Profesor: Luis Gianera

Lengua Inglesa Especializada TLA

Alumna: Ailín Toconás Bosco 2° cuatrimestre 2018
LINGUISTIC VARIABLES AND TABOO WORDS IN THE CATCHER IN THE RYE:
THE TRANSLATOR’S DILEMMA, NEUTRALITY OR LOCALIZATION?

Introduction

The translation of literary texts involves certain challenges that are not present
in the translation of scientific or technical texts. One of these challenges is the
translation of taboo words and informal register. As literary translations should
sound native and effortless, and should also cause the same effect as the
original, the linguistic problem of translating informal speech – teen speak, in
this case – and taboo words is a constant conflict in the literary translator’s
working life. There are many variables that may influence the possible
translations of a text, although this essay will only analyze the dialect variable –
a region or social group’–, and will briefly display the chronolects on teen speak
in 1940 in contrast with teen speak in 2000. This paper will explore the use of
taboo words in the fifth chapter of The Catcher in The Rye (1951) by J.D.
Salinger, and the translations made by Argentinian translator Manuel Méndez
de Andes in Cazador oculto (1961) and Spanish translator Carmen Criado in El
guardián entre el centeno (1995).

Theoretical Framework

This paper will be supported by the analysis Paula Ángel Valdés carries out in
her final paper La traducción de idiolectos en El guardian en el centeno:
Traducir la oralidad fingida (2017). Ángel Valdés will set the basis of the
linguistic analysis that will be carried out here, even though this paper will also
analyze the pragmatic use of the taboo words and the techniques on their
translations the way Rojo López and Valenzuela Manzanares do in their article
Sobre la traducción de las palabras tabú (2000). In addition to Criado’s El
guardián entre el centeno, which Ángel Valdés analyzes in depth, the analysis
will also be on Méndez de Andes’s translation El cazador oculto, with the
intention of contrasting lexical choices in different dialects and chronolects and
the effects of the chosen translation techniques. Besides, Margara Averbach’s
Traducir Literatura will be used to develop on the possible ways to translate
dialectal characteristics and social jargons.

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Profesor: Luis Gianera
Lengua Inglesa Especializada TLA
Alumna: Ailín Toconás Bosco 2° cuatrimestre 2018
Analysis

Before starting the analysis, it is important to contextualize the situational

background in the making of The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger published this
story in 1945, when the American society had gone through 7 years of WW II.
This recent post-war environment and certain aspects of American society
during that time are present in Holden’s speech throughout the book, and
therefore they should be present in the translation of his speech.

From the American society of the mid-1940 emerged the counter-culture

movement, an ideology mainly shared among teenagers and young adults who
were against the consumer society of that time. They criticized war, capitalism,
and capitalist values – which they considered were superfluous and hypocrite –;
they did not believe in the ideal of the American dream.

This counter-culture movement is represented in Holden’s speech through

constant feelings of discontent, disappointment, and criticism. Through the
book, there are many instances in which Holden criticizes adults and fellow
teenagers calling them “phonies”. This is also part of his own emotional conflict,
as the novel somehow tells the readers about his growth into maturity. The
Catcher in the Rye is said to be a bildungsroman novel, the kind of novel in
which the story revolves around the protagonist growing up, and Holden is a
growing kid who resists to become an adult. His constant struggle against
adulthood is embedded in his emotional conflict and the American society of
that time – it can be said that Holden does not believe in adulthood the way
counter-culturists did not believe in the American dream. Holden is constantly
expressing his feelings by swearing, which helps to build credibility on his oral
speech and to characterize him through his way of speaking as a teenager.
Holden is supposed to be telling everything that happened to him to a
psychoanalyst, so the entire book is built as a monolog.

As has been said before, the translation of Salinger’s book needs to express the
particularity of Holden’s speech. In fact, Averbach (2011: 72, 73) says that if the
original clearly displays a specific jargon, the translation cannot be
standardized. To solve this regular problem of translation in literary texts,

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Profesor: Luis Gianera
Lengua Inglesa Especializada TLA
Alumna: Ailín Toconás Bosco 2° cuatrimestre 2018
Averbach suggests two techniques: the translator can search for an equivalent
jargon in the target language, or he or she can invent a jargon of their own. In
this particular text, it makes more sense to search for the equivalent jargon in
order to cause the same effect as the original text. If the original readers
imagine a depressive yet funny teenager, the target readers should somehow
picture the same image.

