QuixoteSpanish

Level C2 · Part Two, Chapter 62

Translation as the back of a tapestry

In a printing house in Barcelona, don Quixote meets a translator and gives his opinion of translation: it is like looking at a Flemish tapestry from the back. Translators still quote the image. It is also an opinion about the book it appears in, which has claimed since Chapter 9 to be a translation itself.

The passage, exactly as Cervantes wrote it

Miguel de Cervantes, Part Two, Chapter 62. Public domain, and not adapted, shortened or modernised in any way.

Pero, con todo esto, me parece que el traducir 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 veen las figuras, son llenas de hilos que las escurecen, y no se veen con la lisura y tez de la haz; y el traducir de lenguas fáciles, ni arguye ingenio ni elocución, como no le arguye el que traslada ni el que copia un papel de otro papel.

But for all that, it seems to me that translating from one language into another, unless it is from the queens of languages, Greek and Latin, is like someone looking at Flemish tapestries from the back: although the figures can be seen, they are full of threads that obscure them, and they are not seen with the smoothness and finish of the front. And translating from easy languages shows neither wit nor eloquence, any more than they are shown by a man who transcribes or copies one paper from another.

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.

Pero, con todo, me parece que traducir de una lengua a otra, salvo que sea de las reinas de las lenguas, el griego y el latín, es como mirar los tapices flamencos por el revés, que, aunque se ven las figuras, están llenas de hilos que las oscurecen, y no se ven con la lisura y el acabado del derecho. Y traducir de lenguas fáciles no demuestra ni talento ni elocuencia, igual que no los demuestra quien transcribe o copia un papel de otro papel.

What changed, form by form

In the textTodayWhy it matters
el traducirtraducirThe infinitive with an article, used as the subject. Formal now, ordinary then.
en otraa otraTraducir en, where today only traducir a is accepted.
como no sea desalvo que sea deComo no plus subjunctive for unless. Still alive, and a little literary.
es como quien miraes como mirarThe comparison slides from the act to a person doing it. Loose, and completely natural in speech.
se veense venThe older form, with the two vowels not yet merged.
son llenasestán llenasSer with a state that today takes estar.
escurecenoscurecenAn older vowel.
la hazel derechoThe right side of a fabric. It survives in haz y envés, the two sides of a leaf.
arguyedemuestraArgüir meaning to prove or show, not to argue.
trasladacopia, transcribeTrasladar meaning to copy out a text, the old sense behind traslado.

The syntax

The image takes up more room than the claim. The main clause, el traducir ... es como quien mira los tapices, is interrupted by an exception, como no sea, then the tapestries get a clause of their own with a concession inside it, aunque se veen las figuras, and only then does the sentence reach the threads. Notice too that son llenas agrees with figuras and not with tapices. The subject has changed quietly halfway through, which is exactly what happens in speech.

What a Spanish reader hears

Don Quixote says this in a printing house in Barcelona, to a man who has translated an Italian book, and there is something underneath it. The whole novel claims to be a translation, from Arabic, by a morisco paid in raisins and wheat. So by don Quixote's own rule the book in your hands is the back of the tapestry, full of loose threads. Translators have quoted the image ever since, usually with approval and usually without noticing that it is spoken by a madman about the book he is in.

Where the course prepares you for this