Subject:
(14231) Traducción de textos literarios Gr.A
Student´s name: Otero Ormeño, Marina
Title of the paper: "Ulysses",
and my translation into Spanish.
Author or topic: Joyce, James
Abstract:
First
thing I have to say about this translation is that it was the hardest we have
done so far, not only because of the vocabulary, which is sometimes hard to
find its meaning, but also because of the structure of the sentences in the
original text. Due to the period when this text was written (beginning of the
XX century by James Joyce), it is even harder to find the exact meaning of many
words and a deep investigation is required.
Now, I am going to expose all the problems I have faced while translating and
how I resolved them (they are all emphasized in yellow in the original and blue
in the translation):
1.
“behind him on the mild morning air”-------“tras la espalda a pesar del suave viento de la mañana”. Instead
of saying “detrás de él” as
the original literally says, I chose “tras la espalda”, which shows better the fact that it is his back
which is meant. And I used “a pesar” instead of “en”
because despite the air, his gown was still in his back.
1.
“winding stairs”------- “escaleras de caracol”.
Although it literally means “escaleras serpenteantes”, in Spanish we call that “escaleras de caracol”. I found a
translation in http://dict.leo.org.
2.
“Come
up, Kinch! Come up you fearful Jesuit!”------”¡Sube, Kinch! ¡Que subas
maldito jesuita!” In
this case, to try to reproduce the repetition and the insistence of Buck, I
decided to put “Que” to show this insistence.
3.
“gunrest”-------“tronera”.
After many discussions in class and after looking for a lot of information on Internet,
we all agreed that the gunrest was a “tronera” in Spanish. (definition).
4.
“thrice”--------“tres veces”.
Here, the problem was not about how to translate it, but what it was
referred to, that is to say, in the original it is no clear if he was blessing
the three things once, or three times each thing. In any case, I decided to
leave the ambiguity as it is not clear in the original either.
5.
“awaking mountains”-------“las montañas en su despertar”. Taking
into consideration that the scene where this sentence appears takes place in
the morning, I thought it was a good option to translate it this way. The
mountains are waking up.
6.
“Dedalus”--------“Dedalus”. I have to
mention that I have not translated any names, besides Chrysostomos,
for which there is a translation (Crisóstomo).
7.
“gurgling in his throat”-------“mientras gorjeaba”. The gerund denotes an action that is
happening at that moment or meanwhile something else is taking place. I reflected
that by putting “mientras”. Furthermore I had the
doubt whether to omit “garganta” (throat) or not.
Finally I looked the verb “gorjear” in the RAE and I
found out in this verb, “garganta” is implicit.
8.
“untonsured”--------“sin tonsura”.
I had many doubts with that adjective. I could not find it anywhere, so
I decided to look up “tonsure”, which is “the part of a monk’s or priest’s head
that has been shaved”, so I came to the conclusion that I had to express the
opposite to that definition.
9.
“gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown”-------“recogiendo
sobre sus piernas los pliegues sueltos de la bata”. Here
I had the problem of expressing the same idea into Spanish, so I just imagined
myself doing what was written on the original and I tried to transmit the same
thing.
10.
“patron of arts”------“mecenas”. I did not know the meaning of
that word, so I looked it up in the dictionary. Depending on the context it has
one meaning or another, and when it refers to Arts, it is called “mecenas” in Spanish.
11.
“A pleasant smile broke quietly
over his lips”-------“En sus labios se dibujó con
discreción una agradable sonrisa”. In this sentence my
doubt arose with “broke” and it was hard to find the most suitable word in
Spanish. Also the adverbs are sometimes hard to translate because in Spanish is
not very advisable to take advantage of the adverbs ending in “-mente”. So my solution is to try to use a noun instead.
12.
“Hellenic
ring”-------“toque helénico”. In this expression I thought that a
literally translation was useless because it would not say anything to the
reader, so I tried to find a similar expression which the reader would be more
familiar with.
13.
“jejune”------“aburrido”. There were several options
in Spanish for this word, but the one I chose was more adequate for the
context.
14.
“Lend
us a loan”------“préstanos”. In this case I omitted “the loan”
because I thought that it was redundant.
Bibliography:
·
Wordreference
·
Merriam
Webster Dictionary On-line
·
Cambridge Dictionary On-line
·
Oxford dictionary
·
Real Academia Española
·
Wordsmyth Dictionary On-line
·
British National Corpus
·
Dictionary.com
·
Allwords
Auto-evaluation:
Academic year 2007/2008
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Marina Otero Ormeño
orma@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press