Introduction to Spanish Translation

Jack Child

LESSON 2
A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION.

Translation and interpretation in Ancient Times.

The need for translators and interpreter stems from the linguistic diversity of humankind. There
are today somewhere between 3, 000 and 5, 000 languages spoken on earth, and from the
perspective of historical linguistics the evolution of these languages is linked to the evolution of
man’s diverse culture over the face of the planet. Language, after all, is the most basic expression
of culture, and from a Darwinism viewpoint it would be only natural to expect languages to evolve
in different directions given the different set of geography and cultural surroundings. But man’s
situation is biologically unique. In no other species are group of that species so cut off from each
other because of communication problems.

The Biblical explanation for the diversity of languages is found in the story if the Tower of Babel,
as told in Genesis 11. After the great Deluge the descendants of Noah wandered onto the plain of
Shinarin in Babylonia (Mesopotamia), and there in their arrogance decided to build a tower high
enough to reach Heaven. An angry Jehovah punished their temerity by taking away their common
language and giving them different ones, thus confusing and frustrating them since they could no
longer understand each other. They subsequently scattered over the face of the earth in separate
linguistic and tribal groups that account for the diversity of humanity’s tongues and cultures. The
etymology (word given) of an Assyrian word meaning “gate of God”, and Hebrew root word,
“balal,” meaning “to confuse”.

Regardless of the explanation, ancient humans had a need for interpreters and translator from
the first days when the different tribal groupings came into contact with each other for the
purpose of trade, diplomacy, or conquest. The Old Testament of the Bible contain many
references to the need for interpreters, for example in Genesis 42:23 when Joseph, governor of
Egypt, had to use them to communicate with his famine-stricken Israelite brothers. Although most
of the people of Biblical antiquity spoke similar Semitic languages, Egyptian was different, and
this caused a difficult linguistic barrier. Moses, raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter, drew some of his
leadership from the fact that he was bilingual in the Egyptian and the Semitic languages, and this
helped him lead the Jews out of theirs Egyptians bondage.

Trade, diplomacy and military activity in the Mediterranean Basis is ancient times required large
numbers of skilled interpreters. The ancient function of “scribe” was quite frequently associated
with that of bilingual recorder of information, with the associated skill of translating or interpreting
that information. Apparently most of these early translators or interpreters learned their craft
though travel, contact with other cultures, or the sheer lucky happenstance of being born to a
bilingual marriage or living abroad as children (these are still today some of the most common
ways interpreters, but not necessarily translators, acquire their basic skills). But there were also
exceptional eases when carefully selected young people were sent abroad to learn a second
language through what we today call “immersion”. In the sixth century B.C. the Pharaoh Psamtik II
created the caste of interpreters in Egypt when he sent a considerable number of Egyptian boys
to Greece to learn the language of that country. Later Alexander the Greek ordered that some 30,
000 Persian boy learn Greek to satisfy the linguistic requirements of his conquest, and Quintus
Sertorius, who ruled Spain for eight years, required that children of noble should study both Latin
and Greek.

The linguistics who were in this (an other) fashion were frequently accorded special status as
diplomats or emissaries of the ruler. In their travels they sometimes learned the hard way one of
the occupational hazards of the translator/ interpreter: when the message is an unpleasant one, it
is easy to blame the messenger. Plutarch’s Lives record that a Greek interpreter at the Persians
embassy in Athens was killed by a mob which was offended because he used the Greek
language to express the demands of barbarians.
Introduction to Spanish Translation
Jack Child

LESSON 3

A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION.

Early Bible translation and St Jerome.

The old and New Testaments represent the greatest single translation project in the history of
civilization. To this day there are professional linguistic-religious missionaries who are goal of
providing the languages which have no written form, with the goal of providing the tribes with the
bible as their first text.

The challenge of translating the Bible from its original Hebrew and the other Semitic
languages has always been a delicate one because of the religious sensitive towards modifying
the Word of God in any way. But if the challenge were not accepted, then that Word would remain
inaccessible to the vast majority of converts. Thus, the challenge had to be accepted, even at
some risk to the translators, many of whom endured charges of blasphemy for theirs efforts. More
than one Bible translator was burned at the stake for a supposedly distorted translation of God’s
words.

Because of the heavy emphasis on God’s exact words as the basis for the bible, many early
translators understandably leaned towards an excessively literal translation. That ism they
translated word fro word in an attempt to avoid say accusation that they were changing the Word
of God. While this might have been the safer course, it frequently resulted in losing much of the
meaning if the original text. As we shall see in the various theoretical sections which follow
dealing with “surface versus deep meaning,” this us a dilemma that plagues all translator, although
it has been especially troublesome in Bible translations.

The earliest systematic translation of the Old Testament was made for extensive Greek-
speaking Jewish communities in places such as Alexandria (Egypt) and the Mediterranean
generally, several centuries before the birth of Christ. As Christianity spread through that same
area and the remote reaches of the Roman Empire, there was an increasing demand for
translation of the New Testament into a variety of languages, beginning with Latin, but also
including Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Gothic, Georgian and Armenian. There was little control over
many of these translations, which frequently were so literal that although they might have
preserved the Word of God, they did little to meet the basic purpose of making that Word available
in these other languages.

And so it came to pass that in the year 384 A.D. pope Damasus ordered the scholar Jerome
(Eusebius Hieronymus in the Latin version of his name) to begin a fresh translation of the New
Testament. although Jerome was certainly not the first, or even the best, translator of the Bible, he
was the first translator who left us with a detailed and analytical written record of the mental
process he went through as the translated. We was in a sense the first person to lay out a
“theory of translation” and to explicitly address the eternal dilemma of the translator: Do I translate
words or do translate meaning? He approached his immense task in a systematic and disciplined
way, examining the many exist translate versions of Bible, and deciding that he had to go back to
the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts in order to determine the original meaning, His solution to
the translator’s dilemma was to translate “non verbum e verbo sed sendum expremere de
sensu“ (“sense for sense, and not word for word“). He also wrote his Vulgate Bible I a Latin style
which would be understood by the average educated Christian of his day, and not the more
elevated forma style of the classical writer or a theologian. His approach, and his clear statement
of it, were courageous, and brought upon his head a storm of controversy which lasted all his
career.

St Jerome’s analytical approach, his willingness to be subjective, and his courage to

understand and convey the deeper meaning of what he was translating have earned him the
nickname of “patron saint of translators.” His admonition to translate the sense of the text, and not
literal word, is a basic guideline for every translator since his day.
Introduction to Spanish Translation
Jack Child

LESSON 4

A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION.

The Greek and the Roman approaches to translation.

