Translation Universals.pdf - ymerleksi - home

208 Riitta Jääskeläinen
(1) The news of his assassination was hardly noted in the newspapers in his
hometown of Medellín, Colombia; they are so used to it – 16 of these
killings take place every single week in that city. It was not mentioned in
the newspapers of other Colombian cities; this news is no news anymore
in a country where 11,000 of these murders take place every single year.
The international wire services didn’t carry this event to their foreign
affiliates; how many thousands of killings take place every single day in
the world?
Three paragraphs later, in example (2), we return to the young murder victim
who, as it turns out, was the son of one of the author’s close friends. This fact is
brought up after the author has established his own close personal relationship
with Medellín.
(2) I was born in Medellín. Many years ago I fell in love there. My first
two children were born there. My father is buried there. I remember
Christmas, birthdays, baptisms and funerals. And serenades at midnight.
Medellín is also home for the so-called Medellín cartel, possibly the most
powerful group of narcotraffickers in the world. It was the home, too,
of the 28-year-old boy. His family is like my family. The father, Luis
Fernando, is my friend who, not so long ago, drank aguardiente with me
on nights of serenade. Last December he lost his son.
To make his point, the author uses an interesting variety of stylistic devices:
he combines autobiographical narration with expository prose. He adds local
colour by using Spanish loan words, such as narcotraficantes, aguardiente,and
corrida. Repetition of various kinds is a central device, often coupled with
contrasts. Repetition is also the means by which the author carries across
the main image or metaphor in the text, i.e. family and home. The text
is built on contrasts between good vs. bad families, the home of good vs.
bad things/people (see example (2) above), families then and now, which is
illustrated in the following excerpts from the ST.
The semantic network dealing with family/home is triggered by the headline
“The Families of Medellín”, and further enhanced in the caption “The city
where I was born and where my father is buried is also the hometown of the cocaine
cartel.” The caption also expands the families mentioned in the headline
into the good (=the author’s) vs. bad (=drug dealing) families (i.e. contrasts the
families). The caption also contains a couple of extensions of the family/home
image, also contrasted, i.e. the author and his birthplace,theauthor’sfather and
his burial place. (These references to family affairs are repeated later, as shown
by example (2) above.)