UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID

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UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID FACULTAD DE FILOLOGIA

TESIS DOCTORAL

La traducción al español de las novelas de esclavitud afroamericanas: Variación lingüística e ideología Spanish Translations of African-American Neo-Slave

Narratives : Linguistic Variation and Ideology

MEMORIA PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE DOCTOR PRESENTADA POR

Miguel Sanz Jiménez

Directores

Jorge Braga Riera Dámaso López García

Madrid

© Miguel Sanz Jiménez, 2020

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U

NIVERSIDAD

C

OMPLUTENSE DE

M

^ADRID

F

ACULTAD DE

F

^ILOLOGÍA

T

ESIS DOCTORAL

La traducción al español de las novelas de esclavitud afroamericanas:

Variación lingüística e ideología

Spanish Translations of African-American Neo-Slave Narratives:

Linguistic Variation and Ideology

M

EMORIA PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE

D

OCTOR PRESENTADA POR

Miguel Sanz Jiménez

D

IRECTORES

Dr. Jorge Braga Riera Dr. Dámaso López García

Madrid 2020

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Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields, Sold in the market down in New Orleans.

“Brown Sugar”, The Rolling Stones

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Agradecimientos

Son muchas las personas que han contribuido a que este proyecto de tesis doctoral avanzase desde los primeros borradores y diera sus frutos. En primer lugar, quiero expresar mi agradecimiento, por su cariño y apoyo constantes, a mi familia: Estela, Mónica, Paloma, Juan Miguel y Kira. Y a Soraya, por tanto.

Quedo muy agradecido a mis directores de tesis por su ayuda, infinita paciencia y sabio consejo. Al Dr. Jorge Braga Riera por despertar en mí el interés por el oficio de la traducción literaria y por la investigación en este campo, por creer en este proyecto desde que comenzó a gestarse con un modesto trabajo de fin de máster, por atender mis numerosas dudas y ofrecer siempre precisas correcciones. Al Dr. Dámaso López García por apoyar mi investigación desde el principio, por su aguante con las interminables sesiones de papeleo por firmar y tramitar y, por supuesto, por sus observaciones constructivas en las horas de docencia que hemos compartido.

Quiero dar las gracias al Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte por las ayudas para la formación de profesorado universitario y para estancias breves en centros extranjeros que pude disfrutar. Gracias también a la Facultad de Filología de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, en especial a su Departamento de Estudios Ingleses: Lingüística y Literatura, por acogerme en calidad de investigador en formación.

Un agradecimiento especial se merecen los profesores que han colaborado conmigo mientras trabajaba en esta tesis doctoral, como el Dr. David Johnston, que me invitó a realizar una estancia en Queen’s University Belfast en primavera de 2019 y tuvo la bondad de darme varios apuntes sobre mi investigación. Igualmente, doy las gracias a mis mentores, con quienes he podido dar clase y conversar acerca de este trabajo durante los últimos años: los doctores Elena Domínguez Romero, James William Flath, Rebeca Gualberto Valverde, Juanpe Rica Peromingo y Paloma Tejada Caller, coordinadora del programa de doctorado en Lingüística Inglesa.

Muchas gracias a Daniel Álvarez Prendes por la oportunidad de traducir El pájaro carpintero, confiar en mi proyecto y dar un hogar a Cebolla, el Viejo y su banda de alocados abolicionistas. Gracias a mi amigo Juan Fernández Sáinz por las largas tertulias sobre cine, música y series. Gracias a Chris Ratsabout, mi amigo en la distancia con quien comparto la afición por la buena comida y por coleccionar figuras de acción.

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Un modesto y último agradecimiento es para los variopintos artistas que me inspiran desde mi infancia, me ayudan a creer en mi trabajo y a sobrellevar el día a día: Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Jim Henson, los hermanos Coen, Key &

Peele, Taika Waititi, Matt Groening, los Beatles, los Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen

& the E Street Band, Queen, Bob Dylan, Little Richard, los Black Keys, Jamie Cullum, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Vince Gilligan, David Simon, Larry David, Stan Lee, Ed Brubaker, Jason Aaron, Toni Morrison y James McBride.

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Table of Contents

List of Tables i

List of Figures ii

List of Graphs iii

Abstract 1

Resumen 5

1. Introduction 9

1.1. Motivation 9

1.2. Aim and Research Questions 10

2. Theoretical Framework 13

2.1. Translation Studies 13

2.1.1. General considerations on Translation Studies 13

2.1.2. Approaches to Translation Studies 16

2.2. Literary Translation from English into Spanish: Narrative Texts 21 2.2.1. General considerations on Literary Translation: Narrative Texts 21 2.2.2. An Overview of Literary Translation in Spain 25

2.3. Ideology and Literary Translation 30

2.3.1. Approaching Ideology 31

2.3.2. Polysystems and Norms: The Tel Aviv School 33 2.3.3. The Manipulation School and the Cultural Turn 39 2.3.4. Discourse, Invisibility, and Narratives 44 2.3.5. Spanish contributions to research on Ideology

in Literary Translation 51

3. The Background: Slave Narratives, Black English, and Dialect Translation 55

3.1. African-American Slave Narratives 55

3.1.1. The rise and evolution of Slave Narratives 56

3.1.2. Neo-Slave Narratives 67

3.2. Black English in Slave Narratives 71

3.2.1. Features of Black English in Neo-Slave Narratives 72 3.2.2. Black English as a Literary Dialect 83

3.3. Translating Literary Dialect 89

3.3.1. An overview of strategies for translating literary dialect 93 3.3.2. Publishers’ stance on the translation of literary dialect 105

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3.3.3. Translating literary dialect into Spanish: Published examples 112

4. Methodology 123

5. Jubilee, by Margaret Walker 133

5.1. Context and Reception 134

5.2. Morpho-syntactic Features 138

5.3. Phonological and Lexical Features 151

5.4. Discussion of Jubileo 157

6. The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron 163

6.4. Discussion of Las confesiones de Nat Turner 188

7. Roots, by Alex Haley 191

7.4. Discussion of Raíces 212

8. Flight to Canada, by Ishmael Reed 217

8.4. Discussion of Vuelo a Canadá 242

9. Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler 247

9.4. Discussion of Parentesco 274

10. Beloved, by Toni Morrison 279

10.4. Discussion of Beloved 303

11. Middle Passage, by Charles Johnson 307

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11.4. Discussion of La trata 330