These two great Mediterranean civilization had their own idiosyncratic approaches to
translation. The Greeks were somewhat ethnocentric, and with the exception of the Scriptures,
they minimized the value of anything not written in Greek. Thus, although they undoubtedly
learned other Mediterranean languages and interpreted into them in order to conduct trade, they
did not translate much from those languages into Greek. One measure of this is the word
“barbarian” (meaning “nonsense” or “incomprehensible”) which the Greeks used to describe the
language of the other nations. The word is apparently onomatopoeic, like the English word
“babble”, and suggests that the Greeks regarded other languages as inferior to their own. This
does not mean, however, that the great classical Greek writers were unaware of the value of
translating important writings from other languages. Indeed, both Cicero and Horace commented
on translation in ways not very different from those stressed by St Jerome several hundred year
later. Cicero, for example, stated that a too much from the order or wording of the original he
would not be a good translator.

The Roman approach stands in considerable contrast to the Greek reluctance to translate, to
the point that the other writer has stated rather hyperbolically that translation was a Roman
invention. The great Roman enthusiasm for translation, especially from the Greek, was the result
of the pragmatic Roman attitude toward the other Mediterranean cultures: if it enriched Roman
culture, then it would be adopted and adapted. To do this, translation was frequently necessary.
And the Roman translators became very skilled at their craft. The insertion of Greek ideas into
Imperial Rome frequently meant the coining of new words in Latin based on Greek roots, and the
Roman translator did not shrink from this either. At the same time the Roman appreciated the
value of Latin as the great unifying tongue of their Empire for administrative, military and
diplomatic purpose. The end result was that the typical educated roman citizen was certainly
bilingual and frequently trilingual: Latin was the language of administration and government.
Greek the language of culture,, and a third (or fourth) tongue the language of the citizen’s
birthplace or place of service in the Imperial system.
One the major task of the translators of the Roman empire was to render the decrees of the
Roman Senate into Greek or other local languages. At the same time, translation of literature went
the other direction (I. e. from Greek into Latin) as the Romans absorbed ideas of Greek
civilization. These translators had a difficult role to play, since their sophisticated readership
frequently understood both the source and target languages, and would be quick to catch any
errors or undue liberties. Since the typical reader had knowledge of both languages, the purpose
of the translation was frequently not simply to transmit information, but to do so in ways that
would express the translator’s own style and ability to write creatively in his target language. This
permitted the roman translator a greater leeway than had been hitherto possible, and humored
further away from the strict word-for-word limitations of early Biblical translation.

LESSON 5

A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION.

Spain in the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages Spain played a vital role in preserving the culture of western civilization by
serving as a link between Christian Europe, Islam, and the Jews of the Iberian peninsula. The
Arabs had invaded Spain in the year 710 across the Strait of Gibraltar, and remained a major
Introduction to Spanish Translation
Jack Child

cultural, military and political force in Iberia until they were finally expelled in 1942. This lengthy
eight century period of “La Reconquista” brought with it frequent contacts between Christians,
Arabs, and Jews, and created ideal conditions for translation and interpretation between these
three cultural traditions and their associated languages.

During these years Islamic culture and science were generally superior to those found in
Western Europe, which had entered the Dark Ages after the decline of Rome. in the 8th and 9th
Centuries the powerful Bagdad Califate had the most advanced libraries and scholars in the
world in the fields of science, medicine, philosophy, philology and history, and their activities
included the translation of the writings of the ancient Greeks into Arabic and Latin. The
intellectual influence of these thinkers extended throughout the muslin world, and sound a special
echo in the Iberian peninsula where Islam had close contact with Christianity and the Jews of
Spain. This contact was particularly notable in the city of Toledo, in central Spain, where all three
cultures were strongly represented in the Middle Ages. Toledo had been the capital of the
Visigoths in Spain, but was lost to the Muslims in the year 712, and was not recovered by the
Christians until Alfonso VI retook it in 1085. For almost four centuries the Arabs hade made
Toledo one of the great centers of their knowledge and culture, and many of the best books of
Islam were to be found in Toledo’s libraries. The critical mass of many scholar from the three main
cultures, plus the libraries, and the tradition of intellectual and cultural tolerance, led to creation in
that city of what came to be known as “the Toledo school of Translation” or “ College of
Translation” in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The Jewish community in Spain played a key role in translation in these years. With their
knowledge of Arabic, Latin, and the emerging Iberian romance languages, they were the principal
scholar who formed the bridge between the Islamic books in the libraries and the hunger for the
knowledge those books contained. The Jewish surname “Tordjman” (meaning “interpreter” in
Arabic), which is still relatively common among the Sephardic Jews, is a reminder of that legacy.
Maimonides (1135-1204), a Jewish scholar from Córdoba in southern Spain, was perhaps typical
of this “bridging function” and the, like St. Jerome, paid considerable attention to the translator’s
problem of word for word fidelity versus the deeper meaning of the text. In a celebrate epistle to
Samuel Ibn Tibbon, Maimonides argue that any translator who attempts to simply find a single
word to correspond to each word in the original language will waste much time and will produce
an uncertain and confused the translation. Much better, the felt, would be for the translator and
then express those same thoughts in ways that would be clear and understandable in the second
language.

The Toledo College of Translation reached its apogee under the enlightened reign of Alfonso el
Sabio (1252-1284). By this time the rendering of the epic poem of El Cid into primitive written
Castilian had given that language considerable intellectual prestige, and Alfonso encouraged
translation of Arabic text into Castilian, as well as Latin. The king personally took part in this
enterprise, he was a scholar in his new words in Castilian to express thoughts originating in the
Islamic texts.
The interest in intellectual aspects of translation in the Toledo school led them in keep records
detailing the procedures by which translation were made. The process involved team of translators
consisting of a Jewish scholar, who after consulting with his Islamic colleague, would read the
original text aloud in Arabic and then give his version of it is Latin and the romance language
(Castilian). A third member of the team, a Castilian Christian, would then (after consulting with his
Arabic and Jewish colleagues) write down the version in Latin and Castilian. Since all three
member of the team (Muslim, Jew and Christian) had some knowledge o all three languages
( Arabic, Latin and Castilian), the process involved much discussion and debate before the final
texts were produced. Doubts were resolved by consulting other translators, the rich resources of
the Toledo libraries, or King himself. Such a process would not have been possible without the
overlapping presence in Toledo of rich legacies from all of these cultures and support of the
Church and King.
Introduction to Spanish Translation
Jack Child

Lesson 6

A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION.

The Renaissance and Bible translation.

