
Let’s take, as a sample, the first sentence of chapter IV of the first part of Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. This great and classic novel was written and published in the early 1600s in Spanish. Part I was published first. Ten years later, part II was published. The two parts are now together known as Don Quixote and most often sold together as one book. Don Quixote has been translated from Spanish into English numerous times over the centuries.
(I obtained this original Spanish sentence from the Project Gutenberg.)
Original Spanish:
La del alba sería cuando don Quijote salió de la venta, tan contento, tan gallardo, tan alborozado por verse ya armado caballero, que el gozo le reventaba por las cinchas del caballo.
I took five years of middle/high school Spanish and can identify the little words. I recognize, for example, “the,” “from/of,” “already,” “that,” and “when.” I also think I see a word that means something like “will be” or “would be” or “would have been.” The word “contento” is suspiciously similar to the English word “content.” I see Don Quixote in there, spelled slightly differently than what I’m used to. And, oh! I see the word “horse.” Alright, so this sentence is saying something about Don Quixote and a horse, and maybe one of them, or something else, is or was or might be content!
Obviously, this is not getting me very far. I need the help of a translator.
Google Translate
Let’s enter the sentence into Google Translate and see what pops out!
Original Spanish:
La del alba sería cuando don Quijote salió de la venta, tan contento, tan gallardo, tan alborozado por verse ya armado caballero, que el gozo le reventaba por las cinchas del caballo.
Google Translate:
Dawn would be when Don Quixote left the inn, so happy, so gallant, so overjoyed to see himself already knighted, that joy burst from the horse’s girths.
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Awesome. Sometimes Google Translate shoots out gibberish, but this is quite sensical. I can also see it matching up to the Spanish words I had identified, so I can see that the translation is literal, . . . as would be expected from a good, obedient robot like Google Translate.
I can also see, or at least suspect, that there is an artistry to Cervantes’s use of language in this sentence. I like the way the sentence begins with “Dawn” and goes on to describe Don Quixote’s joy. Right from the beginning of the sentence, we are sensing that joy, since the rising of the sun is associated with new beginnings and happiness.
I can also see that there is something very artful about Cervantes describing Don Quixote’s joy in such a way that it actually exceeds the bounds of his own body. His joy is so great that it is transferred to the horse’s girths. That’s a cool and very apt way to describe joy, for when you are experiencing joy, it does indeed seem to extend beyond the bounds of your own body! And indeed, it seems to me that the experience of joy could be transmitted to a nearby animal, especially one you happen to be hugging with your legs.
However. Our dear, obedient robot has created a sentence that is perhaps less elegant than the original. It’s hard for me to judge, not being much acquainted with Spanish, especially not early-17th-century Spanish. But I’m guessing that the original version sounds less clunky than the English clause “Dawn would be when.” A human translator is needed to convey not just the literal meaning, but also the feel of the sentence. No easy feat—but necessary if the work’s nuances and charm are to be understood and appreciated by a non-Spanish speaker.
The Bargain-Bin Translation, AKA “Avoid Like the Plague”
Here’s how the sentence appears in the book that I obtained from a bargain bin and read in my 30s. (See my previous post for the backstory on this mistake.)
Original Spanish:
La del alba sería cuando don Quijote salió de la venta, tan contento, tan gallardo, tan alborozado por verse ya armado caballero, que el gozo le reventaba por las cinchas del caballo.
Google Translate:
Dawn would be when Don Quixote left the inn, so happy, so gallant, so overjoyed to see himself already knighted, that joy burst from the horse’s girths.
Bargain-Bin Translation, AKA “Avoid Like the Plague”:
Aurora began to usher in the morn, when Don Quixote sallied out of the inn, so well pleased, so gay, and so overjoyed to find himself knighted, that he infused the same satisfaction into his horse, who seemed ready to burst his girths for joy.
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Okay. There are some VERY BIG problems here. This is a mess. This is an actual travesty. Let me count the ways.
- Right off the bat, I see that this translation is significantly longer than both the original version and the Google Translate version. I suspect that the translator has inserted something extra into this sentence. The translator’s job is to convey the sentence as accurately as possible, and to insert extra stuff is an egregious problem.
- “Aurora began to usher in the morn” sounds pretentious. Are we in a bad romance, or are we in one of the greatest works of literature ever written?
- The original Spanish used only one word for “dawn”: the word “alba.” Why, then, did the translator use two words for “dawn,” “Aurora” and “morn”?
- The translator introduced a verb (an action) not in the original: the action of a god (Aurora) who “began to usher.” There was no god, or action of a god, in the original.