12. The Known World, by Edward P. Jones 333

12.4. Discussion of El mundo conocido 357

13. A Mercy, by Toni Morrison 361

13.4. Discussion of Una bendición 375

14. The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride 377

14.4. Discussion of El pájaro carpintero 413

15. The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead 417

15.4. Discussion of El ferrocarril subterráneo 439

16. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi 443

16.4. Discussion of Volver a casa 466

17. Discussion of Results 469

18. Conclusions and Further Research 479

Works Cited 491

Index 521

Appendix 523

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List of Tables

Table 1: FEATURES OF BLACK ENGLISH IN NEO-SLAVE NARRATIVES 79 Table 2: STRATEGIES FOR TRANSLATING LITERARY DIALECT 104 Table 3: 19^TH-CENTURY AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVE NARRATIVES AND

THEIR SPANISH RETRANSLATIONS 125

Table 4: CORPUS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEO-SLAVE NARRATIVES AND

THEIR SPANISH TRANSLATIONS 127

Table 5: SUMMARY OF THE METHODOLOGICAL PROCESS 132 Table 6: PERCENTAGES OF FEATURES OF BLACK ENGLISH

IN NEO-SLAVE NARRATIVES 470

Table 7: STRATEGIES FOR TRANSLATING BLACK ENGLISH IN THE CORPUS 473 Table 8: TRANSLATION OF THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF SKIN COLOR 474 Table 9: TRANSLATION OF THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF SLAVERY AND PLANTATIONS 475 Table 10: TRANSLATION OF MEANINGFUL NAMES 477 Table 11: AWARDS WON BY NEO-SLAVE NARRATIVES 483

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List of Graphs

Graph 1: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN JUBILEE 159 Graph 2: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN

THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER 189

Graph 3: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN ROOTS 213 Graph 4: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN FLIGHT TO CANADA 242 Graph 5: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN KINDRED 274 Graph 6: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN BELOVED 304 Graph 7: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN MIDDLE PASSAGE 330 Graph 8: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN THE KNOWN WORLD 358 Graph 9: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN AMERCY 375 Graph 10:PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN THE GOOD LORD BIRD 413 Graph 11: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES

IN THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD 439

Graph 12: PERCENTAGES OF BLACK ENGLISH FEATURES IN HOMEGOING 466 Graph 13: PERCENTAGES OF STRATEGIES FOR TRANSLATING LITERARY DIALECT 485 Graph 14: PERCENTAGES OF BOOKS PER PUBLISHER 487

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List of Figures

Figure 1: THE RUNAWAY SLAVE 57

Figure 2: SLAVE CATCHERS AND RUNAWAY SLAVES 62 Figure 3: COVERS OF JUBILEO’S EDITIONS (1968 AND 1976) 135

Figure 4: THE DISCOVERY OF NAT TURNER 163

Figure 5: COVERS OF LAS CONFESIONES DE NAT TURNER (1968 AND 2016) 169

Figure 6: COVER OF RAÍCES (1978) 194

Figure 7: COVERS OF FLIGHT TO CANADA (1989 AND 2018) 219 Figure 8: COVERS OF KINDRED (1988 AND 2018) 250 Figure 9: MARGARET GARNER FACES OFF SLAVE CATCHERS 280 Figure 10: COVERS OF BELOVED (1988 AND 2001) 282

Figure 11: THE MUTINY ABOARD THE AMISTAD 308

Figure 12: COVER OF LA TRATA (1991) 311

Figure 13: ASLAVE COFFLE SUPERVISED BY BLACK OVERSEERS 334 Figure 14: COVERS OF THE KNOWN WORLD (2003,2004, AND 2007) 335 Figure 15: COVERS OF AMERCY (2008 AND 2009) 364 Figure 16: THE LAST MOMENTS OF JOHN BROWN 378 Figure 17: PATTY CANNON, THE WICKEDEST WOMAN IN AMERICA 380 Figure 18: COVERS OF THE GOOD LORD BIRD (2013 AND 2017) 384 Figure 19: THE RESURRECTION OF HENRY BOX BROWN AT PHILADELPHIA 410 Figure 20: FUGITIVE SLAVES AND BLOODHOUNDS,U.S.SOUTH,1850S 418 Figure 21: COVERS OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (2016 AND 2017) 421 Figure 22: REWARD FOR A RUNAWAY SLAVE GIRL 433 Figure 23: CABO CORSO CASTLE ON THE GOLD COAST OF AFRICA 444 Figure 24: COVERS OF HOMEGOING (2016 AND 2017) 448 Figure 25: SPANISH SUBTITLES FOR DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) 489 Figure 26: SPANISH SUBTITLES FOR TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE (2013) 490

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Abstract

Spanish Translations of African-American Neo-Slave Narratives: Linguistic Variation and Ideology

The motivation for this dissertation stems from the combination of my main areas of academic research: Literary Translation and American Literature. My Master’s dissertation focused on the development of a partial translation proposal for a neo-slave narrative, James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird, which I wholly translated into Spanish and was published by Hoja de Lata in September 2017 with the title El pájaro carpintero.

Continuing with the research lines initiated in my Master’s degree, this PhD dissertation centers on a corpus made up of twelve African-American neo-slave narratives and their corresponding versions into Spanish, with the aim of examining translators’ strategies when re-creating novels that give voice to the dispossessed Other, i.e., black slaves, and portray a characteristic racial identity. Thus, the aim of this PhD dissertation is to study how African-American neo-slave narratives have been translated into Spanish, focusing on the strategies used to render linguistic variation and slaves’

use of Black English. Source novels are compared and contrasted with their respective translations in an attempt to observe the norms that control the translation process, readers’ expectations, and editors’ criteria. After discussing these strategies, the ideological implications of translator’s choices are examined, together with their extent of influence in the reception of this particular genre in Spanish.

Three research questions are formulated in the first chapter, and the conclusions after the analysis try to answer them. Still, this dissertation is not a prescriptivist study that determines how African-American neo-slave narratives should be translated into Spanish. Instead, it follows the path of Descriptive Translation Studies and observes translators’ choices for dealing with literary dialect, meaningful names, and lexical elements pertaining to skin color, to slavery, and to the plantation world. With the objective of studying the reasons why certain strategies are chosen and how these contribute to rewriting the image of black slaves in the target culture, this dissertation follows a deductive approach.

