SOLVING TRANSLATION PROBLEMS
Lesson 1: Translation as Negotiation between Cultures
Translation involves much more than figuring out word equivalents for an author’s text. Translation is
a negotiation and understanding between cultures in the middle of two languages, the source (SL) and the
target (TL). It is a tension between what is translatable and what is untranslatable.
The translator’s relation with the author of a text is full of surprises and revelations. In looking for
similar, familiar experiences in the target culture to convey a working sense of the author’s meaning, the
translator, all solitarily and anonymously, interacts with the author through the text in ways that go beyond
the ordinary reader’s.
The following are the opinions of a select group of contemporary experienced translators and
authors that have dealt with translation problems: Kate Griffin, Anthea Bell, Daniel Hahn, Anne McLean and
Frank Wynne.
Kate Griffin
When a publishing company in another part of the world buys the rights to one of my books, they
also hire a translator, and what that translator does to the words is, for the most part, an absolute mystery
to me.
Anthea Bell
A translation is successful if it is invisible – a reader is reading not a translation but the real thing. To
do so, there should be cultural negotiation between SL and TL.
When translating dialogue, if there is dialect or language specific to one region or historic period, I
opt for a colloquial spoken language, a non-specific demotic, a language that is not linked to any particular
place and may vary from book to book.
While it is preferable to be able to consult directly with an author, it is not always possible. If the
author is alive, it is a great privilege, and fascinating, but it is very, very dense work. It is all about finding
the tone of voice in the original.
Daniel Hahn
There are certain components to a text that are likely to present particular challenges to a translator,
things that feel like absolute impossibilities. And conversely there are moments when you are translating
and a clever solution presents itself, or when a new voice you are creating comes into focus, and the sheer
rightness seems miraculous, the fact of it being so very possible feels exhilarating.
My aim when translating is not perfection, my aim is to use English to make a piece of writing that
does the same things another writer has done before me in some other language; my aim is to take one
superb piece of writing and make another superb piece of writing that can stand in for it with a new set of
readers.
Anne McLean
When translating text into English, we are not really trying to convey parts of the Spanish language.
We are rewriting a text in English that was originally written in Spanish. In translation what we try to do is
not rely on our “normal” tones or syntax in order to allow the author´s crafted tone to come through in the
new language. In some ways, it is similar to what an actor does with a script, or what a musician does with
, a score. It is an interpretation, but the goal is to reproduce, or get as close as possible to the artist´s original
vision.
I usually try to follow the syntax of the original (as much as English allows) in my first drafts, but it
also depends on what the prose is meant to do. If it is a passage of dialogue in a novel, meant to be spoken
by plausible characters, and we want the reader to be able to suspend disbelief and hear these characters
speaking to each other as if they were real people, then you have to forego some of the specificities of
Spanish and make the phrasing sound believable in English. There are lots of things the Spanish language
does that English would doing a different way, but then there are also lots of variations within Spanish – all
the various ways of saying ‘you’ (usted, tú, vos, ustedes, vosotros), for example, depending on who you are
talking to and where and how many; and the fact that verb endings allow Spanish speakers to let the
pronouns remain unspoken quite often. But this is something that points to the dangers of literal
translation (if such a thing were even possible). A Spanish writer can write 10-sentence-long
paragraph with each sentence starting with a different verb (With its implied subject), and a
translator seeking to mimic that syntax could end up with 10 sentences each starting with the exact
same pronoun, which might result in a less lively piece of prose.
The translator has to rely on his or her own writerly ear in the final draft, and then on her
editor’s judgment and ear in the next phrase.
Frank Wynne
When dealing with, for example, Argentine Spanish slang, translators are usually advised to
stick to what Anthea Bell has called ‘nonspecific demontic’, that is, a lexical register that is not tied
to a particular country or locality.
Sometimes, the colour and life of a book, and its humanity, came from the crackle of
dialogue. In those cases, my solution is to use something translators generally avoid – the calque.
By preserving Hispanic words, but making their meaning clear contextually, it is possible to keep
the clipped rhythm and cadence of the dialogue, something of the flavour of the novel and the
sense of ‘otherness’, which seemed to me crucial. Hence the characters in the translation do not
refer to each other as bro, brah, blood, buddy, but as socio, pibe, loco, compañero. Similarly, using
constructions like ‘I’m off my face on coke. Chueco´s fifty-peso bill might have been snide, but it
was real enough to get us three grams of merca, and we’ve already snorted the lot’, makes it
possible to casually gloss words like merca (cocaine), leaving me free to use them again (and to
trust the reader to remember).
My decision to preserve some of the porteño slang is informed in part by the fact that one of
the things I discovered when I first began to translate from Spanish is that it is not a single,
homogenous language but one of that varies wildly from Argentina to Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, or
Spain itself. I feel comfortable creating a hybrid slang, since, even in the original, one could not
assume Hispanic readers would understand many of the words.
Something not uncommon, even among adults in Argentina, is the use of nicknames. I
normally decide to leave these unchanged – although the English reader loses something as a
result – deciding that, on balance, more would be lost than gained by having characters called
Bandy-legs (El Chueco), Blondie (Gringo), Babyface (El Jetita), and The Jellyfish (El Medusa).
Lesson 2: Identifying Translation Problems
Languages, as all cultural phenomena, have a history, and the history of every language is
made up of innumerable phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic changes.
Following the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, languages can be studied from a
double standpoint: synchronically, at a particular time in its development, and diachronically, in its
evolution.