- It’s not advisable to use the word “gay” in a modern translation to mean “happy.” Many decades ago, “gay” meant “happy”; but nowadays this is not its primary meaning, and using it in this way makes the passage sound antiquated and awkward.
- The entire clause “that he infused the same satisfaction into his horse” is not in the original. The original implied that this might or might not have been the case: it was ambiguous. The playfully artful nuance of the original is gone here, to be replaced by a clunky fact, decided arbitrarily by the translator.
- The last clause, “who seemed ready to burst his girths for joy” has the same problem of removing the ambiguity of the original.
- The original uses one word for joy, “gozo,” but the translator uses two words, “satisfaction” and “joy,” which is unnecessary and inaccurate.
- The overall vibe of the sentence is sentimental, wordy, and out of date. It’s as if the translator went to the opposite extreme of the Google Translate version (which was too robotic) and infused the sentence with an excess of misplaced emotion.
The Edith Grossman Translation, AKA the Recommended Edition
Let’s see what Edith Grossman did with this sentence. Wow, the work of a translator must be so difficult! ¡Tan difícil!
Original Spanish:
La del alba sería cuando don Quijote salió de la venta, tan contento, tan gallardo, tan alborozado por verse ya armado caballero, que el gozo le reventaba por las cinchas del caballo.
Google Translate:
Dawn would be when Don Quixote left the inn, so happy, so gallant, so overjoyed to see himself already knighted, that joy burst from the horse’s girths.
Bargain-Bin Translation, AKA “Avoid Like the Plague”:
Aurora began to usher in the morn, when Don Quixote sallied out of the inn, so well pleased, so gay, and so overjoyed to find himself knighted, that he infused the same satisfaction into his horse, who seemed ready to burst his girths for joy.
Edith Grossman Translation:
It must have been dawn when Don Quixote left the inn so contented, so high-spirited, so jubilant at having been dubbed a knight that his joy almost burst the cinches of his horse.
This seems pretty great to me. It adheres very closely to the original. Where it differs from Google Translate, the effect is only to make the sentence sound more natural and less robotic.
- “It must have been dawn when” is so much less awkward (to my English-speaking ears) than “Dawn would be when.”
- “at having been dubbed a knight” is so much less awkward (to my English-speaking ears) than “to see himself already knighted.”
- The sentence ends with the word “horse,” as it does in the original Spanish (“caballo”). This gives the sentence a solid-sounding conclusion, as in the original, and unlike in either of the other translations.
- The sentence retains the nuance and artistry of the original Spanish. For one thing, the beginning of the sentence still focuses on dawn, as in the original.
- For another thing, it’s ambiguous, as in the original, whether Don Quixote’s joy only seems to be moving out of the emotional world and into the physical world, or whether there is actually something physical going on with the cinches of the horse.
- The overall vibe of the sentence is storytelling that flows well and sounds natural and unobtrusive, and that retains as much of the literal original sentence as possible.
Final Thoughts on the Three Don Quixote Translations
It’s amazing what different experiences I had from reading two different Don Quixote translations. I remember, while reading the bargain-bin translation, that there were large chunks of the story that didn’t make a lot of sense. And I remember there being basically only one joke, repeated over and over again.
But when I read the Grossman version, almost all of the scenes made perfect sense. In instances where they didn’t quite make sense, Grossman made sure to include an explanatory footnote to clear things up, . . . or at least explain that the reader is not alone in their confusion at that part. I was also astonished at the richness of nuance and language and wit that leaped out at me in the Grossman version. How could I have possibly thought there was only one type of joke? I wondered. No, this book is rich with multiple kinds of humor!—not to mention meta tricks, fabulous storytelling, perceptive descriptions, and deep tragedy.
The back of my book has this description, which I absolutely agree with:
“. . . one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written . . .”
Edith Grossman coaxed all of that humor and pathos into a form accessible by English readers. Thank you, Edith: you are amazing.
I hope some of you out there found this blog post interesting, informative, or in some way worthy of reading. If you speak Spanish and English, I would absolutely LOVE to hear your thoughts on the above passages. Let me know—did I miss anything here? Do you have extra insights to share as a Spanish speaker?
And of course, also feel free to offer your thoughts if you don’t speak Spanish. What do you think about these Don Quixote translations?
Fascinating, Liza! Thanks very much for sharing this experience, and I so admire your diligence in rereading this classic and carefully considering the differences in translations.
I studied French in high school and in college, and thanks to advanced placement credits, earned a minor in the language, most of which learning is long forgotten. As a senior in high school, I can remember having to read some classic French literature, in French, hopefully with understanding and appreciation. I remember the teacher valiantly trying to explain puns and idioms. Like you, I could probably get the words “the, when, on,” and such, but little more, today. Sigh.