Chapter 2 is the Theoretical Framework and it is divided into three sections that deal with the status quaestionis and serve as a starting point. Following a deductive approach, as said above, this second chapter begins with general considerations on

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Translation Studies as an academic discipline, and how these have been addressed by several scholars since the second half of the 20^th century. Section 2.2. approaches the specific research area of Literary Translation, taking into account issues such as translators’ voice in the target text, their role as both readers and rewriters, and the problematic notions of equivalence and intertextuality. It focuses on the rendering of novels and addresses, as well, the history, evolution, and current situation of literary translation in Spain’s context. The last section in the Theoretical Framework delves into how ideology influences the process of rendering a source text into a target language.

The third chapter is the Background and it comprises three sections, too, that address the genre to which the novels that make up the corpus belong. It includes an overview of the rise and development of African-American slave narratives in the 19^th century.

Next, it describes how these autobiographies evolved into neo-slave narratives in the second half of the 20^th century, in the aftermath of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. The following section revolves around the features of Black English, both morpho-syntactic and phonological, that these novels depict on the printed page.

Besides, it looks at how Black English has been represented in different literary works and at the presence of characteristic lexical elements in neo-slave narratives, namely the terms pertaining to the semantic fields of slaves’ skin color and Southern plantations.

The Background tackles the troublesome translation of literary dialects, surveying different strategies, recommendations by scholars, and paying close attention to publishers’ stance.

The Methodology explains how the corpus of novels and their respective Spanish versions have been compiled and accessed: Jubilee, by Margaret Walker; The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron; Roots, by Alex Haley; Flight to Canada, by Ishmael Reed; Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler; Beloved, by Toni Morrison; Middle Passage, by Charles Johnson; The Known World, by Edward P. Jones; A Mercy, by Toni Morrison, The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride; The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead; and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing. In addition, this chapter provides a model for the analysis of meaningful names, the features of Black English, and the strategies chosen to re-create this linguistic variety.

The analysis begins in chapter 5 and goes on up to 16, with a chapter for each of the twelve novels in the corpus. After a summary of the plot, the first section in each chapter looks at the particular context of publication, how it was received by the source culture, the awards it won, who published and who translated it into Spanish, the

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differences between the covers, and the reviews it got in the recipient context. The morpho-syntactic and phonological features of Black English are analyzed according to the considerations explained in subsection 3.2.1. and in the Methodology chapter.

Finally, it is observed how lexical features have been re-created in the target version, namely those belonging to slaves’ loaded names, the semantic field of skin color, and Southern plantations. The Discussion of Results compares and contrasts the results obtained from the analysis and offers a global view of the most predominant features of Black English depicted in neo-slave narratives, the principal strategies used to re-create them, the agreement on certain Spanish versions of lexical elements, and the tendency not to translate black characters’ meaningful proper nouns.

The conclusions prove that the main strategy for translating Black English is standardization. This predominance stresses the tendency to transfer any marked passage from the source text as unmarked excerpts, having uneducated slaves speak perfectly standard Spanish. On the other hand, there are instances of three alternative strategies that aim at re-creating literary dialect in the target versions: dialect compilation, pseudo-dialect translation, and compensation.

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Resumen

La traducción al español de las novelas de esclavitud afroamericanas: Variación lingüística e ideología

La motivación de esta tesis surge de combinar mis dos áreas de investigación académica: la traducción literaria y la literatura estadounidense. Dediqué mi trabajo de fin de máster a una propuesta de traducción para una novela de esclavitud, The Good Lord Bird, de James McBride. Traduje la novela completa al español, que publicó Hoja de Lata en septiembre de 2017 con el título El pájaro carpintero.

Esta tesis doctoral continúa con las líneas de investigación que inicié en el máster y se centra en estudiar un corpus formado por doce novelas de esclavitud afroamericanas y sus respectivas versiones españolas, con el propósito de examinar las estrategias traductoras que recrean las obras que dan voz al Otro desposeído, es decir, a los esclavos negros, y reflejan así una identidad racial característica. El objetivo de esta tesis es estudiar cómo se han traducido al castellano las novelas de esclavitud afroamericanas, para lo cual se centra en qué estrategias se utilizan para verter la variación lingüística y el dialecto de los esclavos, el Black English. Se contrastan, así, las novelas fuente y sus respectivas traducciones para observar las normas que rigen el proceso traductor, las expectativas de los lectores y los criterios editoriales. Se examinan las implicaciones ideológicas de las decisiones traductoras, además de cómo influyen en la recepción de este género concreto en España.

En el primer capítulo se formulan tres preguntas de investigación y, tras el análisis, las conclusiones intentan responderlas. En cualquier caso, esta tesis no es un estudio prescriptivista que pretenda determinar cómo se han de traducir al castellano las novelas de esclavitud afroamericanas. Por el contrario, se inscribe en los Estudios Descriptivos de Traducción y observa las decisiones traductoras adoptadas para trabajar con el dialecto literario, los nombres parlantes y los elementos léxicos relativos al color de la piel, la esclavitud y el mundo de las plantaciones. Con el objetivo de estudiar por qué se eligen ciertas estrategias y cómo estas contribuyen a reescribir la imagen de los esclavos negros en la cultura meta, esta tesis sigue un enfoque deductivo.

El capítulo 2 es el marco teórico y se divide en tres secciones que abordan el estado de la cuestión y sirven de punto de partida. El capítulo comienza con consideraciones generales sobre la disciplina académica de los Estudios de Traducción y cómo varios académicos los han abordado desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX. La sección 2.2. trata

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el área específica de la traducción literaria, en particular la voz de los traductores en el texto meta, su papel en calidad de lectores y reescritores y los complejos conceptos de equivalencia e intertextualidad. Se centra en la traducción de narrativa y también en la historia, evolución y situación actual de la traducción literaria en el contexto español. La última sección del marco teórico aborda cómo la ideología influye en el proceso de verter un texto a la lengua meta.

