El modesto misterio

Samuel Putman, translated this text on 1949, and it reflects the style of the time, it uses words such as “an ancient buckler…a greyhound for the chase. A stew…” These are interesting choice of words as they are not often used this decade. I specially like the he refers to the left overs from Saturdays as “scraps for a Saturday,” as I would not refer to scraps as left overs. Overall I do like the style of writing, as he uses terms such as “fond of the hunt.” I like those choice of words, to be fond really sets across a feeling of like, at least in my perspective.

John Rutherford, translates Don Quixote in 2003, in a similar fashion he chooses to use a different words to translate the same sentences and terms. On oppose to using an ancient buckler he uses “an ancient leather shield”, which is easily understood, he translate a “greyhound for the chase” to “a greyhound for the coursing.” Which was not as easy to understand. And to represent his liking of the hunt he translates to “a keens huntsman.” I really would not have translated this in this manner.

Edith Grossman translation, done on 2003, had a better choice of words, at least to my liking. She chose “a greyhound for the racing”. And a “great lover of the hunt.” This latter translation sets forward his true love of the hunt. And thought it was the most appropriate translation of these sentence.

It was very interesting to explore four different translation of the same text during our class discussion.  I took this class because of the importance of proper translation of a text in the current trends of business globalization.  Don Quixote is one of the most important texts to refer when we talk about world literature.  This text has hundreds of years and I never realized before this class how important is to properly translate this text to understand it in different languages.  I clearly noticed that the first two translation of Don Quixote the English words pick for the translation of the text were more complex and many of the words, I had difficulties to understand.  As we discussed in class, that was caused by an important fact about how languages evolve thru time. The first two translations were written in 1985 and 1949 by two American translators. Even though, they were from the United States, the translation looked different but it is because of the time they were written.

The other two translation of Don Quixote were both written in 2003. However, what made these texts different wasn’t the time; it was the place where they were written what made the difference in this case.  This was another key factor when someone wants to translate a text.  You have to make sure that your target audience would be able to understand your translation of a text. In the case of the last two translations of Don Quixote, they were on point for their target audience, the European and the American Markets. 

During class it was said how the language is in a constant change. It is the only invention from men which evolved throughout time. In the authors’ interpretations about Cervantes’ Don Quijote is evident how language has changed to improve even translations.

Roughly 200 years later of the original publishing, John Ormsby writes a translation very close to a “literal” interpretation. However, at that time English language was still at a level of long sentences. I couldn’t help feeling heaviness in his style. More than a century after Ormsby, Samuel Putnam translated Cervantes’ work and did a much better job at smoothing the text. I could see more resembles with the flow of sentences used in modern language.

My favorite interpretation was the one provided by John Rutherford. He opts to replace some long phrases for contemporary expressions and used better synonymous words like “recall” and others. It was written in 2003 and, contrary to previous translations, has almost the same flow of words as Cervantes’s Don Quijote emanates. The last interpretation was similarly fluid but the use of the phrase “I do not care to remember” gave me a rather negative impression that the narrator didn’t “care” about his narration. The actual interpretation should be closer to Rutherford’s translation.

Andres Rivera

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes has been one of the most translated texts in the history of Spanish language. The translators carefully try to choose the right words to keep the magic created by the author in the original text. However, as we discussed in class, all the translators are indirectly influenced by their place of origin and the period of time they are living in. The translations starting with the one by John Ormsby done in 1885 all the way to the more modern and simple language used by Edith Grossman on 2003. It is worth to mention that out of the four translations, Grossman’s is the one that dared more to get out of the ordinary and create a version much easier to read and understand of Don Quixote, than the other translators. Her choice to start the story with “Somewhere in La Mancha” rather than “In a village in La Mancha” already makes the story more engaging and makes me want to keep reading it.

 Another point to note is that all four translators decided to keep the title in a shorter version than the original by simply stating Don Quixote. It would be awkward to say Mr. Quixote from La Mancha or Mr. Quixote of La Mancha. The word Don is not used in English instead we use Mr. Besides, by the time the book was being translated, it was very famous and known so the title did not have to be catchy at all, rather it had to be something short and easy to remember. Also, we discussed in class how the place where the person comes from plays a very important role in the diction of the translator. All the translators we compared were English native speakers who learned Spanish, so I think the story could sound much different if a Spanish native speaker had translated it instead. In any case, the four translations we compared help us see that to translate something is like creating a completely new product but always trying to maintain the essence of the original, although the translators are not always successful.

