Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

For each fire
is all fires,
the first fire
and the last ever to be. (244)
How can a translator not revel in working on
these rewarding aspects of the myriad
difficulties at hand! Murillo’s translation of the
two sentences above is the following:
Las llamas oscilaban al viento y las brasas
palidecían y se oscurecían y palidecían y se
oscurecían como el pulso sanguíneo de un
ser vivo eviscerado frente a ellos en el suelo
y contemplaron el fuego, el fuego que
contiene en sí mismo algo de los propios
hombres en la medida en que el hombre es
menos sin él y se aparta de sus orígenes y
está como exilidado. Pues cada fuego es
todos los fuegos, el primer fuego y el último
que habrá nunca. (297)
It remains a somewhat lyrical prose in Spanish
(e.g., the rhythmic repetition of palidecíanoscurecían
/ palidecían-oscurecían, although
“oscurecían” is weighed down by the reflexive
“se,” and the alliterative “fuego” of the second
sentence — particularly the “s,” “a” and “f”
sounds), though considerably less so than the
English original, due to slight but significant
changes such as “are exiles” to “are like [very
prosaic] an exile/exiles” (BT: “está como
exiliado”) and the ending thud of “el último que
habrá nunca” (BT: “the last that will ever be” vs.
McCarthy’s much lighter “the last ever to be”).
Of course, neither McCarthy nor Murillo was
writing verse when they were working on Blood
Meridian, such that this recasting into verse
form merely serves a heuristic purpose. But
alliteration abounds in the image-making that is
Blood Meridian:
Text of Blood Meridian
The river led a limegreen
corridor of trees down out of
the barren mountains. (90)
Two thick ropes of dark
blood and two slender rose
like snakes from the stump
of his neck and arched
hissing into the fire. (107)
(…) a buzzard labored up
from among bones with
wings that went whoop
whoop whoop like a child’s
toy swung on a string. (187)
(…) like the imbreachment
of some ultimate alchemic
work decocted from out of
Murillo Translation into
Spanish
El río salía de las áridas
montañas por un pasillo de
áboles verde lima. (114)
Dos cabos gruesos de
sangre oscura y dos más
delgados se elevaron como
serpientes del muñón de su
cuello y describieron una
trayectoria curva para
aterrizar siseando en el
fuego. (133)
(…) un ratonero alzó
pesadamente el vuelo entre
unos huesos haciendo fup
fup fup con sus alas como
un juguete pendiendo de un
cordel. (228)
(…) a modo de irrupción
de algún nuevo
experimento alquímico
Doyle BT of Murillo Translation with
Commentary
The river emerged from the arid mountains on a
corridor of lime-green trees. [River and trees go
together in both versions, but in English the river
leads a limegreen corridor of trees out of the
mountains while in Spanish, which is more
ambiguous, it appears that the corridor of trees is the
means, the vehicle upon which, by which the river
emerges. Similar but different images.]
Two thick ends of dark blood and two thinner ones
rose like snakes from the stump of his neck and drew
a curved trajectory to land hissing in the fire. [While
the Spanish version loses the economy of “arched
hissing” and uses seven words in place of two, it is a
vivid idiomatic read in Spanish — a good translation.]
(…) a buzzard labored up in flight among some
bones going whoop whoop whoop with its wings like
a toy hanging from a string [Here we see for one of
the few times the need for the translator to work with
onomatopoeia, a difficult area of translation.]
like an irruption of some new alchemic experiment
hatched in the secret darkness of the heart of the earth
[Imbreachment, from breach or rupture, is a word
58 Translation Review