El tercer capítulo, el contexto, consta de tres secciones que se aproximan al género al que pertenecen las novelas del corpus. Incluye una cronología del auge y desarrollo de las narraciones de esclavos afroamericanas en el siglo XIX y describe cómo estas autobiografías evolucionan a las novelas de esclavitud en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, después del Black Power y el movimiento por los derechos civiles. Se describen los rasgos del Black English, tanto morfosintácticos como fonológicos, que se retratan en las páginas de estas novelas. Además, se estudia cómo han representado este dialecto diferentes obras literarias, así como la presencia de los elementos léxicos característicos de las novelas de esclavitud, es decir, los términos relativos a los campos semánticos del color de la piel y las plantaciones sureñas. El contexto también aborda la casuística de la traducción de dialectos literarios y recoge diferentes estrategias y recomendaciones, prestando especial atención a la postura de los editores.

La metodología explica cómo se ha compilado y accedido al corpus de novelas y sus respectivas versiones españolas: Jubileo, de Margaret Walker; Las confesiones de Nat Turner, de William Styron; Raíces, de Alex Haley; Vuelo a Canadá, de Ishmael Reed;

Parentesco, de Octavia E. Butler, Beloved, de Toni Morrison; La trata, de Charles Johnson; El mundo conocido, de Edward P. Jones; Una bendición, de Toni Morrison;

El pájaro carpintero, de James McBride; El ferrocarril subterráneo, de Colson Whitehead; y Volver a casa, de Yaa Gyasi. Este capítulo ofrece un modelo para el análisis de los nombres parlantes, los rasgos del Black English y las estrategias para recrear esta variedad lingüística.

El análisis comprende los capítulos 5 al 16 inclusive, con un capítulo destinado a cada una de las doce novelas que comprenden el corpus. Tras un resumen del argumento, la primera sección estudia el contexto de la publicación de la novela original, su recepción en la cultura fuente, los galardones recibidos, quién la publicó y tradujo al castellano, las diferentes cubiertas y las reseñas que cosechó en la cultura receptora. Los rasgos morfosintácticos y fonológicos del Black English se analizan según las consideraciones expuestas en la subsección 3.2.1. y en el capítulo de

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metodología. Se observa cómo se han recreado los elementos léxicos en el texto meta, en concreto los relativos a los nombres parlantes de los esclavos y los campos semánticos del color de la piel y de las plantaciones sureñas. La discusión de los resultados compara y contrasta lo obtenido del análisis y proporciona una visión de conjunto de los rasgos más predominantes del Black English que retratan las novelas, de las principales estrategias para recrearlos, de las coincidencias en las versiones españolas de los elementos léxicos y de la tendencia a no traducir los nombres parlantes de los esclavos.

Las conclusiones muestran, por último, que la principal estrategia para traducir el Black English es la estandarización, subrayando la tendencia a transferir cualquier fragmento marcado por el dialecto en el texto fuente en otro sin marca alguna en el texto meta, de modo que los esclavos analfabetos hablan un castellano perfectamente estándar. Por otra parte, hay tres estrategias alternativas que intentan recrear el dialecto literario en las versiones meta: la compilación dialectal, la traducción pseudodialectal y la compensación.

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1. Introduction 1.1. Motivation

One of my main areas of academic research is the study of American Literature. I dealt with this field in my final paper for my degree in English Studies at Complutense University (2013), entitled Selling a Dream: Flaws of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman, which was about how the American Dream drives characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman; and in the course on Contemporary American Literature I took at Loyola University Chicago (2013). Next, during my stay in the United States as a language and teaching assistant (2013-2014), I lived in a small town in Iowa called West Liberty. There, I got in touch with the story of abolitionist John Brown, since the town was featured in a historical trail that commemorated Brown’s Iowa trip in 1859, before he traveled to Harpers Ferry to raid its federal armory. I also watched the National Book Awards ceremony in November 2013 and was surprised by the success of its winner in the fiction category, The Good Lord Bird. This novel by James McBride is about John Brown’s abolitionist crusade in the 1850s and belongs to the genre known as neo-slave narratives, a recreation of 19^th century African-American slaves’ testimonies and autobiographies from a contemporary and postmodern point of view.

When I returned to Spain and realized The Good Lord Bird had not been rendered into Spanish, I decided to focus my Master’s dissertation, entitled The Good Lord Bird:

Traducción al español y dialectología (Sanz Jiménez 2015), on developing a partial translation proposal for this novel while considering the particularities of slave narratives that may be a challenge for literary translators, such as cultural and historical references, racial identities, and, specifically, slaves’ dialects. Besides, after a long process of sending proposals to many publishing houses, I ended up translating the whole novel into Spanish, which was published in September 2017 by Hoja de Lata. It was eventually titled El pájaro carpintero and it was the first book I ever translated professionally.

In the meantime, following the research lines opened up by my Master’s on Literary Translation (2014-2015), I decided to pursue a PhD in English Linguistics at Complutense University and continue studying the process of literary translation as well as the relation between literature written in English and its translations into Spanish.

Precisely, this PhD dissertation focuses on translating novels through a study corpus 9

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made up of a series of African-American neo-slave narratives and their respective versions into Spanish. This will make it possible to observe translators’ strategies when re-creating, in the target culture, novels that give voice to black slaves —the dispossessed Other— and thus portray a characteristic racial identity.

The following subsection narrows down the scope of this dissertation, formulates the research questions to be addressed, and explains what novels make up the corpus of African-American neo-slave narratives under study.

1.2. Aim and Research Questions

The aim of this PhD dissertation is to study how African-American neo-slave narratives have been translated into Spanish, especially in terms of the strategies used to transfer linguistic variation, particularly slaves’ use of Black English. Therefore, by comparing and contrasting the source texts and their respective translations into Spanish, some light will be shed on the status of each text in its corresponding polysystem, the norms that control the translation process, readers’ expectations, editors’ selection criteria, and how one culture builds up another’s image through translation. What is more, the choice of certain translation strategies transforms and ideologizes makes slaves’ identities according to the target culture’s norms (Määttä 2004: 334-335). Rewriting a source text that gives voice to the dispossessed Other is a special challenge, since this voice is re-coded and rewritten in the target culture and, at the same time, translators’ own identities are reflected within the ideology of the ruling commercial interests (Braga Riera 2011: 67). After determining which strategies have been used to translate neo-slave narratives into Spanish, the ideological implications of translator’s choices will be cross-examined, as well as their role in the cultural construction of slaves and in the reception of this particular genre in Spanish.