Translation played a key role in the Renaissance since the very concept of a “rebirth” of
Western European civilization was based on a new look at the classics of Greece and Rome,
and his required a large volume of translations from the original classical languages to only
facilitated this large volume of translation, but also fueled a growing demand for material from
other languages. Biblical translation was at the heart of this process, but the scope of
translations went far beyond the Bible. Since the volume of translation was so great in the 14th
through the 16th centuries, it should not be surprising that the quality was somewhat uneven.
Some of the excessively literal translation were so close to the “word for word” approach which
Jerome had warned about that they were almost unintelligible in the target language. Perhaps as
a result, we can also see a growing interest in the process of translation, an increasing interest in
what we could call the “theory of translation.” This interest in the process and theory of translator
would include as part of the finished work during the Renaissance, thus initiating a tradition
which has provided much of the key documentation for the history, theory and practice of
translation.

A typical Renaissance statement of translation principles is that laid out by French humanist
and translator Etienne Dolet, who was tried for heresy, tortured and strangled (his body and
books later being burned) because he supposedly mistranslated one of the dialogues of Plato in
such a manner as to undermine belief in man’s immortality. Dolet’s five basic principles, as he laid
them out in a brief statement (“how to translate well from one language into another”) in 1540,
wee: 1.- The translator must understand perfectly the content and intention of the author he is
translating.
2.- The translator should have a perfect knowledge of the language from which he is translating
(I. e., “source language”) and an equally excellent knowledge of the language into which he is
translating (I. e., “target language”).
3.- The translator should avoid the tendency to translate word for word, for to do so is to destroy
the meaning of the original and to ruin the beauty of the expression.
4.- The translator should employ forms of speech in common usage.
5.- Through his choice and order of words the translator should produce a total overall effect with
appropriate “tone.”

The religious aspects of translation in the Renaissance were focused on the need to translate
the Bible into the language of the people. This had many political and linguistic implication
beyond the religious ones. For ones, it tended to elevate the prestige of the vernacular languages
and diminish the mystique of Latin and Greek. From a political perspective, translation of the Bible
into the language of the people tended to undermine the power of the Church and the function of
the priests as interpreters of the Word of God. Bible translation was believed involved with the
protestant Reformation, which has been described as a “battle of the translators,” with careers,
and frequently lives, hanging in the balance if a translation was believed to promote heresy. The
first English Bible translation (that of John Wycliffe, c1330-1384) was published on the premise
that each Christian had a right to have access to the Word of God in his her own language. Martin
Luther’s translation of the New Testament (1522) was a key document in the struggles of the
Reformation and had a considerable impact on the English King James version( 1611), as well as
the first Spanish translations of the Bible in the period from 1543 to 1568.

LESSON 7
A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

Translation/Interpretation in the Discovery and Conquest.

The impact of the translators and interpreters in the Renaissance was not limited to
literature. This was also the Age of Discovery and the Age of Commerce and Trade, when Europe
Introduction to Spanish Translation
Jack Child

burst out of her historical borders with unparalleled energy, enthusiasm and curiosity into the world
beyond. The contacts with a bewildering range of new civilizations and languages in the New World,
Africa and the Far East placed a severe demand on the translators and interpreters available to the
merchants, missionaries and explorers who carried the dynamism of the Renaissance to distant
shores. Columbus, for example, included among his crew in 1492 a few men who knew Arabic
because he believed that the Arab traders had already reached Cipangu and the Spice Islands
(Columbus’ destination) , and he felt that Arabic would be a language through which he could
communicate with the inhabitants of the lands he would reach . We know the name of one of
Columbus’ interpreters: he was Luis de Torres, and was typical of those Hispanic Jews who had
been so effective in the bridging of linguistic gaps between Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and the
vernacular languages of Iberia. Columbus was not able to use Luis de Torres, of course, but upon
his return to Spain he brought back with him six Indians with the idea that they were to learn
Spanish and thus serve as interpreters in future expeditions.
Magellan too carried interpreters, and he took pains to buy slaves at his various
destinations who would serve to help him communicate. On board Magellan’s ships was a
remarkable Italian. Antonio Pigafetta, who kept the historical record of the expedition as well as a
sort of running vocabulary of the various languages they encountered. These included the Tupi-
Guaranì tongue of South America, and Pigafetta`s work served as the foundation for the linguistic
work done by the Jesuits among the Guaranis several centuries later. Pigafetta was also the
recorder of exotic new life forms found in the New World, including the first reference to penguins
(from Southern South America) in European writings.
The Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel were well aware of the significance of
language and translation. The year 1492 was not only the year of Columbus and the fall of the last
Moorish bastion of Granada, it was also the year that Elio Antonio Nebrija of the University of
Salamanca published his basic grammar of the Castilian language, which did much to establish
Castilian as the dominant language of what was fast becoming the nation-state ofSpain. As this
language established its dominance over the Peninsula, Nebrija’s Gramática de la Lengua
Castellana was carried by the conquistadores, missionaries and educators to the New World as the
model for translating the Indian tongues into Spanish. As the Bishop of Avila put it when he
presented Nebrija`s Gramàtica to the Queen in 1492, “language is the perfect instrument of
empire.”
The close links between the Castilian language, the Roman Catholic religion, and the
Spanish Conquest can be seen in the process known as the “requerimiento,” drawn up by King
Ferdinand and his advisors. The Spanish Crown stipulated that in their first contact with any new
groups of Indians the Conquistadores had to read them the “requerimiento,” which was a demand
that they peacefully accept the Catholic Church and the authority of the Crown of Castile and
Aragon. If after having heard the “requerimiento” they refused, then the conquistador had the right
to impose himself by force. The obvious problem was one of languages: the Crown stated that
interpreters must be available to present the “requerimiento” to the Indians in their own tongue. In
order to obtain such interpreters, the first conquistadores in the early years of the 16th Century
made forays to the mainland of the Aztec Empire to capture Indians who would then be forced to
serve as linguistic bridges between the Castilian of the conquerors and their native tongues.
Another source of interpreters for the early conquistadors were shipwrecked Spaniards who
had lived among the Indians. The most famous of these was Jerònimo de Aguilar, who stayed with
the Mayas of Campeche (the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico) for eight years before being rescued by
Hernàn Cortés. As we shall see in the next lesson, Aguilar was to play a key linguistic role along
with Marina/Malinche in the conquest of the Aztecs.
However, the Maya learned by Aguilar was not the language of the Aztecs, the major
empire of Middle America. The Maya civilization had declined markedly by the time of the Conquest,
although its language was still spoken in the area which is today Guatemala and adjoining Mexico.
The Aztec empire was centered on the city of Tenochtitlán (today´s Mexico City), and the Aztecs
spoke Nahuatl. In fact, the widespread use of Nahuatl was a key element which bound together the
Aztec empire, consisting of a series of tribes under the control of the Mixtecs in Tenochtitlán. They,
like the Catholic Kings of Spain, also realized that “language is the perfect instrument of empire.”
Although each subordinate tribe could retain its own language, the Aztecs insisted on imposing
Nahuatl as the official language of the empire, and trained their own linguists, as well as members
of the conquered tribes, to be scribes in the Nahuatl language. To achieve a position of importance
in political, military or commercial activity in the Aztec empire, it was essential to speak Nahuatl.
Introduction to Spanish Translation
Jack Child

LESSON 8
A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

Hernàn Cortès and Marina/Malinche.

