romance studies, Vol. 27 No.

4, November, 2009, 273–282

Four Rulfian Voices. An Analysis of

the Translation of ‘Mexicanisms’
in Juan Rulfo’s El Llano en llamas
Laura Ana Lisi
IULM, Milan, Italy

This essay is concerned with the translation of regional literary voices. The
case in point is Juan Rulfo’s collection of short stories, El Llano en llamas,
and its translation into four languages — English, German, Danish, and
Italian. Rulfo’s fiction, an intricate patchwork of the subdued voices of a
specific people, the rural population of Jalisco, Mexico, poses interesting
linguistic and cultural challenges to the translator. The author’s aim of
reproducing the spoken language of his region in literature has given life
to works of great linguistic specificity, even within the Spanish language
community. The comparative analysis proposed here centres around those
lexical choices which mark the regional specificity of Rulfo’s text — i.e.
linguistic elements classified as ‘Mexicanisms’ — and their treatment in the
four translations.
The theoretical and philosophical starting point of this study is the notion
of ‘linguistic hospitality’ proposed in the reflections of thinkers such as
Ricœur and Berman: the aim of translation cannot be that of making the
foreign comprehensible, of annexing it, but rather that of hosting it as some-
thing foreign in order to enrich the target horizon. Translation is thus a kind
of appropriation which is at once ‘compréhension à distance’ (Ricœur, 1986)
and completion, über-leben, supplement of the source text.

keywords Juan Rulfo, Translation, Mexicanism, Linguistic hospitality, Hans-

Georg Gadamer, Antoine Berman, Paul Ricoeur

The present paper sets out to explore the translational solutions adopted in four
different languages with respect to one particular translation challenge: the rendering
of regional terms deriving from the linguistic substratum of the Náhuatl language
employed in Juan Rulfo’s literature. I will be concentrating, for this analysis, on
Mariana Frenk’s translation into German of 1964, George D. Schade’s translation
into English of 1967, Ane Ipsen’s Danish translation of 1986, and Francisca Perujo’s
Italian version of 1990.1

© Swansea University 2009 DOI 10.1179/026399009X12523296128759

274 LAURA ANA LISI

The decision to work with four different translations at once and into languages
which are both linguistically unrelated to the source language (as is the case of
English, German, and certainly Danish) and more closely related to it (as is the case
of Italian) has to do with one of my primary aims for this comparison: to determine
whether the translators’ choices were limited by linguistic factors only (limitations set
by the single target languages) or whether other factors — which might be termed
‘cultural’ — conditioned the necessary transformations the texts have undergone in
the translation process. The study will refer to the theories of Gadamer, Ricœur, and
Berman, for whom translation is a hermeneutical activity, the paradigm of the act of
interpretation, and also an act of ‘linguistic hospitality’ (‘hospitalité langagière’)2
which provokes the encounter between Self and Other.
Juan Rulfo’s literary works are often classified as both strongly regional and
universal. In fact, his fictional setting restricts itself to only one region in his native
Mexico, the region of Jalisco. None the less, Rulfo cannot be said to belong to
the tradition of regionalist literature in Mexico. His prose is a conscious move away
from the documentarism of that kind of previous literature and a firm step towards
modernist writing. What distinguishes Rulfo from his Mexican predecessors is,
primarily, his use of language and his declared aims: stylistic ‘depuration’ and literary
recreation of the spoken language in the rural areas of his region.3
The technique adopted by Rulfo in order to transport the ‘orality’ of his region
into literature could be related to the Russian formalist notion of ‘skaz’: a narrative
technique which recreates an oral discourse in literature and creates an illusion of
narrations actually uttered by someone.4
Rulfo transformed the intonation, the rhythm, the ‘sententious’ tone of the
language spoken by his people into literature. It is the unmistakable sound of Rulfo’s
prose which gives the reader the impression that he is listening to the authentic voice
of a Mexican peasant. In this sense, to quote Borges, Rulfo seems indeed to have
discovered a specific destiny. In an essay on gaucho poetry, Borges observes that the
merit of Bartolomé Hidalgo — the founder of this genre — had been that of having
‘discovered’ the voice of the gaucho, thereby discovering his destiny. Borges notes:
‘en mi corta experiencia de narrador, he comprobado que saber cómo habla un per-
sonaje es saber quién es, que descubrir una entonación, una voz, una sintaxis peculiar,
es haber descubierto un destino’.5
In Rulfo’s case, the impression of authenticity and the expressive force of that voice
are the product of the convergence of a series of stylistic recourses brilliantly
employed at all textual levels — lexical, syntactic, prosodic — and, most impor-
tantly, of the constant and calculated repetition of those recourses throughout all the
texts. Although, naturally, it is the totality of those recourses which produces the oral
and regional tone of Rulfo’s prose in Llano, the consideration of all of them in trans-
lation would amply exceed the scope of this paper. Therefore, the focus here will
be on recourses employed only on the lexical level and more specifically on terms
deriving from Náhuatl.
While there is no consistent and extensive interference of a pre-Hispanic language
in Rulfo’s prose — as there is in the works of, say, José María Arguedas or Augusto
Roa Bastos — nonetheless the archaic rural language employed exhibits an
abundance of loan words from Náhuatl which clearly points to the presence of an
 ‘MEXICANISMS’ IN FOUR TRANSLATIONS OF RULFO 275

