Cortazar

A translation is important to a work of art due to its effect on the author who crafted it, without translations of their best works, writers like Gacia Máquez or Julio Cortazar would never have been able to win the Nobel Prize. Speaking of which, Cortazar forms part of the most influential authors in Latin America an most of it is due to his surrealism planted into every work he has.

The problem with translations however, are the consequences that it has on the work along with its meaning and impact towards the reader and really, overall. Each language has its limitations and benefits of writing on, like English, while it offers virtually complete reachability in the world, its narration and diction can be seen as stiff when compared to Spanish, for example. But each also comes with a whole thousand-year-old heritage with it, it goes from idioms, references, jokes and interpretations that each language and culture have with it. Whenever an author is writing a book, he prints the language and everything mentioned before with it into his craft and makes it unique and makes sense to that language, it adds to it and makes it able to reach the readers on a more personal level. When there is a translations, the translator does his best to imitate all that baggage the language has with another one completely different and with a whole different one that affects how the story is perceived and interpreted. Cortazar´s allways present sense of ambiguitity and surrealism come from his diction, description, and themes he bases his writing on, all exclusive to his native Spanish. When I first read his works, I never imagined his style being replicated in another language, I never wanted to. The way he writes left me with nothing to be wished for improvement, but when you, teacher, suggested his name on the reading list, I immeadiatly thought to myself the biggest problem with the reading, I wished I would have read it in Spanish. I knew simply by the fact that the work I read of him before were all in Spanish, so the idea of him and his elements in his style never got changed in my mind. And when I read him in English, I realize they still didn´t and they sould´ve done so beforehand.

Cortazar is only one example, where his sense of awkwardness and fixation go away and feel forced when read in English due to its constrains in its narration and heritage it possesses.