Hard to

Imagine
Benedict Anderson
 Dr. Jose P. Rizal
- Born on June 19, 1861
- He was a highly gifted poet,
historian, scientist, journalist,
linguist, satirist, political activist
and novelist.
Noli me Tangere &
El Filibusterismo
- Written by Dr. Jose P. Rizal
- “Chef’s d’oeuvre” of
Philippine Literature
- Had a central role in the
“awakening” of Filipino
nationalism
 Leon Ma. Guerrero
- Top-notch writer and diplomat.
- Philippine Ambassador to the Court of St.
James.
- Served six presidents beginning with President
Manuel L. Quezon and ending President
Ferdinand E. Marcos.
- Translated Noli me Tangere.
7 KEY ELEMENTS OF GUERRERO’S
TRANSLATION STRATEGY
1. DEMODERNIZATION

It is characteristics of Rizal’s bravura style

that although the story of the Noli me
Tangere is set in the past, there are frequent
glissando modulations into the present. Yet,
every such present was systematically turned
by Guerrero into the past.
 “In truth, divine Justice seems less
demanding than that of humanity”
- Dr. Jose P. Rizal

“They found it easier to satisfy divine than

human justice”
- Leon Ma. Guerrero
2. EXCLUSION OF THE READER

- Dr. Jose P. Rizal regularly turns and speaks

to the reader as if author and reader were
ghosts or angels.
“Capitan Tiago became uneasy, and lost his tongue, but
obeyed and followed after the colossal priest, who
locked the door behind him. While they are conferring in
secret, let us find out what happened to Father Sibyla”
-Dr. Jose P. Rizal
“He mad Capitan Tiago so uneasy he was unable to
reply, and obediently followed the burly priest who
closed the door behind them. Meantime, in another part
of the city the scholarly Dominican, Father Sibyla, had
left his parish house”
-Leon Ma. Guerrero
3. Excision of Tagalog

- Dr. Jose Rizal wrote Noli Me Tangere in

Spanish text and bejewelled it with Tagalog
words and expressions
- These expressions and words were
eliminated by Gurrero in his translations
“Cualquier bata de la escuela lo sabe”
- Dr. Jose P. Rizal

“Any schoolboy knows as much”

- Leon Ma. Guerrero

 3. Excision of Tagalog

Other Tagalog words…

Salakot : Local Straw hat
Timsim : Kerosene Lamp
Paragos : Sled
Sinigang : Local Dish
Elimination in translation serves to distance
rather than familiarize the national hero

- Benedict Anderson
 4. Bowlderization

- Noli Me Tangere is a novel that depicts the

controversies during the Spanish colonial
times in Dr. Rizal’s time.

- Vulgar words, actions, political and religious

matters were removed, and edited in the
translation
“Allí esperarán probablemante, no la resurreccion de
los muertos, sino la llegada de los animales, que
con sus líquidos le caliente y laven aquellas frias
desnudeces”
- Dr. Jose P. Rizal
“There they awaited, not the resurrection of
the dead, but the attentions of some animal to
warm and wash their coldness and bareness.”
- Leon Ma. Guerrero
 5. Delocalization

- All scenes in Noli Me Tangere are either in

“San Diego” or in Manila
- Guerrero eliminated 80% of still
recognizable place names written by Rizal
of Manila.
 5. Delocalization

- Famous Filipino personalities during Rizal’s

time were also removed or represented as
“most renowned performers from Manila”
Examples:
● Chananay ● Marianto
● Yeyeng ● Carvagal
Keeping Rizal’s names would have served to
bring milieu of the 1880s closer to modern
readers rather than enstranging them
- Benedict Anderson
6. De - Europeanization
- Dr. Jose Rizal is a polyglot. He speaks 22
languages such as Spanish, English,
French, German, Latin etc. As well as a
smattering of Italian and Hebrew.

- He filled Noli with untranslated classical

tags.
6. De - Europeanization

- Guerrero’s approach were to eliminate or

naturalize them as far as possible

The result…
The erasure of Rizal’s civilized laughter.
“Temo que no estemos empezando á bajar: Quos
vult perdere Jupiter dementat prius.”