indigenous substratum, or — in the words of Martin Lienhard — to a partial

lexical bilingualism, i.e. to ‘una leve interferencia del idioma indígena en el idioma
europeo’.6
These ‘interferences’ are part of what A. Berman calls ‘vernacular elements’,7
which, to him, constitute one of the defining traits of any literary text. Berman
closely links the recreation of ‘vernacular networks’ in translation to the ‘travail sur
la lettre’ which is his ideal of translation. The ‘letter’, in Berman’s view, is a sort of
textual logic, a series of textual systematisms which make up the ‘world’ of the text
opening — in Ricœur’s words — not towards a referentiality behind the text but
rather ‘in front of the text’ (‘par devant le texte’).8 Thus it is a notion which leaves
aside both authorial intent (source-oriented approach) and reader expectations/needs
(target-oriented approach). It is this ‘letter’, or textual logic, which must be re-
inscribed in the target text (‘réinscription de la lettre’).9 The re-inscription of the
letter stands opposed to the simple ‘restitution of meaning’ which is the most basic
function of any act of translation. In Berman’s view, working on the letter in literary
translation to a large extent means working with the vernacular elements of the
source text.
The different techniques adopted in the four translations to render the ‘partial
bilingualism’ — the vernacular elements — in the target languages can be classified,
broadly, under one of the following two translation categories: a) naturalizing the
foreign term in the target language either by generalization (choosing a more general
term in the target language to translate the specific term in the source text), or through
the creation of compound words (i.e. compounding the original term with an
attributive term, which sheds light on the nature of the object denoted by the original
term);10 b) importing the foreign term directly into the target text and either glossing
it,11 or leaving it without further explanation. In this latter case, the context some-
times helps to define the foreign term — at least superficially, as far as its general
nature is concerned — but sometimes it does not.12
To illustrate the first of these two general techniques adopted — naturalizing trans-
lation by a semantically corresponding target language term — we shall consider an
example of the translation of a passage from Rulfo’s short story ‘En la madrugada’.
The term employed by Rulfo is ‘tapanco’, which is not included in the dictionary
of the Real Academia, but listed in Santamaría’s Diccionario de Mejicanismos13
as deriving from the Náhuatl tlapantli (terrace) and co (toponym). The definition
provided is: ‘desván o piso de maderos que sobre las vigas se pone en las casas de
techo de dos aguas, y que sirve a modo de bodega; o cualquier tapesco en alto, sobre
soportes’ (loft or storey made of timber which is placed on the beams in saddle-roof
houses and which is used for storage [of wine]; or any suspended shelf). The passage
from ‘En la madrugada’ reads (the emphases in the following extracts are my own):
Source Text (ST): Pensó también en subir al tapanco, para deshacer la cama dónde él y
Margarita habían pasado la noche. (Rulfo, 1996: 45)

