Handbook for translators of Spanish historical ... - University Library

CHAPTER
THEORY
An eminent scholar has asserted that translation "is not
rendering the words of a foreign language into English, but
it is the metamorphosis of the feeling, the life, the power,
the spirit of the original." He adds: "In other words,
emd I put them in italics for their emphasis, Translation
is arousing in the English reader or hearer the identical
emotions and sentiments that were aroused in him who read
or heard the sentence as his native tongue. "^ This definition
sets a high ideal in translation which, unforttmately,
is seldom, if ever, attained. Tor, we ask with Postgate,^
Who is to be the judge as to whether or not identical
emotions and sentiments are aroused in an American
reader today that were aroused in a French or Spanish reader
at a distant date in the past? Nevertheless, it is an
ideal worthy of the intense effort of every good translator.
It is our belief that such a goal can be most closely
approached when one undertakes his work with the assumption
that tremslation is the art of rendering the idea expressed
in one language into another language in an accurate
and readable manner. There are, however, a thousand
and one obstacles to be hurdled even in this approach to
the ideal.
One must not mistake verbatim translations, paraphrases,
imitations, parodies, or any other thinly veiled approximation
for the serious work of translation. A verbatim
version of an original cannot properly be called a translation,
for a translation' should be first and foremost a
faithful rendition of the substance as well as the form of
the original. "To translate not so much the words as their
meaning, to observe not merely the obvious English idioms
of syntax, but the more evasive but eq\ially important ones
of stress, word-order, and balance, and to create an atmosphere
of associations in some sense akin to the atmosphere
of the original. "3 Nor is the transfer of meaning
from one form of speech to another alone to be considered
as translation. Paraphrasing an original is not transla-
^Herbert Gushing Tolman, The Art of Translating, p. 22.
^J. P. Postgate, Translation and Translations p. 19.
^E. Stuart Bates, Modern Translation, quoting J.M.Edmonds,
p. 106. _i_