The Conquest of Mexico is a prime example of the psychological as well as linguistic
contribution which can be made by translators/interpreters. Upon arriving on the Mexican mainland
at Veracruz, Cortès discovered that his main interpreter Jerònimo de Aguilar was initially of very
limited use to him since he spoke only Maya, and the dominant language as they entered the Aztec
empire was Nahuatl. However, Cortès fortunes soon changed when the chief of the Tabasco tribe
gave him an Indian maiden in tribute. The woman`s name was originally “Malintzin” in Nahuatl, but
she was known as “Maliche,” and eventually “Marina” in the Hispanicized version. She had been
born into a powerful family, but after her father died her mother remarried and bore a son to her
second husband. She favored the boy, and in order to permit him to get her inheritance she got rid
of Maliche by selling her to the chief of Tabasco. Malinche thus spoke Nahuatl as well as the Maya
language of the lowland tribes. By pairing up Jerònimo de Aguilar and Marina, Cortès now had a
team of interpreters through which he could speak to the Aztecs and the tribes dominated by the
Aztecs who had been forced to learn Nahuatl. Cortès would speak to Aguilar in Spanish, Aguilar to
Marina in Maya, and Marina to the Aztecs or their subordinates in Nahuatl. Today we would call this
process “consecutive relay interpreting,” and while it is not especially elegant or efficient, it did
permit communication. Cortès` chronicler, Bernal Dìaz del Castillo, noted that when Malinche joined
the group their great conquest could finally begin in earnest.
But Malinche was soon to become more than a cunning relay linguist. She also became
Cortès` lover and advisor, sharing with him the secrets of the Aztecs which gave him a
psychological edge over his opponents. As the intimacy of their relationship unfolded, Cortès taught
her Spanish, and once she could communicate with him directly in this language, there was no
further need for Jerònimo de Aguilar; Cortès could now talk to the Aztecs in Nahuatl through the
direct simultaneous interpretation of Malinche, who was now increasingly being known as “Marina”
and eventually “Doña Marina.” One of the most famous drawings of Malinche/Marina shows her
standing between a group of Aztecs and a group of Spaniards, with the Aztec hieroglyph for
“word” (a curl sign shaped like a comma) flowing in both directions between the Aztecs and
Spaniards, but through Marina/Malinche. The drawing captures the essence of the task of the
simultaneous interpreter.
Marina interpreted for Cortès in his dealing with the Aztecs emperor Montezuma, and
Montezuma thought so highly of her that he began to refer to Cortès as the “lord of Maliche.” It is
also probable that Marina provided Cortès with key insights into the mind of Montezuma, explaining
to him the Aztec legend of Quetzalcoatl which held that some day a powerful king would arrive, and
this king would be pale of skin and white of beard. Cortès matched that description, and used this
information to break down Montezuma`s resistance.
On numerous occasions Marina was able to provide the Spaniards with “Intelligence
Information” which allowed them to launch preemptive attacks or avoid ambushes. In Cholula, for
example, the wife of one of the chiefs trusted Malinche, and revealed to her that the Cholulans were
planning to ambush and assassinate the Spaniards. Marina passed this information on to Cortès,
who captured the leaders of the plot and had them killed.
There is a tragic side to the story of Marina/Malinche. Although Cortès had great respect for
her linguistic ability and fathered a son (Martìn Cortès) by her, he also regarded her as something
less than his wife, and in fact “gave” her to some of his fellow conquistadores for their enjoyment as
a mistress. Among Mexicans to this day “malinchismo” is an insulting term applied to those who sell
their birthright to foreigners.

LESSON 9
A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION.

The Conquest of Peru and El Inca Garcilaso.

Like that of Mexico, the Conquest of Peru involved transñators/interpreters in important
ways, although Francisco Pizarro never had the good fortune to encounter a single individual so
compelling as Marina/Malinche. On an early voyage to the New World Pizarro brought two young
Indians (Martìn and Felipillo) from Panama back to Spain to be taught Spanish and converted to
Christianity. Both were involved in Pizarro`s encounters with the Inca King Atahualpa, and history
Introduction to Spanish Translation
Jack Child

suggests that their incompetence or deliberate misinterpretation caused problems.

The most dramatic incident was the “requerimiento” laid before Atahualpa. The priest in
charge of explaining Christianity and the power of the Spanish King to Atahualpa was Father
Vicente de Valverde, and arrogant and inflexible man. Whether because of poor interpretation or his
own pride, Atahualpa rejected the requerimiento and threw the Bible which Father Vicente handed
him to the ground. This provided the Spaniards with the excuse they sought to seize him and
demand ransom for his release. His interrogation was handled through the Indian interpreter
Felipillo, who managed to mislead and confuse both the Spaniards and Atahualpa with his poor
interpretations. One explanation was Felipillo`s poor knowledge of both Atahualpa`s Quechua
(which of course was not Felipillo`s native tongue), as well as Spanish. A more sinister explanation
is that he belonged to one of the subordinate tribes that hated the Incas, and furthermore, that he
had fallen in love with one of Atahualpa`s concubines and feared for his life if Atahualpa should
remain in power. Atahualpa was executed by the Spanish, but Felipillo also came to an unhappy
end; he got caught up in the civil wars between the various Spanish conquistadores of Peru,
deserted Pizarro for his rival Diego de Almagro, and was eventually hanged.

LESSON 10
A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

Translation / interpretation in the colonial period.

The linguistic policy of the Spanish catholic monarchs Ferdinand’s and Isabel required that
their possessions in the new world be “castilianized” as soon as possible. Having
established their Iberian power base partly on the unifying force of the Spanish language,
they extended this concept to the Americas and called for teaching their new Indian
subjects the Castilian language. The main responsibility for this task was given to the
“encomenderos,” who were those Spanish conquistadores to whom large numbers of
Indians were granted (“encomendado”) for the purpose of converting them to Christianity
and teaching them Castilian in return for the use of their labor. In practice the Indians labor
was exploited by the encomendero, but the Christian conversion was very nominal and the
teaching of the Castilian language minimal.

An alternate solution for communicating with the Indians existed, but was not used much.
That solution involved using the existing and widespread “linguas francas” in the Americas.
Nahuatl, Maya, qucchua, and Tupi-Guarani. The Aztecs had built their empire at least
partially on the strength of the common language of Nahuatl.