Target Text (TT)1: Er dachte auch daran, auf den Heuboden zu steigen und die Spuren
des Lagers, auf dem er und Margarita die Nacht verbracht hatten, zu beseitigen (Frenk,
2003: 47–48). (‘He also thought about climbing up to the hayloft to remove the traces of
the bed where he and Margarita had spent the night’.)14
276 LAURA ANA LISI

TT2: He also thought about going up to the attic to smooth over the bed where he and
Margarita had spent the night. (Schade, 2003: 49)

TT3: Han tænkte også på at kravle op på høloftet og fjerne den seng hvor han og
Margarita havde tilbragt natten (Ipsen, 1986: 42). (‘He also thought about climbing up to
the hayloft to remove the bed where he and Margarita had spent the night’.)

TT4: Pensò anche di salire al solaio per disfare il letto dove lui e Margarita avevano
passato la notte. (Perujo, 1990: 41)

The term ‘tapanco’ is translated in the four translations by ‘Heuboden’, ‘attic’,

‘høloftet’, and ‘solaio’ respectively. In his ‘analytic of translation’ (1985), Berman
speaks of a problem inherent to the translation of idioms and fixed expressions which
can be related to the problem dealt with here. Berman notes that the difficulty of
translating idioms lies in the fact that most of these expressions ‘véhiculent un sens
ou une expérience se retrouvant aisément dans des locutions, etc. d’autres langues’
(Berman, 1985: 78). That is to say, these expressions base themselves on experiences
which are common to most cultures, and the temptation for the translator thus lies
in simply substituting the source text term or expression with its (semantic) corre-
spondent in the target language. Thus, the iconic density of the original expression
inevitably fades as the foreign image is ‘covered’ by an already familiar one.
The problem with a translation technique of this kind becomes clear if one
considers it in the light of Gadamer’s hermeneutical notion of pre-comprehension
(Vorverständnis)15 and its role in any act of comprehension. The ‘pre-comprehension’
— which is no more than what the word literally denotes, a comprehension (or judge-
ment, ‘Urteil’) before the final comprehension — is the mechanism which furthers the
ultimate comprehension of a meaning. It is a temporary judgement we form of the
thing to be comprehended and which we then measure against later judgements
(which make us confirm or discard our previous ones). This process continues, in a
constant ‘movement of meaning’ (‘Sinnbewegung’) towards the final comprehension
and generation of meaning. Our pre-comprehension is, however, always necessarily
based on our previous knowledge of the world and thus strongly influences our final
judgement of the thing in question.
The consequences for translation of the fact that we always comprehend through
already known concepts and paradigms can be observed in the example cited here.
The translations of ‘tapanco’ with ‘Heuboden’, ‘attic’, ‘høloft’, and ‘solaio’ respec-
tively, introduce the readers of the target text to the foreign term by means of a
term familiar to them in their own language. Thus, the comprehension process of the
readers of the translations is activated through their pre-comprehension of the four
target language concepts rather than through their engagement with the foreign term.
A reader of the English text, for example, will, in his understanding of the above
passage, depart from a pre-comprehension of the ‘attic’ of a house in his culture,
that is, a space below the roof of the house which is solidly constructed in the same
material as the house itself, often has windows, and is just another room of the house
normally used to store old things. The term ‘attic’ has all these denotations for
the English reader and a series of connotations as well, such as childhood, secrets,
memories — denotations and connotations which are automatically activated in
the mind of the target reader, but which are different from the ones implied by the
 ‘MEXICANISMS’ IN FOUR TRANSLATIONS OF RULFO 277

source-text term. The Mexican construction in question (the ‘tapanco’) seems to be

