Translation of a translation: How accurate can it be? The difficult process of translating Saadat Hasan Manto's short-stories in Spanish

Resumo

The Italian expression “traduttore, traditore” (“translator, traitor”) is commonly used to refer to those problems that arise from a bad translation or even the difficulty of the task. It is well known that in the translation process from L1 to L2 some things will not be “equivalents”. This is not only because there is no such thing as a “word by word” translation (Rendall, 1997, p. 161), but also because each language carries a cultural context that becomes particularly evident in idiomatic expressions. According to Pym (2010), when a text is translated, an act of transfer occurs. Even if it is unintentional, translators “will necessarily be using linguistic and cultural knowledge accrued from previous translations, depending on previous transfers, which are themselves responses to previous translations” (Pym, 2010, p. 17). This, specifically in literary translation, seems to be crucial. In this transfer, translators sometimes use footnotes in order to highlight cultural aspects that cannot be fully understood by reading the text alone. This sense, what happens when a translation comes from an already translated text? What if the first translator of a book or literary work does not attend to crucial cultural aspects? What if this translation is the only way to access certain bibliographical resources or authors, ultimately making it the basis for further translations into other languages? How does a translator then use footnotes strategically? These questions arise in the context of Indian literature – specifically, Saadat Hasan Manto’s works, originally written in Urdu, a language both geographically and linguistically distant from Spanish. This paper analyses my experience of translating Manto’s short stories into Spanish, to make them available to a class of Spanish-speaking university students in Argentina with the goal of expanding the literary canon taught at universities. Being unable to read Urdu myself, I accessed the texts in English and translated them into Spanish in order to teach a college-level class of students who understand neither Urdu nor English. Several cultural aspects needed to be considered in order to produce an accurate translation.

According to Pym (2010), when a text is translated, an act of transfer occurs. Even if it is unintentional, translators “will necessarily be using linguistic and cultural knowledge accrued from previous translations, depending on previous transfers, which are themselves responses to previous translations” (Pym, 2010, p. 17). This, specifically in literary translation, seems to be crucial. In this transfer, translators sometimes use footnotes in order to highlight cultural aspects that can not be fully understood by reading the text alone.

This sense, what happens when a translation comes from an already translated text? What if the first translator of a book or literary work does not attend to crucial cultural aspects? What if this translation is the only way to access certain bibliographical resources or authors, ultimately making it the basis for further translations into other languages? How does a translator then use footnotes strategically?

These questions arise in the context of Indian literature—specifically, Saadat Hasan Manto’s works, originally written in Urdu, a language both geographically and linguistically distant from Spanish.This paper analyses my experience of translating Manto’s short stories into Spanish, to make them available to a class of Spanish-speaking university students in Argentina with the goal of expanding the literary canon taught at universities. Being unable to read Urdu myself, I accessed the texts in English and translated them into Spanish in order to teach a college-level class of students who understand neither Urdu nor English. Several cultural aspects needed to be considered in order to produce an accurate translation.