A similar phenomenon existed in the Inca empire, where the power structure was based on
the forcing the tribes which were subjected to Inca rule to learn the official Quechua
language. The descendants of the mayas in Guatemala and much of Central America still
spoke that tongue even though the Mayan cities had disappeared into the jungle by the
time the Spaniards arrived. Although there was no similar “Guaraní empire,” this latter
language was in widespread use in the broad South American region extending from the
Paraguayan Chaco and southern Brazil to the river plate. The strength of these four
language can be illustrated by the fagt that in large areas of Latin America to this day.
These languages are still spoken and in fact are the dominant tongues in rural arcas of
Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Paraguay. Had the Spaniards taken the
trouble to systematically learn these four languages (Nahuatl, Maya, Quechua and Tupi-
Introduction to Spanish Translation
Jack Child

Guarani). They would have been able to directly communicate with the vast majority of
their new subjects. But with rare exceptions (most notably among the missionaries) this did
not happen, and the conquistadores and their followers relied basically on the use of
mestizo Indian interpreters to act as intermediaries in the dealings between the Castilian-
speaking Spanish administrators and merchants, and the Indian masses.

In the vice-royalty of new Spain (roughly today’s Mexico, southwestern united states and
central America) this gave rise to a group of interpreters/translator known as “naguatlos,”
typically they would be mestizos who had insights into both cultures (Spanish and Indian)
as well as both languages. They were frequently the only Indians who could write, and
were trained by the Spanish to be court translator, record-keepers, legal secretaries, and
sometimes minor government officials at the village or municipal level. They also had
another characteristic: a capacity for cunning and deception which the Spaniards had
taught them to use in dealing with the Indians. The naguatlos, and their counterparts in the
other areas, frequently played the Spaniards off against the Indian, using their knowledge
of both languages as their principal tool. At times the deception involved simply keeping a
part of the taxes levied from the Indians, and telling the Spaniards that the Indians had
refused to pay their full tax, at other times they falsified records to their advantage,
cheating both Spanish and Indians.

The principal exception to this arrangement of using native translators/interpreters was the
system instituted by the Christian missionary orders. Under the strong influence of the
work of the grammarian-historian Antonio de nebrija, the Spanish religious authorities in
the missionary orders stimulated the study of the principal native tongues, and encouraged
their priests to write formal grammars of these language (modeled on nebrija gramatica de
la lengua castellana), so that the gospel and other religious materials could be taught to
the Indians in their native languages. At the same time this allowed the missionary priests
to preach in the native language without having to depend on sometimes unreliable and
even deceptive translator/interpreters such as the naguatlos.

LESSON 11

A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION.

Translation in Spain’s golden age.

During the golden age of the Spanish culture and literature (16th and 17th centuries) good
translation was highly valued as the mechanism by which to gain access to the Latin and
Greek classics, as well as the conduit though which the best in Spanish writing could be
transmitted to the rest of Europe. At the same time, the respect for Arabic scientific and
medical writings (and the need to translate from them) continued, despite the fact that the
moors had been expelled from Spain along with the Jews in the fateful year of 1492.
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These aspects of Spanish humanism in the renaissance did much to shape the Spanish
attitude towards literary translation. In this period the English language acquired a number
of Spanish words. English lexicographers began to accumulate lists of Spanish words.
Beginning with john thorius in 1590, and for the next two centuries this British interest in
the Spanish language facilitated translation into the two languages as well as the mutual
borrowing of words.

The glory of the old Toledo school of translation had diminished considerably with the
expulsion of the moors and jewsfrom Spain in 1492. But in many of the old Arab quarters
of Spanish cities the tradition of translation from Arabic to Latin or Spanish continued,
although frequently in disguise to avoid the suspicions of inquisition. The first known
Spanish translation of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, was made in 1456, but after 1492
the situation of the Arabs left in Spain changed drastically. Those who chose to stay in
Spain were known as “mariscos.” And were foreed to accept Christian baptism as a
condition for their remaining. Any Islamic religious rituals were carried out in secret, and
the holy writings had to be kept hidden. As the years passed they grew increasingly unable
to read the Koran in the original Arabic, and turned more and more to Spanish translations
of their holy book.

But this in turn violated one of the tenets of the Muslim faith, which required them to read
and recite their scripture in Arabic. The solution was to write in Spanish. But in Arabic-
looking characters known as “aljamaido.” Even though many of these works were
destroyed by the inquisition, some have survived, and bear witness to the laborious task of
translating and them copying the Muslim holy book by hand. In the year 1606, a morisco
copier of the Koran in Spain made this marginal motation in a mixture of Castilian,
aljamaido and Arabic.

“esta eskrito en letra de kristyanos…rruega y suplica que por estar en dicha letra no lo
tengan en menos de lo kes, antes en mucho: porque pues esta así declarado, esta mas a
vista de los muslimes que saben leer el cristiano y no la letra de los muslimes. Por que es
cierto que dixo el annabi Muhammad salla allahu alayhi wa-sallam que la mejor lenwa era
la ke se entendía”translation of the passage: “it is written in the letters of the Christians:
(the writer) begs that on account of being in those letters it not be belittled, but rather
respected; because, being set down in this way, it can better be seen by those Muslims
who know how toread Christian, but not Muslim, letters. For it is true that the
prophetmuhammad (peace be unto him) said that the best language was the one that
could be understood.”

The relationship of Arab and Christian (and the problem of translation) shows up at
numerous points in the Spanish masterpiece of this period: the don quijote de la mancha
of Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes attributes the authorship of his book to a variety of
characters and translators, some Moorish and some Christian, and expresses his opinion
on translator in the prosses. At one particular point, Cervantes gives us a metaphor for
translation which is frecuently cited by contemporary theoreticians and practitioners of
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translation: “pero con todo esto, me parece que el traducer de una lengua en otra, como
no sea de las reinas de las lenguas, griega y latina, es como quien mira los tapices
flamencos por el revés: que aunque se ven las figuras, son llenas de hilos que las
escuerecen, y no se ven con la lisura y tez de la haz.” Cervantes is telling us that (with the
exception of Greek and Latin. Whose classical beauty cannot be ruined by even a bad
translation). The challenge to translator is to keep their finished product from looking like
the reverse side of a Flemish tapestry, with its negative images and loose threads.

LESSON 12

HISTORY OF TRANSLATION.

Translation and the “black legend” of Spain.

Translation (or more accurately, mistranslation) was a weapon used in creating the “black
legend” against Spain, and to a lesser extend, Portugal. The black legend was an attempt
by polemicists in England, Holland and France to portray the Spanish in the new world as
cruel, fanatical, exploitative, and wrong in their policies.

The purpose was to diminish the achievements of the Iberians in America and justify the
northern Europeans in their quest to take the Spanish possessions, or the riches they
generated, away from them. It was a massive propaganda effort sustained over a period of
many years, and which continues to have impact in certain prejudicial attitudes against
Hispanics today. To be certain, the Spanish did not act out of exclusively altruistic motives;
and many of the charges lied against them were justified. But the northern Europeans
were consistently emphasizing and distorting the negative aspects of the Spanish and
Portuguese conquest and colonial regimes, while presenting their own actions in the best
possible light.