As a starting point, the research questions this dissertation will try to answer are the following ones. They will help to narrow down the scope of this study as the research moves forward:

1. What African-American neo-slave narratives have been translated into Spanish?

Why have these particular novels been translated into Spanish?

2. What strategies have been used to render slaves’ use of Black English? Are there any predominant strategies when dealing with this issue?

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3. What are the ideological implications of using these translation strategies in the target language?

With these three research questions in mind, this dissertation does not intend to become a prescriptivist study and determine how African-American neo-slave narratives should be translated into Spanish and which strategies must be used to this aim. Instead, it goes in line with current Descriptive Translation Studies and tries to examine translators’ choices when dealing with the particular difficulties this literary sub-genre presents. By analyzing a corpus of contemporary African-American slave narratives and their translations into Spanish, this study will illustrate the reasons why certain strategies were chosen and how they contribute to rewriting a specific image of black slaves in the target culture. The corpus is made up of twelve novels and their correspondent Spanish translations: Jubilee, by Margaret Walker (1966); The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron (1967); Roots, by Alex Haley (1976);

Flight to Canada, by Ishmael Reed (1976); Kindred, by Octavia Butler (1979); Beloved, by Toni Morrison (1987); Middle Passage, by Charles Johnson (1991); The Known World, by Edward P. Jones (2003); A Mercy, by Toni Morrison (2008); The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride (2013); The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead (2016); and Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi (2016).

This dissertation will follow a deductive approach, starting with general considerations on Translation Studies and moving towards the analysis of the rendering of Black English in each of the neo-slave narratives under study. The first section, the Theoretical Framework, is sub-divided into several sections dealing with the state of the question in different fields that serve as a starting point for this study. Thus, some general considerations on Translation Studies, on translating narrative texts from English into Spanish, and on the situation of literary translation in Spain lead to the issue of ideology in literary translation and how scholars have tackled it in the last decades. Next, the Background begins with an overview of the rise and development of African-American slave narratives, how they have evolved into neo-slave narratives in the second half of the 20^th century until present day, and what features of Black English they manage to portray on the printed page to reflect slaves’ speech. The last section in the Background deals with the issue of translating literary dialect, different strategies, translation scholars’ views, and publishers’ preferences for dealing with this matter.

Then, the Methodology explains the criteria followed to build up the corpus of novels under study and their respective translations into Spanish and how they were

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accessed at different libraries. Eventually, this chapter offers a model to analyze the features of Black English and the strategies used to convey them into Spanish in each of the books under study. This is followed by the analysis as such, with a chapter devoted to each of the twelve novels that make up the corpus. After considering the relevance and context of these works of fiction, the analysis focuses on how the features of Black English —previously studied in the Background— have been rendered into the Spanish target texts. For this purpose, source and target texts will be contrasted following the model explained in the Methodology chapter. Once the analysis has been carried out, the Discussion of Results and the Conclusions will try to provide an answer to the research questions. Lastly, the dissertation closes with a list of references, both primary and secondary sources, and with an appendix that includes the charts with the fragments selected from the source texts and their corresponding Spanish versions.

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2. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework of this dissertation provides an overview of the previous scholarly contributions on Literary Translation and Ideology which serve as a basis for this study. Following a deductive approach, this chapter starts from general considerations on Translation Studies as a discipline, how they have been approached since the second half of the 20^th century up to the present day. Next, it will move on to the specific research field of Literary Translation, focusing on the rendering of narrative texts, on the Spanish context, and on how ideology impinges the whole process of re- creating a source text in the target culture. The third chapter, the Background, complements this theoretical framework as it centers on the evolution of African- American Slave Narratives as a literary genre, and on how they depict Black English, which poses quite a challenge for literary translators. The strategies for dealing with such a linguistic variety are addressed in section 3.3., paying special attention to how the issue of rendering African-American Vernacular English into Spanish has been addressed by several publishers in Spain.

2.1. Translation Studies

This section provides an overview of the development of Translation Studies as an academic discipline in the second half of the 20^th century, the initial issues it addressed, and how the contributions made by different approaches shaped this area of research in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries.

2.1.1. General considerations on Translation Studies

Translation Studies, as a discipline, may have originated thanks to early issues of Bible translation and travel literature, and then they were part of the academic fields of Comparative Literature and Contrastive Linguistics. They have developed considerably in the last decades, particularly from the eighties onwards due to the so-called “cultural turn” (Bassnett and Lefevere 1995: 1-13), which focuses on the study of literary translations (Zaro 2001: 72-73). As a discipline, it is interested in the process by which source culture’s texts are transferred to a different one, known as target culture, as well as the implications this cultural shift may have (Bassnett 2002: 12). Thus, as Bassnett

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states, translation plays a key role in the formation of literary polysystems, since translators take an active part in rewriting source language’s texts and negotiating their new meaning in the target culture. This section will provide an overview of the contributions of several academics to the development of Translation Studies as a discipline and, eventually, this will lead to a survey of the different branches into which this field has been subdivided.

One of the key contributions that may serve as a starting point in a reflection on Translation Studies is Walter Benjamin’s classic essay “The Task of the Translator”. It is a big core text, quite possibly one of the most widely cited 20^th-century philosophical statements on translation and, since its publication, it has generated more debate than any other piece of criticism. In it, Benjamin wonders for whom we translate if not for the reader, and he emphasizes that translators should find, in the target language, an intention that can awaken an echo of the original text (2017: 19). He goes on to add that translation should not hide the source text, but rather be transparent and let it be seen (2017: 24), and this philosopher concludes his essay by stating that it is translators’ task to free the pure language present in the original and re-create it in the target text. When talking about this “pure language”, Benjamin implies that all languages strive for some universal language that talks about the human condition, and it is this language the one translators should aim for in their work.

