraphrase from memory. This leads to a broader consideration of the ongoing debates surrounding translations. The choice of terminology is crucial, with some translations opting for 'telling lies about Joseph K.' In light of these discussions, I propose reevaluating the term 'translate' itself. To translate implies turning from one language into another, but is it also an act of traducing? Traducing involves speaking maliciously and falsely about someone, akin to slander. Both 'traduce' and 'translate' share roots in the Latin 'traducere.' What if we reconsider the act of rendering one language into another as 'traduce' instead of 'translate'? By doing so, we acknowledge the complexities of translation—where the translator may, at times, be slandering, disgracing, or leading readers astray. This per...

My daughter Lorraine informed me that ChatGPT also offered translation services. Being the way I am -I just can´t help it- I rushed to put that service to the test, rather more of a medieval ordeal, hell and high water. Why? Because I am mischievous, I wanted to make it tough on the program and feed it idiomatic expressions and idioms in English and Spanish. The result, as I expected, was poor, to say the least.  For "verse a la legua" ChatGPT offers this: " Verse a la legua  in English translates as to be seen from a mile away or to be obvious at a glance . It is an idiomatic expression used to describe something that is easily noticeable, apparent, or obvious from  distance or at first sight." In my Phraseological Dictionary, I offer the right equivalent: "Stand (stick) out a mile. Stand out like a sore thumb. Another example: "The equivalent expression in Spanish for there´s no crying over spilt milk is: no hay que llorar sobre la leche derramada ....

I have often explained my intellectual shortcomings in my language abilities. I must read most world literature in translation. And although I gratefully acknowledge translators' efforts in rendering originals into English and Spanish, I am still weary. I remember my reading of Dowstoweski ´s The Idiot where the main character, Prince Mishkin, was el príncipe Mishkine. Why so? I finally discovered that the translation into Spanish was from French, not Russian. I had been reading a translation of a translation. In order to keep the sound of Mishkin, the French translator added an "e" to the name and the Spanish translator followed suit, unnecessarily.  In a recent post, I complained lightly about Murakami ´s Norwegian Wood translation into English. As I speak no Japanese (and no Danish, Tagalog, Chinese, Korean, etc.), I decided to check  Lourdes Portal ´s rendering of that novel into Spanish. Both translations are suspiciously similar. I must venture that Lourdes Porta...

In 1921, Edwin and Willa Muir , Scottish poets of good standing, went to Prague and then Germany, Austria, and Italy, and then back to England where they decided to become professional translators. They were lucky with a first effort and chose to tackle Franz Kafka next, who had died in 1924 leaving behind an unfinished novel, Das Schloss , The Castle . They introduced Kafka to the English-speaking world in translation, their translation. J.M. Koetzee (2003 Nobel Prize in Literature) in His Stranger Shores (2001) deals with the art of translating, by means of Kafka, in the Chapter "Translating Kafka". His analysis is of great interest and picks holes in the Muirs´rendering of Kafka into English well-worth reading and studying by all would-be translators. Particularly a paragraph stands out: "... although the Muirs mastery of German -particularly Willa´s- was astonishing, given the fact that they were more or less self-taught, and although Edwin in particular had read w...

Siguen interesándome las traducciones graciosas.  En en hotel: “You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.” (Aprovecharse de ella... si se deja, claro.) En Mallorca: “English well talking here.” (Más errores en una frase de cuatro palabras, imposible.) En Málaga: “Locals for sale or rent.” (“Se venden o alquilan residentes de la zona.” Locals: residentes de una zona. Local: premises , entre otras posibilidades.) "Estar algo a punto de caramelo" lo traduce Google como "to the point of caramel".  Y la expresión inglesa "shape up or ship out" resulta ser "dar forma o enviar" que yo, pobre de mí, traduzco como "O cambias de actitud o te largas."  No voy a negar que los traductores en línea no hayan hecho grandes avances, pero tienen graves limitaciones en lo tocante a la fraseología.

  "L ike Holden, I don´t feel like going into all that David Copperfield kind of crap, although in my case, a little about my parents you may find more interesting than reading about me." This is how Woody Allen starts his memoirs titled "Apropos of Nothing", translated into Spanish as "A propósito de nada."  En su traducción, Eduardo Hojman nos da su versión de estas primeras palabras: "Al igual que le ocurría a Holden, no me da la gana de meterme en todas esas gilipolleces al estilo de David Copperfield, aunque, en mi caso, algunos pocos datos sobre mis padres tal vez os resulten más interesantes que leer sobre mí." Yo traduciría: " Como a Holden, no me apetece meterme en toda esa mierda estilo David Copperfield, aunque en mi caso, algo sobre mis padres quizá resulte más interesante que leer sobre mí."  No se nos dice quién es Holden. Tampoco sabemos a qué viene eso de David Copperfield. Los que leyeron The Catcher in the Rye en su m...