It actually makes more sense to find the equivalent jargon because the original
does not pose a major linguistic problem beyond teen speak. If it were a text
written in a different ethnic jargon, then maybe the solution would be different
from the one chosen in this paper. The condition of looking for an equivalent
jargon is to follow the grammatical rules of the chosen jargon for the translation.
This is what Méndez de Andes and Criado did when each of them translated
Salinger’s book. They identified Holden’s teen speak, and tried to emulate their
culture’s teen speaks. It is important to note that Méndez de Andes had to go
for more neutral lexical choices than Criado, who clearly went for a more
located teen speak – something that usually happens with translators from
Spain.

However, it can be said that a vertical jargon (the way Averbach calls social
jargons) not only generates a conflict on the localization of the language but
also on the historical characteristics of it. If a translator chooses to completely
transfer a character’s speech from one jargon to another, certain geographical
and historical features may be lost in the meantime. The inevitability of infidelity
in translation can be justified if one thinks of the process of translation as an
industry that has certain requirements beyond the act of translating alone. It is
interesting to look at the way Méndez de Andes translated the text back in
1961, and the way Carmen Criado corrected her own translation in 1995. The
American society is only a setting in both translations; the way their teenagers
expressed themselves in 1945 is completely lost and cannot possibly be
restored in the translation. For this, the translator would have to somehow
create a nonexistent jargon historically set in 1945, with swear words and
expressions that would have to express the way American teenagers talked
back then. The problem with this solution is that it would have to be constantly

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Profesor: Luis Gianera
Lengua Inglesa Especializada TLA
Alumna: Ailín Toconás Bosco 2° cuatrimestre 2018
explained to the target readers, breaking the original effect on them and losing
credibility in the construction of the oral speech.

The one to translate The Catcher in the Rye needs to find equilibrium between
the foreignization and domestication 1 of the text (Ángel Valdés, 2017), he or she
has to try and keep certain local aspects of the text while adapting it in order for
the target culture to be able to understand it.

There are many examples that could have been chosen for the analysis of this
problem of literary translation; but for the aim of this paper, we are only going to
analyze the translation of specific words and expressions in chapter five of The
Catcher in the Rye.

The first expression to be analyzed is “What a racket”. This expression belongs

to the slang of the mid 1940, and it has been significantly less used since 1990 2.
According to Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional
English, Fifth Edition (1961), a racket is “A dodge, trick; plan; 'line', occupation,
esp. if these are criminal or 'shady': ... E.g. racket, noise, disturbance.” In the
context of the expression, what Holden means to say with it is “what a scam”/
“what a fraud”. He complains about Pencey’s authorities planning the menu for
the kids to say they ate meat every time their parents asked, not for the kids’
healthy nutrition. In Rojo López and Valenzuela Manzanares’s classification of
taboo words’ pragmatic uses, where taboo words are said to express one out of
three intentions (annoyance, disdain or emphasis), this phrase means to
express annoyance. The problem that arises in the translation is: annoyance
towards who or what?

In the translation of this phrase, Méndez de Andes and Criado use expressions
with different meanings. Méndez de Andes’s choice was to translate “What a
racket” as “Qué porquería.” What he does not seem to have grasped is the
1
The concept of foreignized translations and domesticated translations were developed by Lawrence
Venuti, an American translation theorist born in 1953, in his book The Translator’s Invisibility: A History
of Translation (1995). His text develops on the role of the translator and questions the predominant
strategy of domesticating the texts.
2
According to a statistics research in Google Books, available in:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?
year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=racket&dir
ect_url=t4%3B%2Cracket%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bracket%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BRacket%3B%2Cc0%3B
%3BRACKET%3B%2Cc0

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Profesor: Luis Gianera
Lengua Inglesa Especializada TLA
Alumna: Ailín Toconás Bosco 2° cuatrimestre 2018
sense of “fraud” or “scam” in racket, and it is shown in his translation. “Qué
porquería” does not apply to the acting of the authorities but to the food itself, as
later on Holden explains how awful the piece of steak actually was, and in this
translation it would seem that he is annoyed at the food and not at the hypocrisy
of the authorities. Holden’s criticism towards the adults’ hypocrisy is lost, and so
is part of his characterization. Even though the sense of the expression is
misplaced, the intention of using a slang word in the translation of racket is in
the way of building an informal register in Holden’s speech.

