their - The University of Texas at Dallas

imaginación de Roger Donal 9 (“The Imagination of
Roger Donal”). This novel has several voices. The
first example I am going to use demonstrates two
diametrically opposing voices. The novel switches
between the voice in the romance novel that the
protagonist is reading and the voice of the protagonist
as in the following example:
“His eyes travel over her, assessing this
intermittent gift. The spirals of metal
touching his skin open furrows of
excitement; he is drawn into the eroticism of
the harem evoked by that ring, an heirloom
from Schaharazad.
Slowly, gently, the tip of her tongue covers
each of his fingers. Searching for words to
frame the moment, she crosses a geography
of silence. Her voice finds whispers to
portray her desire and fuse with it. As the
voice descends in scale, it becomes weaker,
turning into a hoarse moan, and leaving her
body to finish the sentence.
Like a siren going off, a shrill alarm makes him
jump and feel a void in the pit of his stomach;
suddenly all the coordinates intersect. Looming before
him is a gigantic figure — Adela [his wife]. The
chain, the ring, the voice. The ring. Adela has that
ring, doesn’t wear it often. The chain, her habit of
always playing with it. Her voice. Sexy hoarse, he
describes it. He sits straight up in his seat, breathing
heavily, the book shaking in his hands. You are crazy.
Come on, calm down. Look, it’s a novel, the stupid
story of a man obsessed. The man obsessed, and you
out of your mind. Since you began to read that lunatic,
everything has been crazy.
… the voice descends in scale, it becomes weaker,
turning into a hoarse moan… it isn’t possible to
reproduce something so exactly. Don’t be stupid,
people lose their voices at such a time. Lots of people,
you know, really, just think. I don’t know.”
The particular challenge in translating the
romance novel passages is in retaining their flavor and
distinctness. The romance languages are much more
expansive in nature than English. It is easy to stay too
close to the Spanish and produce a text unacceptable
to a reader of the English version. However, there is a
little more latitude with this text because it is
supposed to be “purple prose.”
I will conclude the discussion of applying theory
to practice with the next example. To reiterate, the
translator’s work is the inverse of the author’s: the
author builds, whereas the translator dismantles and
reconstructs using poetic devices and figures similar
to the author’s. Rabassa’s statement that a
translation’s quality depends on how close it
approaches the original is valid, but the translated text
cannot, of course, be identical. Often, translators
produce faithful analogues by drawing on their
creative-writing abilities to compensate for the
inevitable loss of the originals’ semantic and cultural
subtleties. I want to explore this idea by looking at the
translation issues in a whimsical section of La
imaginación de Roger Donal.
Voice is not the challenge in this passage. It is the
play on words, the central word being “caso,” which
has many possible uses in Spanish. “Caso” can also be
spelled “cazo.” “Caso” is “case, circumstance,
instance, affair, medical case, subject, in case, in the
event of, at best, at worst,” and part of the idiom “to
pay attention to:” “hacer caso,” ad infinitum. “Cazo”
with a “z” is a ladle. The selection follows:
“Hacerle caso a Adela no es fácil, porque casi
nunca define el caso en cuestión. Y no hacerle caso
también, por lo mismo. Ultimamente trae problemas
con los términos; las palabras adquierren una especie
de solidez, como piedras o troncos con los que se
tropezara a veces. Caso; no es el caso, como no es
pertinente: hacer caso, como prestar atención a los
consejos de alguien; es un caso difícil, no tiene caso,
el caso es que caso acaba por convertirse en cazo, uno
enorme de cobre lleno de letras que se desbordan.”
My analogous translation follows. The cazo with a
z becomes a briefcase rather than a ladle, which is
appropriate because a briefcase is prominent at
another point in the novel:
“It isn’t easy to pay attention to Adela, because
she almost never defines the case in question. And, for
the same reason, it’s hard not to pay attention; she’s a
hard case to ignore. Lately he has been having
difficulty with terms; the words acquire a kind of
solidity, like rocks or tree trunks that you occasionally
run into. In any case, it’s not a case to worry about;
it’s not pertinent to the other case; though difficult,
it’s not of importance as a case, the case is that… The
case turns out to be a briefcase, an enormous leather
one, with letters of the alphabet spilling out of it.”
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