Many translations of Cervante’s Don Quixote have been released since the first time it was translated in 1612 from English to Spanish. Here, we have four translations from different countries, times and authors. The most different is the oldest from John Ormsby (1885).

In fact, Ormsby is writing in 1885 and is of British origin, in his translation he uses words pertaining to a British vocabulary from the 19 th century. Also, the author takes the stand to stay closer to Don Quixote original text. For instance, while other translators choose simply to replace the term by “stew”, Ormsby voluntarily decides to keep the word “olla” -referring to a pot holding a stew-. The word “olla” can be confusing for the English speaking reader (British or American), as it might send him back to footnotes in the original translation. Ormsby translation is very much romantic and classic. He strove to represent Cervantes voice. Thus, we find a lot of similarities with the Spanish text in terms of phrase construction: “ a pigeon or so extra” is a very similar formulation to“algún palomino de añadidura”. Throughout this extract we feel the tone of the time period in which Ormsby is trying to write: The Golden Age.  And this, from the first sentence to the last, where “lugar” (place) is referred as village and where Cervantes sense of humor is depicted – “ it will be enough not to stray a hair’s breadth from the truth in the telling of it”. All these efforts make the version a bit difficult for the average reader.

On the other hand, the translations of Putnam (1949), Rutherford (2003) and Grossman (2003) bring modernity to this extract written in 1605. The language used is simple and adequate. Out of the three authors Edith Grossman presents a very appealing translation to the modern reader, example-“lamb” instead of “mutton”, “light woolen tunic “instead of “broadcloth greatcoat” or“doublet”, and “man-of-all-work” for “jack” and “lad”. She was also the only one to interpret “ En un lugar “ as “ Somewhere in”. La Mancha is in fact a region of central Spain, we can guess she finds of no importance (not relevant to the events taking place as Cervantes himself says it) to specify if it is a village. As villages are places, she goes on with “in a place whose name I do not care to remember…”

It is then a matter of interpretation. Besides, all these details and differences show that translation works depend on other variables such as the time period, the writing style, and the background of the author. These four versions of a same text are perfect examples.

Fathia Ben Tahar

Each author has there own method of writing in there unique ways.  In class we have read the different translations of Don Quijote.  From these comparisons we were able to compare and contrast the various readings given. In the readings we realized how each of the translations had a very different beginning compared to the original one.  For example “En un lugar de la Mancha” was translated into many different ways. We were able to realize from this how one phrase or even one word can translate into many forms.

The reason in which there are probably many ways to translate it is because of the different time periods. In each time period many as the time changes languages evolve into more complex and comprehensive tools. Reading each of these passages not knowing they were translations I would of never thought they would be Don Quijote translations.

Janitza Solarte

Hemos leído diferentes versiones de la lectura “Don Quijote” y podemos notar que cada versión o cada escritor utiliza un estilo diferente en cuanto a su escritura y como expresan sus ideas.  Es importante resaltar que cada versión fue escrita en tiempos diferentes y por eso cada una usa vocabulario distinto. Por ejemplo: John Rutherford es un escritor Británico mientras que Edith Grossman es una escritora Americana.

Cuando una obra o una lectura quiere ser traducida en diferentes países y por diferentes escritores, lo que se busca es que esa traducción se asemeje lo más posible a la original pero el conflicto aquí es que cuando se traduce de un idioma a otro es difícil encontrar las palabras exactas para que la lectura traducida no pierda la esencia de la lectura original. Podemos notar que la traducción de Rutherford es más épica que la traducción de Grossman. Mi opinión sobre estas traducciones con diferencia a la lectura original es que ninguna tienen fluidez ni concordancia como la tiene la original.

