Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

were entitled, not only to make radical changes to
the literal meaning of the original text, but also to its
reference…. Only by this maneuver can the translator
suggest what seems to be the ‘deep sense’ of the
story, that is, a psychological feature of the character—Diotallevi
can enjoy a landscape only through
the poetical experience of somebody else.”
It may seem bold to contradict the author with
regard to the “deep meaning” of his own text, but
one cannot help but wonder whether the Italian
character’s reference to his native literary culture is
not indicative of an equally essential feature of his
psyche. Not only is Diotallevi a culture snob who is
able to perceive nature only through poetry, but he
perceives it through Italian poetry, which he learned
in a certain kind of Italian family and in Italian
schools. Substituting Keats for Leopardi may, in
fact, not preserve the psychological meaning of the
passage, or it may preserve its universal aspects at
the expense of the particular. This preference for the
universal tends to run throughout Eco’s examples,
and it seems to derive from the scientific approach
of the semiotician rather than the artistic approach
of the novelist.
In part two of the book, Eco examines the relationship
of translation to interpretation, and here the
semiotician comes to center stage as the translator
retreats to the wings. After a brief review of
Jakobson and Peirce’s theories of interpretation, Eco
concludes that translation should not be identified
with interpretation but is better viewed as a species
of the larger genus of interpretation, which includes
all forms of intralinguistic and interlinguistic reformulations,
from transcription through transmutation
(films based on novels, comic strips of the Divine
Comedy, etc). This taxonomy of interpretation, and
Eco’s explanations of translation’s place in the classification,
will be useful to scholars in translation
studies, particularly those interested in comparing
literary translation to other forms of interpretation,
such as musical performance, film and theater adaptation,
or parody.
A final word about the graceful translation of
Eco’s rhetorical style as rendered here by Alastair
McEwen. All the way through Experiences in
Translation, the reader has the sensation of listening
to a skillful and engaging lecturer. This is no doubt
partly due to Eco’s own mastery of the anecdotal
style of oral presentation. McEwen succeeds, however,
in preserving Eco’s Italian professorial style,
retaining Latinate words whenever possible—
“paronomasia” instead of pun, “perspicuous” instead
of clear, “hypotyposis” instead of vivid description—and
adhering to an authoritative yet genteel
formal register. The examples cited here from
McEwen’s translation are probably the only words
capable of rendering Eco’s boundless erudition, but
one is also left with the impression that they successfully
capture the “deep sense” of the lecturer’s
persona.
The Love You Promised Me by Silvia Molina.
David Unger, trans. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone
Press, 1999. ISBN 1-880684-62-4 (Paper). 152 pp.
From El amor que me juraste. Mexico, D.F.: Joaquin
Mortiz, S.A. de C.V, 1998.
Patricia Schoch, Reviewer
Silvia Molina is a prolific and critically acclaimed
contemporary Mexican writer. She has written 10
children’s books, three collections of short stories, a
one-act play, two volumes of essays, and five novels.
Only four of her short stories and two of her novels
have been translated into English; the first novel, La
mañana debe seguir gris, originally published in
1977, was translated by John and Ruth Mitchell in
1993, and her most recent novel, El amor que me
juraste, winner of the 1999 Sor Juana de la Cruz
Prize of the Guadalajara International Book Fair, has
now been translated by David Unger.
Most of Molina’s previous novels have dealt
with themes of Mexican women in search of their
identity against a backdrop of contemporary
Mexican political upheaval that is interwoven with
Mexican history. Although in a recent interview,
Molina denied that her writing style is similar to that
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