In the mid-20^th century, linguist Roman Jakobson elaborated a category of three types of translation: translation within the same language or rewording (intralinguistic), translation from one language to another one or translation as such (interlinguistic), and intersemitoic translation or transmutation, which takes place when verbal signs are interpreted as non-verbal signs (1996: 495). Elaborating on the second kind, what is commonly referred to as “translation”, Jakobson explains that, when recoding a message, translators try to provide a second message that is equivalent to the one they received (1996: 496). The concept of equivalence introduced here, though useful in the early stages of Translation Studies, has shown to be quite troublesome when it comes to literary translation, as will be explained in section 2.2.1. Precisely, the emerging discipline was named Translation Studies by Holmes, who separated it from the adjacent fields of linguistics, linguistic philosophy, and comparative literature and established its two main objectives (2000: 76): “to describe the phenomena of translating and translations as they manifest themselves in the world of our experience and to establish general principles by means of which these phenomena can be

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explained and predicted”. Even though translations had been previously used for teaching foreign languages, Holmes advocated for a translation policy that can define

“the place and role of translators, translating, and translations in society at large, determining what works need to be translated in a given socio-cultural situation” (2000:

82).

At this point it would be interesting to consider Steiner’s wider view of translation.

In his book After Babel, he considers that “inside or between languages, human communication equals translation” (1992: 49) and defines the translator as “a bilingual mediating agent between monolingual communication participants in two different language communities” (1992: 75). Since meaning is rarely neutral or static in an unambiguous setting, Steiner explains that translators’ craft is uncertain by nature and

“in a very specific way, the translator ‘re-experiences’ the evolution of language itself, the ambivalence of the relations between language and world, between ‘languages’ and

‘worlds’” (1992: 246). Going back to Benjamin’s notion of pure language, he considers how hard it must be to reach that universal language, which leads him to reflect on the impossibility of translation, despite actually being an everyday act, and resolves that:

We do speak of the world and to one another. We do translate intra- and interlingually and have done so since the beginning of human history. The defense of translation has the immense advantage of abundant, vulgar fact […] Somehow the “impossible” is overcome at every moment in human affairs. (1996: 264)

Dealing with the problem of Babel, that of the act of translation, Steiner applies poetics, literary criticism, and history to aspects of human language. In the afterword to this book, on a poetical note, he concludes that “every language offers its own reading of life. To move between languages, to translate, even within restrictions of totality, is to experience the almost bewildering bias of the human spirit towards freedom” (1992:

498). Besides, the problem of the impossibility¹ of translation is also pondered by Ricoeur, who states that as translation takes place every day, it is necessary that translation is actually possible (2005: 38).

Once Steiner’s contribution to Translation Studies has been taken into account, it is necessary to observe how this discipline has become more and more concerned with

1 Delving into the issue of the impossibility of translation lies beyond the scope of this research. Apart from Ricoeur, it has been thoroughly addressed by several scholars, namely in the works by Paz (1971), López García (1991), and Eco (2014).

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issues such as the selection of texts to be translated, the roles played by translators, publishers, and patrons in this text selection, the criteria that influence the strategies followed by translators, and the reception of translated texts in the target culture.

Summing up, Translation Studies were starting to pay attention to “a set of power relations that exist in both the source and target contexts” (Bassnett and Lefevere 1998:

137), since, as Toury states (2003: 405), “translation is norm-governed by its very nature: it is subject to directives which draw from cultural agreements and conventions”

(For more on the issue of norms and translation, see section 2.3. below). It is within this cultural turn in Translation Studies that translation is understood as an interpretive and communicative process and not only as conveying the same message from one language into another, especially in the case of literary texts, which are bound to a specific target culture and literary tradition (Hurtado Albir 2001: 63).

Adding to this view of translation, Eco (2014: 14) understands translation as negotiation and, as it tends to happen when reaching an agreement, there is something that both parties miss in the final product. This Italian linguist also agrees that translation does not only have to do with two languages, but cultures, so translators should not just rely on strictly linguistic strategies. Plus, a translation can be regarded as a critical reading of the source text because it reflects translators’ interpretation of the original, and the notion of fidelity is not a criterion that guarantees only one acceptable target text, but rather a tendency to believe that translation is always possible if the source text has been rigorously interpreted and its meaning has been negotiated (2014:

472).

2.1.2. Approaches to Translation Studies

In their respective books, Gentzler (2001) and Moya (2016) provide a comprehensive overview of the growth of Translation Studies from the early stages to the recent proliferation of theories and approaches. One of the first attempts to systematize Translation Studies, still within the field of Applied Linguistics, is the linguistic theory of translation developed by scholars such as Vinay and Darbelnet (1958) and Catford (1965), who state that the same source text can be the origin of two or more target texts, which would be correct since they may be intended for different readerships and thus pursue different functions (Moya 2016: 32). The scholars who advocate for this early linguistic theory of translation also share the view of translation as a complex

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intercultural communication act. The next approach to translation that both Gentzler and Moya point out in their overviews is Nida’s dynamic equivalence, which was first presented in his Toward a Science of Translating in 1964. Focusing on Bible translation and applying generative grammar, Nida puts away the debate over free versus literal translation and emphasizes what the original text says, its content, and leaves aside its form by stressing the importance of dynamic equivalence, which is achieved when the receivers of the message in the target language react to it practically as the recipients in the source language did in the first place (Nida in Moya 2016: 62). Although quite ground-breaking at the time it first came out, the principle of dynamic equivalence has been proven outdated in Translation Studies because stating that a translation has to produce the same effect in the target readers as the one the source text had in its original readers would be to assume that there are some constant and ahistorical thoughts and feelings about a specific text, leaving aside its particular context and contingency.

Another problem with this “science” of translation is that it is primarily aimed at teaching and evaluating translation, so it cannot escape from its prescriptivism (Gentzler 2001: 75).

In the late seventies, the interpretive theory focused on the acceptability of the translated text in the target culture and divided the process of translation in three stages:

understanding the source text, de-verbalizing it, and finally reformulating it in the target language, or, as Katan puts it, “decoding the source text language, analyzing it, and then reformulating the same message in other words” (1999: 123). The notion of fidelity was also emphasized since, according to this school, translators should be faithful to what the original author wanted to say, to the target language, and to the recipients of the target text. However, the notion of fidelity proved to be problematic and this school was more concerned with what translation should be, leaving aside the study of translated texts (Moya 2016: 84). In the meantime, German scholars such as Reiss and Vermeer (1978) worked on the “Skopos” theory, which stated that acts of translation are governed by the function the target culture assigns the target text, which can be different from the source text’s function. Translation activity always results from a specific commission, so there is someone who tells the translator what text to translate and what the intention, aim, and purpose of this activity are (Vidal Claramonte 1995: 22). It is this function what determines the strategies translators may choose, so the source text loses its authority in contrast with previous approaches. Christiane Nord summarizes the skopos theory as “the end justifies the means” (Nord in Gentzler 2001: 70), and she

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holds the hypothesis that a text is produced for a specific communicative end, or for a hierarchy of several communicative ends that translators should ponder and take into account (Nord 1998: 69).