Daisy Mordan

Al comparar las distintas versiones de la novela escrita por Miguel de Cervantes, se puede notar la diferencia en el vocabulario que utilizan los autores, y como este mismo afecta la percepción de la audiencia de la novela. Esto se debe a las distintas etapas en las que fueron escritas, al igual que el origen del escritor. La versión de John Ormsby fue escrita a finales de 1800’s, mientras que la versión de Samuel Putnam fue escritas a mediados del siglo XX. La diferencia mas grande entre estas dos versiones es simplemente el uso de sinónimos, pero en general están escritas de una manera muy similar. a diferencia de estas versiones anteriores, las traducciones de John Rutherford y Edith Grossman tienen diferencias mas destacadas. Rutheford se enfoca en una narración mas poética que la de Grossman. Por ejemplo, al describir la edad de Don Quijote el dice: “Our Hidalgo himslef was nearly fifty…” mientras que Grossman, de manera mas coloquial, dice “Our gentleman was approximately fifty years old.” Aunque las dos frases se pueden usar en ingles sin problema alguno, al decir “Our Hidalgo himself” uno suena mas teatral ya la palabra Hidalgo esta siendo utilizada como un nombre propio en ingles, aunque esta es simplemente un sustantivo común en español. Por el otro lado, Grossman hace un énfasis en la manera correcta de explicar la edad en ingles “fifty years old” y tambien utiliza la palabra “approximantely” que, aunque pueda significar lo mismo que “nearly,” es bastante mas formal cuando se esta utilizando para hablar de edad.

Por otro lado, algo que todas las versiones traducidas al ingles tienen en común, es la falta de fluidez del texto y redundancia, de la ‘ultima frase con la cual el autor concluye esta introducción, al eesta ser traducida al inglés: “pero esto importa poco a nuestro cuento; basta que en la narración de el de se salga un punto de la verdad.”  A pesar de las distintas maneras en que se escribieron estas versiones, y las grandes diferencias que yacen entre ellas, ninguna de las cuatro logra el efecto que tuvo la misma en el texto original en español.

Ana R.

I strongly agree with Mishelle Fare that in order to analyze a translation work, we need to take into account three important elements: Time period, writing style and background of the writer.

Through out the four version of the translation of Don Quijote we can perceive the different writing style of the writer as well as the  use of descriptive language.  John Ormsby: Don Quixote (1885) translation, used words that make the story sound weir. For instance, lean hack, mutton, doublet…Well, that how it sounded to me when I first read it. I am sure that his writing style and language had captivated the reader of his time. Therefore, I agree with Mishelle Fare that  Edith Grossman, (2003) translation is written in modern, simple and contemporary language. By doing so, Edith made her translation work more attractive to us that are the reader of her time.

Nevertheless, the background of the writer play an important role in his work. In the first place, we know for a fact that writers in England, in America or in Spain will aim their work to their people, meaning to the native country of the writer. Therefore they will use the most common language of their aimed market. Hence, the same translation of a word will not suit in every case.

Thus, the translator with the used of language are not only telling the story but trying tell the story as close to the original as possible in their place and time period.

Lucy Riera

The four versions of translations of Don Quijote differ in 1) the time period which they were written, 2) the background of the author writing them 3) and through the individual style of the author.

 As discussed in class, depending on the time period in which it was produced, we see with each translation a reflection of that time period through certain vocabulary, language, and style of writing.  What we understand today in modern day English is not how people would speak or read in 1885, 1949 and vice versa. In the most recent translation by Ellen Grossman (2003) the writing is modern, simple, and easy to understand for todays readers. In older versions the vocabulary is outdated and intended for an audience living in that time period. This is why hundreds of translations were produced over the years since the book was first written in order to make the story relevant  & contemporary and also to engage the reader in a story he/she is able to understand. A contemporary translation of a classic will inevitably feel dated in a way that a modern translation will not even if the modern translator has attempted to use language that reflects the era of the original.

Secondly, we discussed that the background of the author is equally important to the type of translation produced. John Rutherford, for example, is a British author while Ellen Grossman is American. The type of English used to create each version is specific to the type of English used and understood by their respective readers. The same is true for other languages such as Spanish and Portuguese. Readers from Mexico and readers from Argentina are going to understand a completely different Spanish therefore it is essential that there are translations specific for each group. In addition, the context, vocabulary and the style of writing are all taken into consideration when localizing a book.

Finally, the style of writing by the author is very important.Before a translation is made, decisions have to be made about the target audience and what kind of style suits them best. For example, some translators might want to stress readability over absolute correctness or vice versa. In addition, sometimes the translator has to forgo their own personal style, nor would they put too much of their own creative ideas into it as to lose the authors.

-Mishelle Farer