Criado’s translation of the expression is more localized than the one chosen by
Méndez de Andes, but it does not express a different sense from the original.
She chose “¡Menudo timo!” for her translation. And it actually reveals the
criticism in Holden’s words, and his analysis of the situation with the school
menu. His criticism goes past the steak’s edibility, it goes directly to the
authorities and the adults’ way of thinking. She also tried to use an informal
register, to emulate Holden’s slang.

The second expression to be analyzed is “crap”, one of the most used words
through chapter five. It is used in varied situations, but both translators chose to
standardize the text a few times, and omit that the original text ever said “crap”
in the first place. This word is one of the most repeated by the character, four
times throughout the chapter. Two times it is used to express annoyance, once
to express disdain, and once to emphasize a point. Both of the times that the
word was used to express annoyance, it was used in a coordinative structure. “I
was putting on my galoshes and crap” and “with Cary Grant in it, and all that
crap” are both pretty similar structures, where the taboo word is enumerated in
a coordinative structure with cumulative “and”. The author adds this “crap” word
to express the character’s annoyance towards a specific situation.

The translators’ strategies in the first two situations seem to be the same, even
though they differ in the lexical and structural choices. Méndez de Andes chose
to omit, as Criado also did in her translation, the first appearance of “crap” in the
chapter. Both translators found a way out of “galoshes and crap” by omitting the
“crap” part of the text. The problem of the omission is that the element of
repetition can be lost in the translation, and the author opted to repeat the word

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Profesor: Luis Gianera
Lengua Inglesa Especializada TLA
Alumna: Ailín Toconás Bosco 2° cuatrimestre 2018
because he meant to give the character the credibility of the oral speech, which
is abundant in repetitions and informal – in this case, also vulgar – expressions.
The translator needs to build the character in a similar way in the target culture
and its language. What Méndez de Andes did to restore the element of
repetition of taboo words was to repeat the words “porquería” and “cochina”,
and both of them he used to translate other taboo words in the text apart from
“crap”. “Porquería” may be useful in the translation of “crap,” and it was used
repeatedly in the text, even though not always in the contexts where “crap” was
in the original. Criado did not try and repeat any taboo expression other than
“cabrón”, which she used twice, and for different elements in the original: once
to translate “bastard” and once to translate “sonuvabitch.” Criado’s effect in both
situations are similar: using “cabrón” to translate “bastard” and “sonuvabitch”
may be a good (localized) option in a pragmatic sense, as these lexical choices
are useful to express disdain with similar strength in their respective languages.
The element of repetition does not appear in the translations as it does in the
original, although it may not be considered a fail in the translation if the effect is
prioritized and can be achieved in the final product.

The second “crap” that appears in the chapter (“with Cary Grant in it, and all
that crap”) is used to express annoyance at the situation, and the authors chose
to translate it in different ways. Méndez de Andes chose to extract the taboo
element into another short sentence: “[Se trataba de una comedia en la que
trabajaba Cary Grant.] En fin, una porquería.” Although it kept the literal
meaning of “crap” in the translation, the effect of this strategy does not sound as
natural as the original did. He tried to keep the same pragmatic use of the taboo
word, but it lost the natural sound of the oral speech in the way.

Carmen Criado opted, again, for a localized expression, popular among

teenagers from Spain “[Ponían una comedia de Cary Grant,] de esas que son
un rollazo.” She does maintain the natural sound of the oral speech, while using
an expression from the Spanish slang, and she keeps a structure similar to the
original, without needing to extract the word from the sentence. She also
succeeds in expressing annoyance towards the situation; the pragmatic use of
the word “rollazo” in that sentence fulfills the original’s intention.

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Profesor: Luis Gianera
Lengua Inglesa Especializada TLA
Alumna: Ailín Toconás Bosco 2° cuatrimestre 2018
The word “crap” appears a third time, but the communicative intention clearly
changes. This time, the protagonist is talking about something another teenager
had told him many times, but in many different ways, which led him to think his
classmate was just telling lies to look more adult, more important in other
teenagers’ eyes. As it has been said, Holden is a very critical teenager, who
criticizes adults and teenagers when they are being hypocrite. As this is a
characteristic he abhors about people, he expresses disdain when qualifying his
classmate’s sayings: “It was all a lot of crap, naturally.” This intention has to be
transferred to the target text, because it builds the protagonist’s character.