somewhat less substantial: the footnote in the Cátedra edition of Rulfo’s text defines
‘tapanco’ as ‘canopy made with strips of cane’ (‘toldo hecho con tiras de caña’).16
According to this definition, the ‘attic’ in question is not even a construction in wood
on top of the house, being just a canopy made of canes.
The point, however, is not whether the ‘tapanco’ and the ‘attic’ are comparable
constructions in real life. Rather, what is interesting from the point of view of
translation, is to what extent our understanding of something foreign is influenced by
our pre-comprehension. If we are confronted with a foreign term denoting an object
unfamiliar to us, we will have to activate a process — or Sinnbewegung — in which
we negotiate between our view of the world and the foreign world unfolding before
us. If, on the other hand, we are confronted with an already familiar term, there is
no reason for our mind to keep searching for a meaning; in the case just discussed,
there will be no reason for the English reader to search for any meaning hidden
behind ‘attic’ since, with his mind at rest, he will not suspect that behind the English
‘attic’ there used to be a Mexican ‘tapanco’.
This search for meaning is what Jean Boase-Beier refers to in her discussion of
‘maximum relevance’17 which she identifies as the principle governing literary transla-
tion. The literary translator’s task, Boase-Beier argues, is that of maintaining the
multiplicity of meanings and linguistic ambiguity which characterise all literature,
thereby ‘holding up the reader’, making him ‘search for significance’ instead of
handing him the ‘solution’ (Boase-Beier, 2006: 43).
A comparison with the other three translations will serve to further nuance the
selection of the English translator. The terms chosen in the German and Danish
versions (‘Heuboden’ and ‘høloft’ respectively) are still — as in the English transla-
tion — terms which will lead the reader to depart from a pre-comprehension clearly
rooted in the target culture, but, as opposed to the English version, an attempt to let
the reader sense — though almost imperceptibly — the foreignness of the object
denoted in the original can be perceived here. The German as well as the Danish
translator opt for two words which can be said to be direct translations of each
other: ‘Heuboden’ (hayloft) and ‘høloft’ (hayloft) where the attribute ‘hay’ in both
words gives the terms a rural tone which is lacking in the English ‘attic’. In the Italian
version a similar intention on behalf of the translator can be observed: the term
‘solaio’, as opposed, for example, to ‘soffitta’ or ‘sottotetto’, has more direct rural
connotations.18
It is evident from this example that the technique of substitution, employed in
various cases throughout the four translations, significantly dissipates the foreign
nature of the source text terms and expressions.
The second technique adopted by the translators in dealing with the abundant
Mexicanisms in Rulfo’s stories is, in a sense, the opposite of the one just analysed. In
many other cases, the translators choose to import the foreign term directly into the
target text, sometimes adding explanatory phrases, attributives or, in the German and
Italian versions, glossary entries, sometimes without further explanation. The case of
the translation of the term ‘ajolote’ in the following extract from the short story ‘El
hombre’ can serve to illustrate the latter. The emphases in the following passages are
my own:
278 LAURA ANA LISI

ST: Lo vi beber agua y luego hacer buches como quien está enjuagándose la boca; pero
lo que pasaba era que se había tragado un buen puño de ajolotes [. . .]. (Rulfo, 1996:
38)

TT1: Ich sah ihn Wasser trinken und dann gurgeln wie jemand, der sich den Mund
ausspült. Aber in Wirklichkeit hatte er eine Handvoll Axolotl runtergeschluckt (Frenk,
2003: 41). (‘I saw him drink water and then gargle like someone who is rinsing his mouth.
But in reality he had swallowed a handful of Axolotl’.)

TT2: I saw him take a drink and then fill his mouth with water like he was rinsing it out;
but what had happened was that he’d swallowed a good mouthful of mud puppies [. . .].
(Schade, 2003: 40)

TT3: Jeg så han drak noget vand, og at han spyttede som om han skyllede munden; men
det var fordi han havde fået munden fuld af axolotler [. . .] (Ipsen, 1986: 36). (‘I saw he
drank some water, and that he spit as if he were rinsing his mouth; but it was because he
had his mouth full of axolotls’.)

TT4: Lo vidi bere acqua e poi fare delle boccate, come chi si sciacqua la bocca; ma quel
che succedeva era che aveva mandato giú una buona manciata di girini [. . .]. (Perujo,
1990: 34)