The role of translation in this process involved taking the Spanish accounts of their
activities in the new world and selectively distorting portions of them. When, for example,
the Spanish priest bartolome de las casas attempted to defend the Indians from the
abuses of the Spanish administrators in America, his writings were distorted and
mistranslated by the English and other to provide documentation for the black legend. Las
Casas came to America in 1502, and after a sting of exploiting Indians himself in the mines
and lands he owned, he developed a conscience about the exploitation of the Indians,
entered the priesthood, and became a life-long crusader against these wrongs. In 1547 he
wrote his most powerful tract, the “brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias,” in
which he presented in gruesome detail the excesses of the Spaniards. Although he
exaggerated, his accusations were justified, and they did cause the Spanish crown to
institute reforms. However, his tract also reached the northern Europeans, who seizes
upon it as proof of the black legend’s truth. In a short period of time the work was
translated into Latin, English, French, German and Dutch, here is the subtitle carried in the
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Jack Child

English translation of 1606: “popery truly display’d in its bloody colours: or a faithful
narrative of the horrid and unexampled massacres, butcheries, and all manner of cruelties,
that hell and malice could invent, committed by the popish Spanish party on the
inhabitants of west-India… composed first in Spanish by Bartholomew de las casas, a
bishop there, and an eye-witness of most of these barbarous cruelties: afterwards
translated by him into Latin, then by other hands into… modern English.

An example of more subtle but still deliberate mis-translation into English in order to serve
the black legend was Pedro cieza de Leon’s crónica Del Peru. Published in 1553. Cieza
de Leon was an impartial and respected chronicler whose work does not have the polemic
quality of that of bartolome de las casas. Indeed, his book provides the historian with very
detailed accounts of the Incas at the time of the conquest. The book was first translated
into English by john Stevens in 1709, and again by Clements Markham in the 19th century.
This latter translation, in particular, has been strongly criticized for its distortions which
support the black legend. There are extensive omissions and mistranslations that are not
obvious to the reader unless a close comparison with the original is made. Markham
consistently omitted passages that portrayed the Indians in a bad light, such as those
describing their sexual perversions and their cannibalistic practices. In another he takes an
incident when Indians commit suicide and changed it so as to make their deaths appear to
be the result of their wanton killing by the Spaniards.

Lesson 13
A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION
Translation in the 17th and 18th centuries

The major advances in the theory and practice of translation in these centuries belong to England,
as amply documented by scholars such as Stiner in his English Translation Theory, 1650-1800. Not
only were there some important translations being accomplished by British writers, but perhaps
more importantly they concerned themselves with how quality translations could be produced, and
what the duties of the translation were to both the original writer as well as to the reader of the
translation. Because of the practical nature of many observations made by British translators of this
period, they are still valuable for us today.

By the 17th century the impact of the Reformation and Counter-reformation and a more powerful
Parliament in England and had run its courses, with the important side effects invigorating British
letters and rekindling interest in the classics, and therefore translation. The status of translators was
elevated, to the point of the best translators were given opposition of quasi-equality to the original
writers they were rendering into English. The most prominent figure in this field in the 17th century
was John Dryden, who not only was a major translator, but also an individual who established a
basic typology, or classification, of translations: they could either be “metaphrase” (word for word),
“paraphrase” (more sense for sense), or “imitation” (in which the translator assumes considerable
liberties with both the word and the sense of the original). Dryden also acknowledged the basic
dilemma of the translator caught between being fateful to the original and yet also intelligible, when
he said: “It is impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time. T is much like dancing on
ropes with fetter’d legs! A man may shun a fall by using caution, but the gracefulness of motion is
not to be expected”.

Dryden saw translation in very modern terms as a careful balance between the features which
make translation an art, a craft, or science. He is detailed rules establish prerequisites for a
translator, whom he felt must be master of both the language of the original and his own. As he
translates, he must:
- Understand the characteristics that make the author individual.
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- Conform his genius as translator to that of the original.

- Be literal when gracefulness can be maintained.
- Make the original author appear “charming” as possible without violating his true character.
- Make the original author speak contemporary English.
- Not try to improve the original.
- Not try to follow the original so closely that the spirit is lost.

The 18th century brought a new and successful metaphor for translation: the translator would be like
a portrait painter, who would capture the “spirit” of the original, but not necessarily the exact
features. Because the translator cannot recreate nature he must necessarily use a different palette
and different colors. But nevertheless his guiding principle should be to catch the spirit and strive for
the same impact. In this task he had equal responsibilities to the original writer, to the reader, and to
his own standards.

Late in the 18th century Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1814), produced a
classic work in the field of translation, his 1792 Essay of the principles of translation. Here he
established simple basic principles and illustrated them exhaustively with the examples of wide
range of languages. His three fundamental principles of translation were:
1.- a translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work.
2.- the style and manner of writing should be of the same character as that of the original.
3.- a translation should have all the ease of the original composition.

LESSON 14
A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

Romanticism in 19th Century translation

The spirit of 19th Century Romanticism (especially in Latin America) rejected the cold and rigid lost
of neoclassicism and freed the human spirit so that it could soar to greater heights of emotion and
unbridled creativity. However romanticism treated translators into rather contradictory manners. One
was to simply see translation as a way of permitting access to unbridled spirits and emotions in
other languages; the translator’s job was not to create, but to allow the romantic spirit to flow
faithfully from one language to the other. The other romantic treatment of translators was to treat
them as fellow Romantics and allow them the freedom to feel and create as equal in the process
ideally, this treatment of the translator as a creative genius in his or her own right, who was in touch
with the feelings of the original writer, would then result in a great enriching of the language and
literature of the target language.

As might be expected, the romantics were more concerned with the translation of poetry and a
great deal of the attention paid to translation in this period dealt with the issue of whether or not
poetry could be adequately translated (or at all). The poet Persy Vysshe Shelley was adamant that
translation could not do poetry justice unless one could go back to the original “seed” of thought in
the poet’s mind:

“It were as wise to cast a violent into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its
color and odour, as to seek to transfuse from one language to anotherthe creation of a poet. The
plan must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower- and this is the burden of the course of
Babel”.

On the other hand, some of the best poetry translation ever accomplished into English language
were carried out in this period = by poets. Mathew Arnold argued that the purpose of translation
(especially of poetry) should be to achieve the same effect on a reader that the original would have
on those who could read it in the language of the writer. Thus, accuracy must be sacrificed for the
aesthetic and emotional effect. The romantic poet who best illustrates this principle was Edward
FitzGerald (1809-1883), whose translations from the Persia of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
carries deep impact in the English.