Méndez de Andes neutralized the taboo word, completely losing the writer’s
intention of disdain: “Era todo pura charla, desde luego.” The meaning is the
same, but the pragmatic intention is lost, and so is part of Holden’s
characterization. Criado does the same, her strategy is to neutralize the swear
word and she only translates: “Naturalmente todo era puro cuento.”

The fourth time the word “crap” appears in the chapter, it is used with a different
pragmatic intention. The protagonist is talking about his brother Allie, someone
that he loved very much, and he is telling about all the good things the teachers
said about his brother, he says “and they weren’t just shooting the crap.”
Clearly, in the context of the narration, the protagonist does not intend to sound
annoyed or disdainful, he wants to emphasize how good the teachers spoke
about his brother, he is exaggerating the way they talked about him. His
intention is to be emphatic, and so this has to be reproduced in its translation.

Neither of the translators chose to translate the word “crap” in any way.
However, they did grasp the intention of emphasis. Mendez de Andes chose to
translate that part in this way: “Y lo decían en serio.” His emphasis does not
sound as the original did, and does not have the same level of intensity. Criado
chose to say “Y no lo decían porque sí.” She emphasizes a bit more, but still it
does not sound as intense as the original. Both translators chose to neutralize
the problem of translation by omitting the swear word altogether.

A similar case is the word “goddam”, another word that is repeated four times
throughout the chapter. The difference with this word is that it is only used by

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Profesor: Luis Gianera
Lengua Inglesa Especializada TLA
Alumna: Ailín Toconás Bosco 2° cuatrimestre 2018
the author to express annoyance towards a specific situation. Only once did
Mendez de Andes translate this word, using “cochina” as its equivalent. It is
difficult to say if this was a common swear word among teenagers back in 1960,
but nowadays the word lacks strength as a swear word and is not frequently
used by Latin American teenagers. In the case of “goddam,” Criado’s strategy
was to neutralize all of the times this taboo word appeared. Not once did she try
to express the character’s anger and annoyance in any way.

Conclusion

In the analysis of these few expressions, we can see a pattern in the translators’
strategies while dealing with Holden’s vulgar register. The first and most used
technique is omission. As has been said, the problem with this technique is that
many times there are crucial elements of the narration that are completely lost.
The abuse of this strategy can lead to an under-translation. In this way, the
target text can never achieve the same or even similar effect as the original. A
pragmatic analysis of the use of taboo words needs to be done, in order to try
and decide whether it is convenient or not to omit these expressions in the
translated product.

Holden’s vulgar register was not the only conflict the translators had to face in
the process of translation. His informal register and his teenager’s speech were
also a challenge. From the analyzed expressions and their translations, we can
see that many times Criado found a better way to express what the original
meant. This relative success was due to her strategy to choose more localized
expressions than Méndez de Andes. The localized translation always sounded
more natural (to its intended readers) than the standardized translation or the
one that chose more neutral words. Neutralizing the text generally leads to
losing elements of the original and its intended effect on the readers.

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Profesor: Luis Gianera
Lengua Inglesa Especializada TLA
Alumna: Ailín Toconás Bosco 2° cuatrimestre 2018
Bibliography

Ángel Valdés, Paula (2017) La traducción de idiolectos en El guardián en el

centeno: Traducir la oralidad fingida. Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Salinger, J.D. (1961) El cazador oculto (Méndez de Andes, M., Trans.). Buenos
Aires: Compañía General Fabril Editora

Salinger, J.D. (1995) El guardián entre el centeno (Criado, C., Trans.). Madrid:
Alianza Editorial

Rojo López, A. M. and Valenzuela Manzanares, J. (2000) “Sobre la traducción

de las palabras tabú,” Revista de investigación Lingüística N.º 1. Murcia:
Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia.

Averbach, M. (2011) Traducir literatura. Córdoba: Comunic-Arte.

Salinger, J.D. (1951) The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little Brown Books.