Etymologically, the word ‘axolotl’ derives from the Náhuatl atl (water) and xolotl
(monster) and denotes the larva of a specific amphibian whose particular character-
istic is that it remains in larval mode without fulfilling its metamorphosis until its
adult, terrestrial state.
The German translator chooses to import the word directly from the source text,
without, surprisingly, explaining it in the glossary provided in the German edition.
The reader of the German translation is thus left to confront the foreign term
directly, and is not aided in his comprehension either by explanatory terms or by the
context, which in this case does not elucidate the meaning of ‘ajolote’ further. An
interesting aspect of the solution found by the German translator, evident also in the
Danish translation, is the fact that the word ‘ajolote’ is not imported in its Spanish
spelling — as it figures in the original text, i.e. written with a ‘j’ — but rather in its
traditional Mexican spelling with an ‘x’ (axolotl). The Danish translator further
chooses to adapt the word to the Danish morphology adding the plural desinence –er
(‘axolotler’). It is not unthinkable that the decision of the German and Danish trans-
lators to modify the source text term by means of an orthographic variation was
prompted by a desire to exoticize the term in the target text, possibly in order to
recuperate some of the local colour lost in other parts of the translation. The problem
of comprehension, however, persists: the foreign shines through, but the target text
reader does not have any basis on which to comprehend the foreign term and the
unknown object it denotes. The necessary respectful distance from the thing to be
comprehended (‘compréhension à distance’, Ricœur, 1986: 116) is kept, but the
distance risks being too great for the process of understanding to proceed.
The choices of the English and Italian translator — translating ‘ajolote’ with
‘mud puppies’ and ‘girini’ respectively — are, in this case, equivalent to the first case
treated. In English, the ‘mud puppy’ is, in fact, an animal comparable to the Mexican
‘ajolote’. The translator’s choice is thus that of presenting the reader with a similar
 ‘MEXICANISMS’ IN FOUR TRANSLATIONS OF RULFO 279

animal which might be more familiar to him. The English ‘mud puppies’, like the
Italian ‘girini’,19 deprive the ‘ajolotes’ not only of their linguistic specificity, but also
of their cultural density, which has roots deep in Aztec mythology.20
Neither of the two techniques generally adopted by the four translators to render
the ‘Mexican’ terms in the source text seems to be entirely satisfactory. Neither of
them really works with what Berman calls the ‘iconic’ richness of the terms, or what
Ezra Pound refers to as the words’ ‘luminosity’.21 These linguistically and culturally
specific terms in Rulfo’s stories are either covered up by the target language terms, or
‘over-exposed’ in the target text.
The challenge of finding a tangible solution to translating Mexicanisms in Rulfo’s
prose remains. Between the two techniques employed, that of importing the foreign
term directly into the target text no doubt comes closer to what Berman intended by
‘re-inscription of the letter’ since it generates what Boase-Beier calls ‘difficulty in
processing’ in the target text, thus ‘“hold[ing] up” the reader’ and making the foreign
more visible (2006: 43). However, as we have seen, in the case of Rulfo’s prose,
importing the foreign word directly into the target text often leaves the reader of the
translation at too great a distance from the thing to be understood. Also, if this is
really the only ideal solution to translating linguistically-specific terms, the transla-
tor’s creativity is seriously limited. Though a direct meeting between the Self and the
Other is provoked, what Ricœur and Berman mean by ‘linguistic hospitality’ and
‘hosting the foreign’ does not seem truly to be fulfilled.
Ricœur identifies the translator’s ideal, or ‘happiness’ as he calls it, in the notion
of ‘hospitalité langagière’ which envisages the hermeneutical act, and with it transla-
tion, as a meeting between the Self and the Foreign which is constructive and
enriching for both parties involved. Inherent in this notion of linguistic hospitality
is a dimension which is lacking from other hermeneutical theories (e.g. Steiner’s),22
that of the reconciliatory nature of the act of translation. Translation is hospitality
which hosts the foreign and the incomprehensible without aggression or pretence
to full comprehension; it is an act of loving acceptance which, by its very nature, is
incomplete and blind to imperfection.
The arduous (and necessarily impossible) task of the translator, therefore, consists
in approaching a foreign world, rather than just a foreign language. The ideal of
translation cannot merely be linguistic equivalence, but needs to reach beyond
language to the Obertöne (Gadamer), the overtones, which vibrate in the sound of
a language and give it substance. The notions of ‘linguistic hospitality’ and ‘hosting
the foreign’ have not so much to do with a preservation of all the source text’s
characteristics (which would correspond, simply, to the traditional notion of ‘literal
translation’), as with an actual ‘labour’ (travail) to be done on the target language.
In order fully to host the foreign text, the translation certainly needs to keep a respect-
ful distance (‘compréhension à distance’), but also, and more importantly perhaps, it
needs to give the source text new life in the target language.23
Therefore, the translator’s creative effort is indispensable not only to make the
meeting between host and guest truly possible, but also to ensure the survival of the
source text in the target language and culture. According to Benjamin, the importance
of translation lies not in the communication of a message, but in the transformation
and gradual completion of the source and target language which is a result of their
280 LAURA ANA LISI