This period in the history of translation includes the time when the United States as a new nation on
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Jack Child

the world seen was beginning to consider the need for translation/interpretation in the conduct of its
diplomacy and trade in the world. The State Department established the “Department of Foreign
Affairs” in the 1781 with one French interpreter and one French translator. Spanish translator was
added five years later. A few years later the staff was expanded to ten, but clearly this was not
adequate, since substantial amounts of translation work had to be contracted out.

LESSON 15
A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

A late 19th Century translator: José Marti

José Marti (1853-1895) is usually honored as the great poet, patriot and martyr of Cuban
Independence, but he was also a translator of some note. Although he translated literary material
for the sheer joy of it, much of the translating he did was imposed on him by economic necessity
during his many years of exile in the United States. Marti learned English at an early age, and had
begun to translate at thirteen. He continued translating for the rest of his life, including his time as a
student in Spain, although the period of his greatest productivity was during his stay in New York
from 1880 until he returned to Cuba to die on the battlefield against the Spaniards in 1895.

In New York he was what we would today call a “free-lance” as well as and “in-house” translator. He
translated several books for the publishing house of D. Appleton, and did a series of translations for
newspapers. As a revolutionary activist in Cuba’s long struggle for independence he translated into
English a number of articles and pamphlets supporting that movement.

There was clearly a dichotomy in Marti’s feeling about the kind of work he was translating. Like
many professionals, he undertook for money translation tasks which had little intellectual or
emotional appeal for him. De la Cuesta illustrates this nicely with a quotation in which Marti reflects
on his translation projects in February 1883, writing to his sister Amelia: “Anoche puse fin a la
traducción de un libro de lógica que me ha parecido – a pesar de tener yo por maravillosamente
inútiles tantas reglas pueriles – preciosísimo libro, puesto que con el producto de su traducción
puedo traer a mí padre a mi lado.”

Martí was also a diplomat in his years in exile in New York acting as consul for several Latin
America countries and conduct their business in that city as well as at various conferences in
Washington. He wrote for the major newspaper La Nación de Buenos Aires, and his candid
commentaries for that paper during 1889-1890 First Inter-American Conference in Washington
provided neat counterbalance to the dry official documentation. Martí obviously had access to
behind-the-scenes sources (especially for the Argentine’ side), and his columns were sprinkled with
almost gossipy references to what the various delegations said to (about) each other in private. His
commentary on the strains between the host US delegation and the aggressively independent
Argentine delegation are especially illuminating.

Martí was much involved in writing for Spanish-speak audiences about the assassination attempt
and eventual death President Garfield in 1881. Using several New York newspapers sources, Martí
took the basic accounts and translated them, but also added personal touches which in his view
were necessary to continue the appropriate emotional tone to a Latin audience. In so doing showed
his skill as a translator as well as his creative abilities of journalist and author.

Although Martí never presented a systematic theory of translation nor did he write extensively about
his approach translation, he did jot down occasional thoughts on the subject which are of value: “yo
creo que traducer es transpensar … traducir es pensar en español lo que en su idioma ellos (los
autores) pensamos … traducir es estudiar, analizar, ahondar”. His awareness of the translator’s
dilemma of the faithful versus the beautiful is evident in his belief that “la traducción debe ser
natural para que parezca como si el libro hubiese sido escrito enla lengua al que lo tradujeron, que
en esto se conocen las buenas traducciones” and “ve pues el cuidado con el que hay que traducir,
para que la traducción pueda entenderse y resulte elegante – y para que el libro no quede, como
otros tantos libros traducidos, en la misma lengua extraña en la que estaba”.
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LESSON 16

A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION
Translation at the turn of the Century

The Victorian translators at the turn of the century in England developed a peculiar tendency to
archaize, which is to render the foreign text in English in such a way as to try and convey a sense of
distant time and place. The technique was to use a mock antique language, which sound very
unusual in English, in order to try to carry the reader back to the original setting of the text in the
source language. The end result was artificial and even pedantic, and tended to restrict the
products of translation to a relatively small intellectual elite. From a theoretical perspective it was
the exact opposite of the frequently stated principle that a translation ought to sound natural in the
target language, so that it should not read like a translation. The Victorian translators’ justification for
this procedure was to convey a sense of the original, as awkward as this might be in contemporary
English.

Diplomatic translation received more attention in the late 19th Century. Secretary Hamilton Fish had
reorganized the U.S. State Department in 1870, setting up a Translating Department, although it
was staffed with only one permanent translator. By 1910 the Department grew as communications
were received in as many as 13 languages. Most of this material consisted of messages from
foreign governments, treaties, and the proceedings of international conferences. Interpreting was
not given much priority, since it was assumed that any serious diplomat would be able to conduct
his business in French.

The need for translation in the U.S. State Department was heightened by the fact that very few of
our diplomats spoke any foreign languages except for French, which was still the standard
language of diplomacy up to the First World War. U.S. diplomats assigned to Spain or Latin America
were generally deficient in their to make him or her seem foreign and may have unfortunate side
effects such as discrimination or limitations in job or social possibilities. As Carney has noted, the
speaking of “Spanglish” is not viewed kindly by academics, supervisors and language purists in
either English or Spanish.

LESSON 17

A. HISTORY OF TRANSLATION.
Walter Owen: Translator of South American Epics.

The Scot transplanted to the Argentine Pampas stands as a fitting symbol of how the translator can
open up a key aspect of a culture to readers in another language. Born in Glasgow, he spent much
of his boyhood in Montevideo and as an adult returned to the River Plate area to work as a
stockbroker. He thus had the opportunity to become bicultural as well as bilingual, and applied his
skill to the translation into English of the major epic poems of the Southern part of South America. In
so doing his objective was not simply esthetic, but cultural and even political in terms of bringing
closer together the English-speaking peoples and those of Latin America. As he put it, he hoped
that his work “in its modest way may advance between peoples of different speech, the friendly
interchange of thought and feeling which is the foundation of mutual esteem and the surest
establishment for good fellowship. To have done so is the vest reward of the translator.” In this
preface to Martin Fierro he expressed the same idea in verse:
pa que el gaucho inglés sepa lo que el
gaucho argentino era;
y el argentino que el inglés
también es gaucho a su manera.

What Owen did was to “English” (his verb for translate) the principal epics of the part of Latin
America he knew best: José Hernández’ Martin Fierro, Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga’s La Araucana,
and Zorrilla de San Martín’s Tabaré, among others. In so doing he made available to the English-
speaking world these neglected masterpieces of the Southern Cone. But as a translator he felt
obliged to tell his readers (in extensive introductions or prefaces) how he crafted his works of
translation. Thus, his legacy is a double one, of considerable value to both the reader of epic Latin
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American poetry as well as to the student of translation.