- Dr. Jose P. Rizal

“Whom God would destroy, He first makes

mad.”
- Leon Ma. Guerrero
 There is a curious irony in all this, since
Guerrero, as we shall see, prided himself on
his anti-American nationalism. For the effect
of his de-Europeanized translation is not to
Filipinize Rizal, but rather Americanize him.
- Benedict Anderson
 ANACHRONISM - relate to the changing
“official” social-political classification
systems operating in the Philippines in
the 1880’s and 1950’s.
KRIS - a short swords

Rizal uses ethnic, racial, and political

terminologies:

•Peninsulares - Spaniards born in Spain

•Criollos - Spaniards born in the Philippines or
Latin American.
•Mestizos - persons of mixed descent,
Spanish-native, Spanish-Chinese,
Chinese-native and more.
•Mestiza or Criolla - typically rendered as
Filipina.

Guerreros’s was born in
1915, sixteen years after the United States
assumed sovereignty over the Philippines
from Spain and He died in 1982.
His Grandfather, Leon Ma. Guerrero I.
(1853-1935)
* “Father of the Philippine Botany
* Professor of Botany at the University of
Santo Tomas
* And he wrote for Aguinaldo’s newspaper
La Republica Filipina.
Lorenzo Ma. Guerrero (1835-1904)
* He was a well-known professional artist,
and the teacher of the Philippine most
famous painters, Juan Luna and
Resurrección Hidalgo.
All Guerrero seemed destined for a
brilliant career.
Leon M. Guerrero III
* He won his B.A. (summa cum laude) at
the Jesuits Ateneo de Manila in 1935.
* And his L1.B. (summa cum laude) at
university of the Philippines in 1939.
During this period Guerrero became a
protégé of Claro Recto, wealthy lawyer and
Nacionalista Politician.
In 1959, at a diplomatic lunch in New York,
which Guerrero attended as a member of
the Philippines delegation to the United
Nations.
Guerrero’s introduction to the Lost Eden was
dated “Rizal day [December 30], 1959” a
bare three months after the Robertson; that
to the Fili, “Mayday pf the Centenary of
Rizal’s birth, 1961”, a few months after
Recto’s death.
Rizal was the centre figure in imagining
and mobilization of a popular Philippines
nationalism against two states: the
autocratic, clerical-colonial state based in
Manila, half liberal-republican, half
clerical-monarchical imperial state based
in Madrid.
It was Rizal’s prime strategy to show all of
the most convincing and immediate social
realism at his command; hence Yeyeng,
pasay, salakot, jolo, and so forth.
But in the independent Philippines of the
1950’s how much of all this was really
bearable?
Rizal Grandfather appeared either amigo
and enemigo. Of mixed
Spanish-Chinese-Indo descent.
World War I. Rizal had criticize
collaborating mestizo hacendados: Leon
Ma. was President of the International
Sugar Federation and the Filipino
legislature was dominated by collaborating
sugar borons. Rizal mercilessly ridiculed
the Catholic hierarchy.
No surprise that the official Rizal is the silent
waxwork martyr of the museum in Intramuros
the statue that holds (closed) copies of the
Noli and Fili in his hands, and the sorrowful
poet of Mi Ultimo Adios.
Leon Ma. Guerrero was a loyal and intelligent
servant of the Philippine state.
Anderson will be trying to argue, from here
on, that these transformations literally made
Rizal’s Filipinas virtually unimaginable.
We noted above that according to the census
of 1939 (forty years after the installation of
American colonialism) less than 3 per cent of
the population claimed competence in
Spanish, while over 26 per cent professed
ability in “English.” Both figures are of
interest and need their own explications.
Was this perhaps the reason that the
American-educated Guerrero remov tagalog
from his translation of the Noli?
Last and most important, was a fundamental
change in the imagining of the Philippines
and of Philippine society that started in the
1880’s but reached its full fruition only two
generations later. One might formulate the
change simply by saying that Rizal was a
patriot, while Guerrero was a nationalist.
Las Filipinas had been around for 350 years.
It was there in the imagining to be loved
place, a Heimat.
Anderson suspect, that we may find the
solution to the puzzle of anachronism in
Guerrero’s translation of the Noli.
Nationalism in our time dreams of purities,
and finds it hard to linger cariñosamente over
the oxymoron “pure mix.” Maybe this is, in
