Translators in the underworld
Francisco de Quevedo's El Buscón (1626) has presented a formidable sociolectical challenge for translators. For instance, in the novel's indecorous elements of the picaresque underclass, ones often not cross-culturally permeable due to differences in taste and tolerance of the receiving cu...
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| Formato: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ddd.uab.cat:305834 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://ddd.uab.cat/record/305834 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Quevedo El Buscón Censura Lectura estereoscópica Sociolecto Argot Conceptismo Censorship Stereoscopic reading Sociolect |
| Resumo: | Francisco de Quevedo's El Buscón (1626) has presented a formidable sociolectical challenge for translators. For instance, in the novel's indecorous elements of the picaresque underclass, ones often not cross-culturally permeable due to differences in taste and tolerance of the receiving cultures and their class norms, we find revealing choices related to the body, sex, immorality, origins, and class status across ten translations and four centuries: euphemistic (or even dysphemistic) strategies and censorship at one extreme, and flights of verbal invention at the other, largely attempts to recreate the wit and wordplay of the characters' private languages. Comparing the translations allows us into a rogues' gallery of realities often considered unliterary or un-English for their times. This study considers how so-called 'low life' language, including the germanía, or thieves' argot, and the very word 'pícaro', is strategized. The presentation of translators as 'persons of quality' in the era is considered in the light of the public's (dis)taste for the subject matter. I weigh whether prurience as an attractor to otherness is reduced to inoffensiveness as the price of acceptability in these translations. |
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