That’s why Paul, Matthew, and John become Pablo, Mateo, and Juan in Spanish, or Paolo, Matteo, and Giovanni in Italian. In some texts, such as the Bible, the domesticating strategy is almost always used in order to create a sense of universality. Naming is one of the areas where the conflict between domesticating and foreignizing becomes clearest. This is a huge decision, with wide ranging implications in how the target audience ultimately receives and relates to the text. Or Rabassa could foreignize the text by maintaining these aspects of the original and thereby produce a flavor of foreignness in the translated version. Domesticating is done so that the text feels more accessible to the target audience. Probably one of the greatest decisions that any literary translator faces is whether to domesticate a text, meaning to adapt foreign aspects of the original, such as names, expressions, or untranslatable words. it’s impossible to say one few, or one bunch), or why if you ask for a cookie before dinner, you mother might say ‘okay, but just one.’ One does not equal a.īy deciding to use one, Rabassa opted for a title that sounds both stronger and more precise, and that ultimately sets the stage for the surgical precision and superior decision making that he employs throughout his translation. That’s why one and a can’t be interchanged in these examples (i.e. One evokes precision, as in one thousand three hundred and forty-two, while a sounds more like an estimation, as in a bit, a few, or a bunch. In Spanish, the number cien is not preceded by an article, and so it could logically be translated as either ‘one hundred,’ or ‘a hundred.’ The difference between ‘one hundred’ and ‘a hundred’ may seem insignificant, but in reality each one sets a very different tone. The Titleįrom the very first word of the title, there’s already a huge decision to be made. Still, he is probably best known for his English translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which García Márquez himself famously said was even better than the original Spanish version.īut what made Rabassa’s translation so good? To get an idea, let’s take a look at some of the tough decisions Rabassa was confronted with as he worked to transform Cien Años de Soledad into One Hundred Years of Solitude. Rabassa was a renowned translator of texts from Spanish and Portuguese to English, and his client list included the likes of Mario Vargas Llosa, Clarise Lispektor, and Julio Cortázar. But while García Márquez’ fame and notoriety is more than well-deserved, those who fomented their adoration reading his texts in English certainly should not overlook the work of another profoundly talented individual: Gregory Rabassa. Since then, his work has gone on to influence writers from Toni Morrison to Salman Rushdie, and he has even been called a childhood favorite of Barack Obama. It was the golden age of literature in Latin America, and Gabriel García Márquez, who would later become known to the entire continent by a single name, ‘Gabo,’ had just stolen the spotlight with One Hundred Years of Solitude. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a novel came out in Buenos Aires that was destined to sell more copies world-wide than Homer’s The Odyssey, Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, or even Dante’s The Divine Comedy. On May 30, 1967, just two days before the release of Sgt.
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