In 1985, with the publication of the volume The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation, edited by Theo Hermans, Amsterdam’s scholars working on what is usually known as “the Manipulation School” came together with Tel Aviv’s academics and their polysystem theory, a term used to refer to the whole network of interrelated literary and extra-literary systems within a given culture (Gentzler 2001:

114). In this ground-breaking approach to Translation Studies, extra-textual and intercultural features are taken into consideration, thus overcoming the limitations of a simply linguistic methodology; descriptivism was the method to observe translated texts, describe and explain them, and, if possible, work out the norms that govern translators’ choices. Thus, the emphasis is placed upon the target culture and its literary polysystem, the field of study is narrowed down to describing real translated texts, and these scholars realize that the same source text can have as many translations as there are translators, not better or worse, but different; and that translation is contingent and culturally bound (Moya 2016: 140). Instead of further speculating about functions and dynamic equivalences, they decided to look at “real texts in the target culture that are called translations by specific cultural groups, and begin their analysis from there”

(Gentzler 2001: 76). Besides, since translation can be seen as a form of rewriting (Lefevere 1996: 138), it implies certain manipulation of the original text according to the ideology and poetics of the translator and of those who establish the norms that govern this cultural process and determine what is acceptable in the target culture. This ideology may be willingly assumed by translators or it may be imposed by what Lefevere calls “patronage” (1997: 29), those institutions and people who control the writing, rewriting, and reading of literary works in the target polysystem. Thus, the translation process could only be comprehended if translated texts are analyzed within their own cultural and linguistic context (Gentzler 2001: 126) and translators could be able to reflect on the norms that have conditioned the production of a specific text and meaning in the target language.

The research on translation initiated by these scholars was continued, after the cultural turn in the early 1990s, by academics such as Bassnett and Lefevere, who worked on the unfixed meaning of the source text and the relevance of the context in which the translation process takes place. The findings of the polysystem theory, norms,

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and the Manipulation School will be further discussed in section 2.3., dealing with issues of ideology in literary translation.

Paradoxically, not much attention had been paid to Translation Studies in the United States’ academia. Ezra Pound’s view of translation emphasized rendering details, fragmented images, and even individual words, and the first workshop on literary translation opened in 1964 as part of the University of Iowa’s Creative Writing Program (Gentzler 2001: 5). It was Lawrence Venuti who, in his 1995 book The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, pointed out that American scholars usually ignore translators’ choices and mediations, and instead talk about foreign texts as if they could read them in the source language. He says that translation is an invisible activity in the United States, that translators are “self-effacing in their work” (Gentzler 2001: 37) and hide their voice in favor of the author’s and the style that sells best in the target culture.

Venuti argues against the myth of translators’ invisibility and tries to make their contributions more salient by showing how they take an active role in participating in the target culture.

Even though this dissertation will not be following its principles, the contributions of Deconstruction to the field of Translation Studies should be taken into account in this overview. Based on Derrida and post-structuralism, this approach asserts that there is no such text as the original or the source, because every text calls back to a previous one, emphasizing the idea of the palimpsest. In other words, Deconstruction questions that there is a fixed meaning that can be transferred from the source text to a different system of signification, and, thus, demonstrates the instability of Translation Studies’

theoretical framework (Gentzler 2001: 147). The concept of equivalence is finally put away, and hierarchies and binary opposition between source and target are forgotten (Vidal Claramonte 1995: 89). The notion of authorship is undermined and translation is seen as a constant process of rewriting, of transforming and modifying a text and incorporating it to a new literature, which is enriched and even polluted by that translation’s achievements (Moya 2016: 185). There is no possibility of grasping what the source text meant, there is no pure meaning to be conveyed in translation.

In connection with Deconstruction, postcolonial translation scholars try not to use translation as a tool that supports and extends images based on Western philosophy and religion. Instead, they use translation as a strategy of resistance that distrusts the traditional images of non-Western cultures (Gentzler 2001: 176). For colonialism, translation worked as a powerful tool to impose certain ideologies on the colonized, but

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postcolonial academics subvert this use of translation (Carbonell i Cortés 1999: 238).

Translation used to be a central tool for colonial encounters, with European languages perceived as superior to set the supremacy of these cultures over the colonized, yet now it can be used to “bring readers face to face with the reality of difference and call into question the supremacy of the standard language” (Bassnett and Trivedi 1999: 14). Two of the most-renowned scholars working on this approach are Niranjana and Spivak. The latter, in her essay “Can the subaltern speak?”, wonders if the dispossessed can speak for themselves given the processes of colonization they have undergone, and points out how the colonial subject has been persistently built, through translation, as the Other, the self’s shadow, concluding that it does not have a voice of its own (Spivak 1994: 75- 76). In addition, Martín Ruano has followed this postcolonial approach and researched the selection criteria that allow certain texts to access the target culture, readjusting to its norms to offer a specific image of the Otherness that is associated to a given foreign collective (2013: 63).

Lastly, the Feminist approach to translation should be considered as well. Taking as a starting point Barthes’s death of the author (1967: n.p.), it assumes that every reading implies appropriating the text, so scholars working on this approach advocate for leaving aside the much-discussed translator’s invisibility in order to reclaim the work of women translators who had previously been cast to the shadows (Moya 2016: 205).

This revisionist approach aims at recovering the works by marginalized women and it also stands as a manifestation of women’s rebellion against male hierarchies, which can be seen, in the context of Translation Studies, as the target text rebelling against the imposed authority of the source text (Moya 2016: 229). Since language reflects reality and influences it, this revisionist approach tries to call into question sexism by challenging the use of language and the ideologies introduced by male translators who rendered and refracted texts originally written by women.

