Level C2 · Part Two, Chapter 5
The chapter the translator thinks is fake
Part Two, Chapter 5 opens with a note from the translator saying that he thinks the chapter is a forgery, because Sancho speaks too well in it. The narrator publishes it anyway. This is the book arguing with itself about register, and it is the most concentrated example of how many voices stand between you and the story.
The passage, exactly as Cervantes wrote it
Miguel de Cervantes, Part Two, Chapter 5. Public domain, and not adapted, shortened or modernised in any way.
(Llegando a escribir el traductor desta historia este quinto capítulo, dice que le tiene por apócrifo, porque en él habla Sancho Panza con otro estilo del que se podía prometer de su corto ingenio, y dice cosas tan sutiles, que no tiene por posible que él las supiese; pero que no quiso dejar de traducirlo, por cumplir con lo que a su oficio debía; y así, prosiguió diciendo:) Llegó Sancho a su casa tan regocijado y alegre, que su mujer conoció su alegría a tiro de ballesta; tanto, que la obligó a preguntarle: — ¿Qué traés, Sancho amigo, que tan alegre venís?
(When the translator of this history came to write this fifth chapter, he says that he considers it apocryphal, because in it Sancho Panza speaks in a style other than could be expected of his short wits, and says things so subtle that he does not think it possible he could have known them. But he did not want to leave it untranslated, so as to do what he owed to his profession, and so he went on, saying:) Sancho arrived home so cheerful and happy that his wife could see his happiness from a crossbow shot away, so much so that it made her ask him: What have you got there, Sancho my friend, that you come home so happy?
The same thing in Spanish as it is written today
Read the two side by side. What has changed between them is the syllabus of this level.
(Al llegar a este quinto capítulo, el traductor de esta historia dice que lo considera falso, porque en él Sancho Panza habla con un estilo distinto del que cabía esperar de su poca inteligencia, y dice cosas tan sutiles que no le parece posible que él las supiera. Pero no quiso dejar de traducirlo, para cumplir con lo que le exigía su oficio, y así siguió diciendo:) Llegó Sancho a su casa tan contento y alegre que su mujer notó su alegría desde muy lejos, tanto que la obligó a preguntarle: ¿Qué traes, Sancho, amigo, que vienes tan contento?
What changed, form by form
| In the text | Today | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| le tiene por apócrifo | lo considera falso | Tener por, to consider. And le for a thing, where today only lo is correct. |
| apócrifo | falso, no auténtico | The word for texts outside the canon, and the word Cervantes would later use for the forged Part Two. |
| del que se podía prometer | del que cabía esperar | Prometerse algo, to expect it. Still possible, and now formal. |
| corto ingenio | poca inteligencia | Short wits. Ingenio again, the word in the title. |
| no tiene por posible que él las supiese | no le parece posible que las supiera | Subjunctive after a possibility that is denied, in the -se form. |
| a tiro de ballesta | desde muy lejos, a la legua | Measured in crossbow range. Today people say se nota a la legua. |
| traés | traes | The vos form of traer, worn down from traéis. It is exactly the form of Argentine voseo today. |
| venís | vienes | Vos again, with its own verb. Between husband and wife in a village it was the ordinary form. |
The syntax
The note is in reported speech from beginning to end: dice que le tiene, no tiene por posible que supiese, no quiso dejar de traducirlo. Nothing in it is asserted by the narrator himself. Every opinion belongs to a translator whose words are passed on by an editor who is working from the manuscript of a Moorish historian. And the parenthesis closes on prosiguió diciendo, so the chapter he doubts is handed over in his voice anyway.
What a Spanish reader hears
This is a joke about register used as evidence. The translator's argument is purely stylistic: this Sancho talks too well, so this Sancho is not the real one. It is the argument scholars use to expose a forgery, applied inside a novel to a character who does not exist. More than fifty chapters later Cervantes will attack a real forgery, the Part Two published under the name Avellaneda, on the same grounds: its Sancho is the wrong Sancho. Here the reader is asked to decide which one is authentic, and the only proof on offer is the way he speaks. Then Teresa opens her mouth with traés and venís, and the village is back.
Where the course prepares you for this
- Kitchen Spanish and proverbsLesson 59Sancho and Teresa Argue