the end, the reason why the creole-mestizo
world of Rizal’s novels became, so soon, so
hard to imagine— and impossible to
translate.
 The Spanish original read as
follows: POSTSCRIPT
Una de las bellas cualidades de esta señora era el procurar ignorar el tagalog, ó al
menos aparentar no saberlo, hablándolo lo peor posible: así se daria aires de una
verdadera orofea, como ellos solia decir. Y hacía bien! porque si martizaba el
tagalog, el castellano no salía major librado ni en cuanto se refería á la gramática,
ni á la pronounciqción. Y sin embargo su marido, las sillas y los zapatos, cada cual
había puesto de su parte cuanto podía para enseñarla! Una de las palabras que
costaron más trabajo aun que à Champollion los geroglificos, era la palabra
Filipinas.
Cuéntase que al día siguente de su boda, hablando con su marido, que entoces
era cabo, hania dicho Pilipinas; el cabo creyó deber suyo corregirla y le dijo dándole
un coscorrom: “Dí Felipinas, mujer! no seas bruta. No sabes que se llama así á tu
p— país por venir de Felipe?” La mujer, que soñaba en su luna de miel, quiso
obedecer y dijo Felepinas. Al cabo le pareció que ya se acerba, aumentó los
coscorrones y la increpó . . . “Pero, mujer, no puedes pronunciar: Felipe? No lo
olvides, sabe que el Rey Don Felipe . . . quinto . . . Dí Felipe, y añadele nas que en
latin significa islas de indios, y tienes el nombre de tu rep— país!” La Consolación,
lavandera entones, palpándose el chichom ó los chichones, repitió empezando á
perde la paciencia. “Fe . . . lipe, Felipe . . . nas, Felipenas, asi ba?”
El cabo se quedó viendo visiones. Por qué resultó Felipenas en vez de Felipinas?
Una de dos: ó se dice Felipenas ó hay de decir Felipi? Aquel día tuvo por prudente
callarse: dejó á su mujer y fue á consultar cuidadosamente los impresos. Aquí su
admiración llego al colmo; restrégose los ojos: A ver . . . despacio! —Filipinas
decían todos los impresos bien deletreados: ni él ni mujer tenían razon.
“Cómo?” murmuraba, “puede mentir la Historia? No dice este libro que Alonso
Saavedra había dado este nombre al país en obsequio al infante D. Felipe? Cómo
se corrompió este nombre? Si será un indio el tal Alonso Saavedra . . .?”
Guerrero’s version, on the other
hand, goes like this:
Indeed, one of this lady’s lovable qualities was to try to unlearn her Tagalog, or at least to
pretend she did no understand it, speaking it as badly as possible, thus giving herself the
air of a true “Yorofean,” as she put it. It was just as well; if her Tagalog was deliberately
tortured, her Spanish was no better, either grammatically or in pronunciation, for all thatvher
husband, with the aid of his boots and a handy chair or two , had done his best to teach
her. One of the words she had the most trouble with, even more than heiroglyphics had
given the most eminent Egyptologists, was Philippines.
It is said that the day after her wedding, conversing with her husband, who was then a
corporal, she had pronounced it: Pegleefens. The corporal thought it his duty to correct her
and admonished her with a cuff: “Say Feeleepine, girl! Don’t be so stupid. Don’t you even
know your goddam country in named after King Philip?” His wife, who was still wrapped in
honeymoon dreams, did her best to obey him and made it: Feeleepeens.
The corporal thought she was getting closer, gave her a new more cuffs, and upbraided her:
“Can’t you even say Philip, add pines, which in Latin means nigger islands, and you have
the name of your goddam country!”
Doña Consolacion, who was then laundress, gingerly felt with her fingers the effects of her
husband’s cuffing’s, and repeated, almost at the end of her patience: “Peeleep—Peeleep . .
. pines—Peeleepines, is that it?”
“Not Peeleep, with a p!” roared the corporal. “Feeleep, with an f!”
“Why? How do you spell Peeleep? With a p or an f?”
The corporal thought it the better part of wisdom to change the subject that day, and
meantime to consult a dictionary. Here his wonder reached its highest pitch. He rubbed his
eyes. Let’s see . . . slowly now . . . but there was no doubt about it. P-h-i-l-i-p-p-i-n-e-s: he
and his wife were both wrong: it was neither p nor f, but ph.
 Presenters:

Jessa L. Capalac Mary Diana M. Villarba Edrizandra E. Clemente

Presented:
Presented: Excision of Tagalog
Anachronism
Demodernization Bowdlerization
Postscript
Exclusion of the Reader Delocalization
De-Europeanization