Translation essay

Translation essay

By: Monica de la Cruz 

Julio Cortaza is one of the most influential writer of America Latina, it is expected for his Works to be translated. In fact his work has been translated into 45 different languages including English, and this is important to us since we are Reading his short tails in English. The definition of translation is “words that have been changed from one language into a different language: words that have been translated”

In both text we explored the meaning of a work being translated, and I concluded that the whole problem with people who does not like a book that has been translated is about the essence of the book itself. When a writer puts his thoughts into words, he is expecting to share it with the worl, and globalization has help do that exact thing, but as a book in French arrives into a country in Mexico, only a small portion of it population will be able to read and understand the book. Translation breaks this problem, since know a book written in any freight language can now be rewritten into the maternal language of a country. In a place like Mexico, this fact helps a lot, since know any idea of progression and inspiration can reach everyone and be comprehend. But translation problem has nothing to do with this facts, this only expose the context of why translation will keep happening, the trouble with changing a novel of language is loosing the idea. In some languages there are words only expressed there, take for example “Te quiero” and “Te amo”. In Spanish both phrases have different meanings, and they are not used in the same context for this reason, if we translate a book in English, this phrases will have to be change into “I love you”, in the second case there’s no trouble with that, in fact in a Spanish context “I love you” and “Te amo” means the same thing, but between a “Te Quiero” and a “ I love you” there are a world apart difference. In this case the essence of a scene or of the book is lost between translations.

By reading a novel by Julio Cortaza in English the essence of the book is lost, we can see this in the difference in the way of writing, he tends to write with allusions to surrealism in his text, but by reading the tale of axolotls the very essence if what he was trying to say is lost if we don’t think really hard about the text, and specially if we do not analyze the text itself. This idea is supported in one of the text it talks about how every writer has to interpret a text before translating it, and in this process the essence of what the person understood is put in the paper, meaning that what the writer meant could be lost in this process.

Meanwhile translation brings benefits to authors with big ideas like Julio Cortaza, it can also harm there work and change entirely the meaning, this is the main reason for the debate about translation and why it should or not happen.