supplementing (ergänzen) each other.24 Such linguistic transformation happens only

when the two languages forge a new language drawing on the fruitfulness of their
difference.
The translation of Rulfo’s linguistically specific terms, which has been considered
briefly here, gives witness to what happens when a translation is nothing more
than what John Johnston refers to as a process of ‘deterritorializing’ and ‘reterritori-
alizing’: the target language suffers no modifications in such a process because
the changes introduced in the target text are made ‘through reference to the already
written, to previously established cultural codings’.25 This kind of translation, which
Johnston calls ‘a simulacrum [. . .] in the Platonic sense’, i.e. ‘merely a bad copy’
(1992: 54), stands in sharp contrast to the positive simulacrum — in Deleuze’s sense
— i.e. the kind of representation which activates a potential rooted in the original
but fully realized only in the hybrid voice which is the translated text. Translation,
like the simulacrum in Deleuze’s view, is deviation because it includes in itself the
differential point of view: it is always at once ‘more or less’ than the original, but
never the same:
Le simulacre inclut en soi le point de vue différentiel; l’observateur fait partie du simulacre
lui-même, qui se transforme et se déforme avec son point de vue. Bref, il y a dans le
simulacre [. . .] un devenir toujours autre, un devenir subversif des profondeurs, habile à
esquiver l’égal, la limite, le Même ou le Semblable: toujours plus et moins à la fois, mais
jamais égal.26

In the modern hermeneutical tradition since Gadamer, translation is considered as the

paradigm of the act of interpretation per se. The two are related by the fact that in
both the desired result can always be only partial and imperfect; just like the act of
interpretation never leads to a full comprehension (embodiment in Steiner’s sense)
of the foreign, so translation can never lead to total equivalence. As Friedrich
Schleiermacher anticipated, an inevitable core of ‘non understanding’ (‘nicht
verstehen’)27 always remains in every act of translation and comprehension. It is no
coincidence that another philosopher, Paul Ricœur, defines translation as ‘saying the
same thing differently’ (‘dire la même chose autrement’, Ricœur, 2004: 45) precisely
because the only truly equivalent translation of any expression remains the simple
repetition of that expression.28 The barrenness of repetition, or mere reproduction,
stands in stark contrast to the promise of a notion such as linguistic hospitality, where
the interaction with the Other is the necessary premise for the definition of the Self
as a ‘mobile space’29 which is constantly shaping and re-shaping itself.