New methods keep shedding light in the field of Translation Studies, like those that look at sociological questions —including literary dialect— and study the links between use of language, social roles, and ideology. As Braga Riera (2012: 11) observes,

“strictly linguistic approaches should go hand in hand with other equally valid ones, in such a way that diverse lines of study can complement each other”. Concerning literary translation, there is still much to be said on how foreign texts have been rendered in the target language, have influenced the course of the recipient literature, and have altered the place given to the dispossessed Other.

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2.2. Literary Translation from English into Spanish: Narrative texts

After surveying different approaches to Translation Studies, this section centers on the field of Literary Translation and considers issues such as translators’ voice in the target text, their position as both readers and rewriters, and the troublesome concepts of equivalence and intertextuality. It also provides an overview of the situation of literary translation in Spain, emphasizing the role it plays in the publishing business.

Specifically, this section focuses on the translation of narrative texts, the genre to which neo-slave narratives belong. Hence, it leaves aside drama and poetry translation: given the characteristics of these two literary genres, the study of their translation into Spanish falls beyond the scope of this dissertation.

2.2.1. General considerations on Literary Translation: Narrative texts

According to Octavio Paz (1971: 3-6), translation is a literary procedure and implies altering the original text. Since each language conveys a certain worldview, Paz suggests that translation tries to find a common ground between source and target languages and stresses the role it plays in the circulation of literature. Returning to this assertion, López García observes that an ideal, perfect translation of a literary text does not exist because the mere existence of different languages makes it impossible; if such a translation were possible, there would not be different languages (1991: 15). Talking about literary translation, this scholar quotes the comparison provided in Cervantes’s Don Quixote, how reading a translated literary text is like looking at the reverse side of a tapestry and seeing all the threads that obscure the picture. Besides, he ponders Schleiermacher’s dichotomy (1991: 56), which may be summarized like this: a translation of a literary text can either stick to the source and alter the target language or adapt to the conventions of the target language and try to convey what the source text said differently. After these observations, López García concludes that translations are inevitably linked to how literature is regarded at the moment when the translating process takes place and, therefore, this context should be taken into account when analyzing these target texts (1991: 96). Plus, readers do not usually have the source text by their side, so the translation is commonly read as if it had been written initially in the target language, i.e., the translation is the literary text for the reader.

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When studying the development of national literatures, literary translation plays a key role because the study of how certain authors, works, or even foreign literatures were received in a target culture at a specific moment in time is strongly linked to the role literary translation plays in such culture and the norms that govern it (Gallego Roca 1994: 54). This implies that studying literary translations is an essential tool for observing the dominant poetics of a certain literary polysystem, since, as stated by Carbonell i Cortés (2004: 23), translators try to follow the stylistic conventions of the target culture to produce an attractive and readable text, one that allows readers to connect with the Other’s voice and travel across a different world.

Concerning the task literary translators perform, Connolly suggests they should be critical when reading foreign literary texts to appreciate which ones could be interesting for the target readership and what strategies could be used to render them in the target language (2004: 72). Literary translators should have a deep understanding of the source literary tradition and, ideally, they should gather features that are commonly ascribed to linguists, literary critics, and creative writers, too. Sáenz takes this assertion one step further and states that a literary translator should be a writer in the target language, and that there is not such a thing as translator’s invisibility, it is a widespread myth since rendering a text from a source language inevitably implies manipulating it and reflecting translators’ personality, whether they want to or not (Sáenz 1997: 406-409). Thus, Sáenz contradicts what other scholars have observed about literary translators’ voice, for instance, Hermans states that it “may remain entirely hidden behind that of the Narrator, rendering it impossible to detect in the translated text” (1996b: 27), with the exception of paratextual elements like translators’ footnotes. This issue is also studied by Baker, who admits that “somewhere along the line each translator must be leaving a personal imprint on the new text” (2000: 262). This scholar ponders that this imprint, the style of literary translators, concerns the material they choose to translate, and their use of certain strategies such as footnotes or prefaces. In addition, she wonders if these preferences depend on the style of the source author and whether the target norms condition these choices.

Despite the discrepancy surrounding translators’ voice in literary translation, most scholars agree on the privileged position on which translators stand, since they operate between the codes of source and target cultures and are able to “make communication between the author and the reader of a literary work possible” (Jordan Núñez 2012: 30).

However, Venuti warns that a translated literary text will be unable to provide target 22

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readers with an experience that “closely approximates the one that a reader with source- language proficiency can have with the source text” (2013: 113), mainly due to the fact that what translators communicate is their own interpretation, their own reading of the source text, and thus mediate between this original text and its readers in the target culture, i.e., translators re-contextualize the literary text. This re-contextualization involves a decision-making process, and each of these choices concerning the target text implies a negotiation between what the possibilities of the source text are and what the patrons, such as publishers, think that will adjust best to readers’ expectations (Franco Aixelá and Albio Villarig 2009: 3). This consideration will be further explored in section 2.3., which will offer some insight into the research in ideology and literary translation and how “ideological and ethical choices characterize translating”

(Tymoczko 2014: 24).

Before concluding these general considerations on literary translation, there are two troublesome issues that have been researched by several translation scholars and that should be taken into account in this dissertation: the notions of equivalence and intertextuality. Firstly, the concept of equivalence has been problematic for most of the approaches described in section 2.1.2. and each of them has tried to explain it from different perspectives. Nevertheless, it seems that the question of whether it is possible that a source and a target text are equivalent is far from over. For example, Vidal Claramonte (1995: 32) suggests that equivalence may be shifting throughout a text and there may be equivalent words, then sentences, and then words again, rather than having full equivalence between source and target texts. She also follows Newmark’s remarks and concludes that the debate over equivalence in literary translation may be too theoretical or arbitrary, yet, in a later paper, Ponce Márquez (2008: n.p.) returns to this controversial issue and declares that a translated text is equivalent to the source when the target text has the same value as the source had in its culture. It is rather dubious what she means by “value” and how it can be appreciated, despite the fact that she resorts to Nida’s dynamic equivalence and to the Skopos theory to try to determine when a translated text is equivalent to its source. Hatim and Mason (1997a: 8) concede there is quite a problem with the use of this term in Translation Studies and that they employ it in a relative sense to refer to “the closest possible approximation to Source Text meaning”. Baker admits she uses the concept of equivalence “for the sake of convenience, because most translators are used to it rather than because it has any theoretical status” (1992: 5-6), an assertion that leads Kenny (2009: 96) to conclude

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