Lesson 1: Translation as Negotiation between Cultures
Translation involves much more than figuring out word equivalents for an author’s text. Translation is
a negotiation and understanding between cultures in the middle of two languages, the source (SL) and the
target (TL). It is a tension between what is translatable and what is untranslatable.
The translator’s relation with the author of a text is full of surprises and revelations. In looking for
similar, familiar experiences in the target culture to convey a working sense of the author’s meaning, the
translator, all solitarily and anonymously, interacts with the author through the text in ways that go beyond
the ordinary reader’s.
The following are the opinions of a select group of contemporary experienced translators and
authors that have dealt with translation problems: Kate Griffin, Anthea Bell, Daniel Hahn, Anne McLean and
Frank Wynne.
Kate Griffin
When a publishing company in another part of the world buys the rights to one of my books, they
also hire a translator, and what that translator does to the words is, for the most part, an absolute mystery
to me.
Anthea Bell
A translation is successful if it is invisible – a reader is reading not a translation but the real thing. To
do so, there should be cultural negotiation between SL and TL.
When translating dialogue, if there is dialect or language specific to one region or historic period, I
opt for a colloquial spoken language, a non-specific demotic, a language that is not linked to any particular
place and may vary from book to book.
While it is preferable to be able to consult directly with an author, it is not always possible. If the
author is alive, it is a great privilege, and fascinating, but it is very, very dense work. It is all about finding
the tone of voice in the original.
Daniel Hahn
There are certain components to a text that are likely to present particular challenges to a translator,
things that feel like absolute impossibilities. And conversely there are moments when you are translating
and a clever solution presents itself, or when a new voice you are creating comes into focus, and the sheer
rightness seems miraculous, the fact of it being so very possible feels exhilarating.
My aim when translating is not perfection, my aim is to use English to make a piece of writing that
does the same things another writer has done before me in some other language; my aim is to take one
superb piece of writing and make another superb piece of writing that can stand in for it with a new set of
readers.
Anne McLean
When translating text into English, we are not really trying to convey parts of the Spanish language.
We are rewriting a text in English that was originally written in Spanish. In translation what we try to do is
not rely on our “normal” tones or syntax in order to allow the author´s crafted tone to come through in the
new language. In some ways, it is similar to what an actor does with a script, or what a musician does with
, a score. It is an interpretation, but the goal is to reproduce, or get as close as possible to the artist´s original
vision.
I usually try to follow the syntax of the original (as much as English allows) in my first drafts, but it
also depends on what the prose is meant to do. If it is a passage of dialogue in a novel, meant to be spoken
by plausible characters, and we want the reader to be able to suspend disbelief and hear these characters
speaking to each other as if they were real people, then you have to forego some of the specificities of
Spanish and make the phrasing sound believable in English. There are lots of things the Spanish language
does that English would doing a different way, but then there are also lots of variations within Spanish – all
the various ways of saying ‘you’ (usted, tú, vos, ustedes, vosotros), for example, depending on who you are
talking to and where and how many; and the fact that verb endings allow Spanish speakers to let the
pronouns remain unspoken quite often. But this is something that points to the dangers of literal
translation (if such a thing were even possible). A Spanish writer can write 10-sentence-long
paragraph with each sentence starting with a different verb (With its implied subject), and a
translator seeking to mimic that syntax could end up with 10 sentences each starting with the exact
same pronoun, which might result in a less lively piece of prose.
The translator has to rely on his or her own writerly ear in the final draft, and then on her
editor’s judgment and ear in the next phrase.
Frank Wynne
When dealing with, for example, Argentine Spanish slang, translators are usually advised to
stick to what Anthea Bell has called ‘nonspecific demontic’, that is, a lexical register that is not tied
to a particular country or locality.
Sometimes, the colour and life of a book, and its humanity, came from the crackle of
dialogue. In those cases, my solution is to use something translators generally avoid – the calque.
By preserving Hispanic words, but making their meaning clear contextually, it is possible to keep
the clipped rhythm and cadence of the dialogue, something of the flavour of the novel and the
sense of ‘otherness’, which seemed to me crucial. Hence the characters in the translation do not
refer to each other as bro, brah, blood, buddy, but as socio, pibe, loco, compañero. Similarly, using
constructions like ‘I’m off my face on coke. Chueco´s fifty-peso bill might have been snide, but it
was real enough to get us three grams of merca, and we’ve already snorted the lot’, makes it
possible to casually gloss words like merca (cocaine), leaving me free to use them again (and to
trust the reader to remember).
My decision to preserve some of the porteño slang is informed in part by the fact that one of
the things I discovered when I first began to translate from Spanish is that it is not a single,
homogenous language but one of that varies wildly from Argentina to Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, or
Spain itself. I feel comfortable creating a hybrid slang, since, even in the original, one could not
assume Hispanic readers would understand many of the words.
Something not uncommon, even among adults in Argentina, is the use of nicknames. I
normally decide to leave these unchanged – although the English reader loses something as a
result – deciding that, on balance, more would be lost than gained by having characters called
Bandy-legs (El Chueco), Blondie (Gringo), Babyface (El Jetita), and The Jellyfish (El Medusa).
Lesson 2: Identifying Translation Problems
Languages, as all cultural phenomena, have a history, and the history of every language is
made up of innumerable phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic changes.
Following the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, languages can be studied from a
double standpoint: synchronically, at a particular time in its development, and diachronically, in its
evolution.