Owen avoided excessively literal translations, realizing that they would be of little interest to the
reader trying to understand the gaucho or araucanian culture. He was willing to sacrifice what he
called “verbal accuracy” (i.e., word for word rendition) in order to achieve clarity and case of style.
His ultimate goal was what we would call “equivalent impact”: “it must produce upon the
consciousness of the reader an equivalent total impression to that produced by the original work
upon readers in whose vernacular it was written.” He reiterates this philosophy in his preface to the
translation of La Araucana: “Translations of poems which adhere faithfully to the original text yield
small pleasure to the reader, and what value they have is for the student of philology or
semantics… I consider the translation of poetry into poetry a liberal art and not an exact science ….
To coin a portmanteau-term for this sort of translation, it might be called a psychological
transvernacularisation.”

Here is his “transvernacularisation” of the opening stanza:

Aquí me pongo a cantar I sit me here to sing my song
Al compás de la vigüela To the beato f my old guitar;
Que el hombre lo desvela To the man whose life is a bitter cup,
Una pena estrordinaria With a song may yet his hear lift up,
Como la ave solitariaq As the lonely bird on a leafless tree,
Con el cantar se Consuela That sings neath the gloaming star.

In the preface to the translation of La Araucana, Owen invites the reader to share with him the
intimate details of the process by which he takes the original poem of the Chilean conquest, makes
a first rough semi-literal translation, and then plays with each line, word, and syllable to achieve the
translation which most closely conveys the spirit, meaning and rhythm of the 16th Century Spanish
original. This preface stands as one of the most complete explanations which a poet-translator has
ever given of the intricacies of his work. He modestly stays: “It will not be foreign to the purpose of
these introductory remarks and will perhaps be of some entertainment to my readers if I illustrate
the working of the system I have outlined, as applied to the opening stanza of Ercilla’s epic. I will
first give the original Spanish text of the stanza, then my first roughly literal translation, followed by a
running commentary showing the development of the finished English version.”

The Spanish original by Alonso de Ercilla, 1569:

No las damas, amor, no gentilezas,
De caballeros canto enamorados,
Ni las muestras, regalos y ternezas
De amorosos afectos y cuidados;
Mas el valor, los hechos, las proezas
De aquellos españoles esforzados,
Que a la cerviz de Arauco no domada
Pusieron duro yugo por la espalda.

Owen notes that this first cut carries the sense of the original, but that the “rhythm and ring and
martial tramp of Ercilla are absent. The epic note is wanting; the bird of poetry has escaped our net
of English words. No patching or mending of the new form will recapture the spirit of the original.
What the translator has to do is to mentally digest this raw material, and once it is well assimilated,
imagine himself Ercilla, seated quill in hand in old Madrid about the third quarter of the sixteenth
century, with a clean sheet before him and his portfolio of manuscript notes at hand, ruminating the
opening lines of his epic of the Araucan wars.”

Owen proceeds to do just that for six pages of his preface, showing the reader in great detail how
he arrives at his final version:
Sing. Muse: but not of Venus and her chuck,
And amorous jousts in dainty lists of love,
Favours and forfeits won in Beauty’s siege
By soft assaults of chamber gallantry;
But of the valiant deeds and worthy fame
Of those who far on surge-ensundered shores,
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Bent the proud neck of Araucania’s race

To Spain’s sterne yoke, by war’s arbitrament.

LESSON 18

HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

20th Century Bible Translation

Translation of the Bible has been the largest single translation project ever undertaken, and for
some the project will not be finished until the Bible (or at least the New Testament) is available to
every person on earth in his/her own vernacular language. This attitude has linked Christian
missionary zeal with the science of linguistics and the practice of translation in ways that have had
special significance in Latin America. One example comes from Mexico Revolution of 1910 believed
that if the Revolution was to survive it had to make a strong effort to bring literacy to the masses of
Mexican peasants, many of whom spoke their own Indian country. But most of these Indian
languages had no written form, no established rules of grammar, and no literature beyond the oral
traditions. The Mexican government’s solution was to link forces with Protestant Bible missionary-
linguists in a joint endeavor to bring literacy to these Indians.

The key to this process was an American translator-missionary by the name of William Cameron
Townsend, who had been working with the Cakchiquel Indians of Mexico since 1917. Although he
started as a missionary, he also became a linguist in order to study the Indian languages and
translate the Bible into the various languages he came in contact with. To do this he first would
study the language, devise an alphabet, analyze the grammar (syntax) and verb structure, then
prepare a reading primer in both Spanish and the Indian language. Eventually, using Indian
assistants, he would prepare a translation of the Bible in the Indian language, and then move on to
the next group of Indians with a different tongue. In the early 1930’s, with Mexican government
support, he explored the possibility of doing this on a larger scale among the Indians of the Mexican
states of Yucatan and Chiapas. Townsend soon realized that his effort would be far more effective if
he could train a larger group of linguist-missionaries. This in turn led to the establishment of the
Summer Institute of Linguistics at Camp Wycliffe, Arkansas, and the Wycliffe Bible Society.

The name of Wycliffe was selected to honor the English religious reformer John Wycliffe (c.
1330-1384) who had fought against the abuses of the Pope in Rome and argued that Christianity
required that every person have direct access to the Bible. Thus, the Bible had to be translated into
each vernacular tongue. Wycliffe was an important precursor of the Reformation, and had
considerable influence on the ideas of Martin Luther. The Wycliffe Bible (1380-1384) was the first
complete translation of the Bible into English, and was an important step in both Bible translation
and the Protestant Reformation.

At the Summer Institute of Linguistics Townsend taught his method to an increasingly effective
group of American and Latin American linguist-missionaries, who extended their sphere of activity
from Mexico to the United States and various other countries of Latin America. From its beginnings
in 1935 the Summer Institute of Linguistics has trained linguistics and missionaries who have
studied over 200 languages, translated the Bible into many of these in 13 different countries, and
produced important theoretical and practical linguistic publications in many languages, with
significant influence on religion and literacy in the these countries. Some of their efforts led to
controversy. The established Catholic Church in Latin America has not been pleased at the
prospect of Protestant missionaries going into remote areas to study languages, teach literacy, and
proselytize by means of Bible translation. Furthermore, since most of the linguist-missionaries are
Americans, there is some suspicion, especially strong among the Left in Latin American, that these
people are also attempted to maintain a separate identity from the Summer Institute of Linguistics,
but there is a close link between the two institutions, and most of the linguists are also Protestant
missionaries. A number of Latin American nations (Brazil, Panama, Mexico and Ecuador among
them) have cancelled contracts with the Institute in the past decade for political or religious reasons.
In Colombia an Institute member was captured and killed in 1981 by leftist guerrillas, who claimed
he was CIA agent intent on penetrating remote areas of Colombia under the cover of his missionary
and translation activity.