Thanks – I’m glad you enjoyed the post! I don’t remember studying classic Spanish literature in high school …. I don’t think I was ready for that. Learning another language is no joke. Hard stuff.
Grossman is a highly regarded translator. She deserves it. Sería, the first verb, is conditional tense. But beyond that, it is used for likely actions in the past. Her translation reflects that knowledge and nuance. It is used for guessing about the past, or wondering about sth in the past.
For a book group I decided to reread a famous book, La Vorágine. I got a recent translation for fun, to compare. I thought recent was better. It was truly abysmal. The first sentence is famous and powerful. The translation of it was awful and even boring.
Thanks for sharing! I’m glad I read the Grossman. Yes, it’s amazing the difference a good translator makes!
This is wonderful, thanks! I had the same experience as you: I found an English version of DQ in a second-hand bookshop and it was pretty bad. I have been wondering how to find a decent translation ever since, and yours is an excellent recommendation. I would like to know how Grossman translated/annotated the first paragraph, which is important to understand DQ’s social status: “Una olla de algo más vaca que carnero, salpicón las más noche, duelos y quebrantos los sábados, lantejas los viernes, algún palomino de añadidura los domingos, consumían las tres cuartas partes de su hacienda”. Or the beginning of the second part, where the priest and the barber “acordaron de no tocarle en ningún punto de la andante caballería, por no ponerse a peligro de descoser los de la herida, que tan tiernos estaban”, where there is a word game with the word “punto” as in “point” (“topic”, “aspect”, “idea”) and “stitch” . The annotations to the Spanish edition by Martín de Riquer are really good and I wonder if Grossman takes them into account as well.
I can tell you that yes, Grossman does include footnotes referencing de Riquer. And I agree, translators do have a challenging task before them when there are word games that aren’t easy to translate!
I first and foremost mean no disrespect to you , or your readers,
If your blog is an honest blog then it’s just MY opion right?? In other words dont get triggered by my honest “opinion”.
I myself am intellectually rounded enough to understand older literature and find
Your description of the first English translation overly dramatic. It reminds me of the “Lost Books of’ ” that were removed from the bible hundreds of years ago because “readers would read the truth, that contradicted the churches agenda. I feel
one can be easily manipulated by so called “EASIER” to understand modern , translations. If something is missing then it’s not truth.
Hi! The issue isn’t that one translation is easier to read than another. The issue is, how faithful is the translation to the original words and intent? Thanks for posting!
I guess in your defense you didn’t say one of the translations was google translate, however in everyone else’s defense, it really shouldn’t have been. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. You won’t be getting me a third time. Have a nice day.
As a person who speaks no foreign language fluently, I find that Google Translate can sometimes give me a basic idea of what’s being said in another language. In this blog post, I acknowledge that the software is far from ideal. But while it’s not perfect, and not human, it is a translator!
In this day and age most of our historians,
government, and central news have beed proven dishonest.
If information is ” MADE, SHORTENED, FASTER , our … OR AKA THEIR convenience, one I feel should question the information.
Not having all ingredients to home made chocolate chip cookies results into yucky taste.
If you’re referring to the Google Translate version, yeah it’s definitely questionable in its translation of a work of art. But worth considering in my opinion.
I agree.
Thanks, you have convinced me to buy the Grossman translation.
My history with Don Quixote is similar to yours: I speak enough Spanish to get by so long as things stay simple; my teachers praised the book highly but couldn’t explain why it was so good; long ago I read an ancient translation; the book impressed me not with its hilarity but its humanity (I was especially impressed with how the Don’s friends and family came to his comfort and rescue in that harsh place and time (see the movie Alatriste)). Now at age 80 the movie on YouTube starring Fernando Rey inspired me to try again.
About the business where the Don’s joy “inspires his horse’s girth.” When I was a teenager in the 1950s, I got a summer job at a dude ranch in the foothills of the Rockies above Manitou Springs. My assigned horse, named “Sixgun,” was a steady experienced worker, but on a sunny spring day, he would feel good. He would prance around in a jocular way, flirting his tail and farting enthusiastically. My horsemanship was only as good as my Spanish, but he would settle down pretty soon like he knew he wasn’t supposed to scare the tourists. When I read that part of your essay, I assumed that’s what that passage was about.
This is my first encounter with your site. I’ll be seeing you again.
Rick: Interesting anecdote – thanks for sharing! Happy reading 🙂
In this day and age most of our historians,
government, and central news have beed proven dishonest.
If information is ” MADE, SHORTENED, FASTER , our … OR AKA THEIR convenience, one I feel should question the information.
Not having all ingredients to home made chocolate chip cookies results into yucky taste.