Por ignorancia lingüística tengo que leer en traducción a Strindberg, Tolstoi, Pirandello, Sienkiewicz, Ibsen, Seifert y muchos otros grandes de la literatura universal. De los 6.500 idiomas manejo, de mala manera, tres, lo que me condena a leer traducciones. "Muerte en Venecia", 1912, de Thomas Mann, es una novelita que he leído tanto en inglés como en castellano, ya que el alemán que manejo da para poco.    Haciendo poda en mi biblioteca, he encontrado dos versiones al castellano. Sólo transcribo un ejemplo y, esta vez, el lector sacará sus conclusiones. Ya en Venecia, Adolf von Aschenbach, instalado en el Hotel Excelsior, baja a cenar: "Había allí un ambiente mucho más abierto y de mayor amplitud y tolerancia. En los coloquios a media voz se notaban los acentos de los grandes idiomas. El traje de etiqueta, uniforme de la cortesía, reunía en armoniosa unidad aparente todas las variedades de gentes allí congregadas. Veíanse los secos y largos semblantes de los americano...

Reading a translation is always an act of faith, almost a religious act of faith: we must believe as fact and truth that the "translation" is a veritable reflection of the original. And we accept as Gospel truth that what we are reading is a good rendering of the original because we have no way of knowing otherwise. So I was thinking we should do away with translations and install "versions" instead. This is what José María Carrascal has done in his novel Un sueño irlandés , An Irish Dream , where he did two different versions of it, instead of simply translating.  ( https://www.amazon.es/Irish-Dream-English-Maria-Carrascal-ebook/dp/B07C1DQJ1P)  But, of course, Carrascal is the author, not the translator and he knows both languages well. If a "version" of a Spanish novel appears in English, we cannot complain if it differs slightly from the original, after all it is not a "translation." Methinks this is either a wonderful idea, ...

  When I was a spry boy, full of pep and curiosity, my German teacher at Duquesne University, Dr. Reinkraut, gave me Thomas Mann´s Dr Faustus to read. Try as I did, the novel was beyond me, even though it was a translation. All these years, that reading was pending and the other day I picked up my 1949 translation by H.T. Lowe-Porter intent on tackling it finally. But I read the "Translator´s Note": "Les traductions sont comme les femme, lorsqu'elles sont belles, elles ne sont pas fidèles, et lorsqu'elles sont fidèle, elles ne sont pas belles." Not content with that, Mrs. Lowe-Porter quotes the Bible, Proverbs: 31:10 "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies." Some other day I will delve into translations... but I will not compare them to women and their "virtue" and "fidelity", whatever that may mean. Mrs. Lowe-Porter´s remarks did not raise a brow in 1949. In 2019 she would have been kicked in t...

Me escribe María del Mar, creo que desde el Reino Unido, para pedirme traduzca al castellano el verbo to compromise , que está en boca de todos desde que comenzó la aventura del Brexit. Me comenta que El País trató este tema diciendo que no hay traducción al español y que la razón es que no existe el concepto.  Yo difiero. Todo lo que se puede comunicar en inglés, se puede comunicar en castellano , y al revés, aunque las palabras se diferencien. Random House nos dice del sustantivo compromise : "a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modification of demands." (Subrayado mío.) Se me viene a la cabeza en castellano ceder, contemporizar y llegar a un arreglo (no acuerdo.) Por contemporizar el María Moliner nos dice: "Tener tolerancia con una persona; tratar de acomodarse a su carácter o a su manera de ser o de actuar, para evitar un choque o conflicto...

As an adjective, other does not change in gender or number, as the Spanish otro does: Some other person / alguna otra persona Other addresses / otras direcciones Othe r women / otras mujeres Other men / otros hombres Other questions / otras cuestiones As a noun or pronoun it does change, of course: Others do not think like us / otros no piensan como nosotros To other is  a verb: I feel othered by society, The problem is not to confuse the pronoun with the noun , as the  Casa Real de su Majestad el Rey of Spain's web does in its English version, where "otras direcciones de interés" is translated as " others addresses." This is not the only blatant error the Royal web makes, but it illustrates our point. Try hard not to confuse adjectives and nouns , in English, as the Royal translators do, making a charade of the web's English version.

The system of communication we call language is very complex and very arbitrary. Efforts to tame it, to break it in, are doomed to failure because language is a community effort, and every speaker, and writer, uses it according to personal, cultural, educational and stylistic idiosyncrasies. Dean Alford, The Queen’s English , put it like this: “Neither grammar nor rule governs the idiom of a people.” Several obstacles hinder translation software from being acceptable: Polysemy –multiple meanings of a word- is not yet understood by computer software. The ambiguities of meaning are still beyond any software in the market. “Vela” can both be a “candle” or a “sail”. “Quemaron las velas”, they burned the sails is translated as “candles burned.” Punctuation : This very important part of the written language presents almost an insurmountable obstacle for the machine translator: “Y gritando que no la mató, se fue” is nonsensically translated as: “And screaming that he killed he...