Notes
1 Rulfo, Toda la Obra. Edición Crítica, ed. by Claude
The translations used in this analysis are the follow-
ing: Juan Rulfo, The Burning Plain, trans. by George
D. Schade (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003);
Juan Rulfo, Der Llano in Flammen, trans. by
Mariana Frenk (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2
2003); Juan Rulfo, Sletten brænder, trans. by Ane
Ipsen (København: Samleren 1986); Juan Rulfo,
3
La pianura in fiamme, trans. by Francisca Perujo
(Torino: Einaudi, 1990). The edition of Rulfo’s El
Llano en llamas used here is the one found in Juan
Fell (Madrid: ALLCA XX Ediciones Archivos
UNESCO, 1996). Unless otherwise indicated, all
page references are to these editions and will be
cited parenthetically in the text.
Paul Ricœur, Sur la traduction (Paris: Bayard, 2004),
p. 19.
Rulfo’s statement about this artistic intent is one
of his best known: ‘Lo que yo no quería era hablar
como un libro escrito. Quería no hablar como se
 ‘MEXICANISMS’ IN FOUR TRANSLATIONS OF RULFO
escribe, sino escribir como se habla’ (my emphasis),
in Reina Roffé, Juan Rulfo, autobiografía armada
(Barcelona: Montesinos, 1992), p. 24. On the
specific techniques adopted by Rulfo in his search
for this linguistic depuration of his literary style, see
Nila Gutiérrez Marrone, El estilo de Juan Rulfo:
estudio lingüístico (New York: Bilingual Press,
1978).
4 16
See Boris Eichenbaum, ‘La ilusión del skaz’, in
Antología del formalismo ruso y el grupo de Bajtin.
Semiótica del discurso y posformalismo bajtiniano,
ed. by Emil Volek (Madrid: Fundamentos, 1995),
pp. 113–17.
5
Jorge Luis Borges, ‘La poesía gauchesca’, in Obras
Completas, 4 vols (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996), I, 181.
6
Martin Lienhard, La voz y su huella. Escritura y
conflicto étnico-social en América Latina (1492–
1988) (La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 1990),
p. 141. Lienhard and other critics (Cornejo Polar,
Rama) ascribe Rulfo’s work to the ‘alternative’,
‘heterogeneous’ literatures or ‘literatures of trans-
culturation’ in which elements of two cultures
coexist. See Antonio Cornejo Polar, Literatura y
sociedad en el Perú. La novela indigenista (Lima:
Lasontay, 1980), and Ángel Rama, Transculturación
narrativa en América Latina (México: Siglo XXI,
1980).
7
Antoine Berman, ‘La traduction comme épreuve de
l’étranger’, in Texte, 4 (1985), 67–81. The English
terms cited here are taken from Venuti’s translation
of Berman’s article: ‘Antoine Berman, “Translation
and the Trials of the Foreign”’, trans. by Lawrence
Venuti, in The Translation Studies Reader, ed.
by Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 2004),
pp. 276–89.
8 1998).
Paul Ricœur, Du texte à l’action. Essais
d’herméneutique II (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1986),
p. 116.
9 Walter Benjamin, ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’, in
Antoine Berman, ‘La traduction et ses discours’, in
Meta 34.4 (1989), 676.
10
The first case, for example, manifests itself in the
consistent translation in the English and Danish text
of the word ‘el zacate’ (a kind of grass) — from the
Náhuatl zacatl, defined by the Real Academia as
‘hierba, pasto’— by ‘grass’ and ‘græs’ respectively.
The second case, most frequent in the German
translation, is exemplified in the translation of the
same term with the compound ‘Zacategras’ or in
the translation of a term like ‘huizache’ (a kind of
aromatic acacia) — from the Náhuatl huixachi,
meaning ‘thorny’ — with ‘Huizachesträucher’
(huizache-shrubs).
11
Only the German and Italian translations are
equipped with a glossary of terms for the target
reader. The former contains eight items, the latter
thirty-eight terms.
12
The cases about to be illustrated are part of a wider
research project and are to be seen merely as a few
281
paradigmatic examples of numerous similar cases
found throughout the texts studied.
13
Francisco J. Santamaría, Diccionario de Mejicanis-
mos (México: Porrúa, 2000).
14
This and all further literal translations into English
of the German and Danish passages are my own.
15
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode
(Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1965).
Juan Rulfo, El llano en llamas, ed. by Carlos Blanco
Aguinaga (Madrid: Cátedra, 2001), p. 73.
17
Jean Boase-Beier, Stylistic Approaches to Transla-
tion (Manchester: St Jerome, 2006), p. 43.
18
According to Zingarelli, the term ‘solaio’, denotes in
Tuscany a ‘locale sotto il tetto con un lato aperto,
frequente nelle case dei contadini’. See Nicola
Zingarelli, Lo Zingarelli. Vocabolario della Lingua
Italiana (Bologna: Zanichelli, 2000).
19
The Italian word ‘girino’ actually means ‘tadpole’,
and thus denotes a different kind of animal
altogether. The result in the Italian translation,
however, is equivalent to the one in the English
version: the original term is ‘covered’ by the target
language term, which is immediately comprehensi-
ble and recognisable to the target reader.
20
According to mythology, the origin of this animal is
related to the last of the metamorphoses suffered by
Xolotl, twin brother of Quetzalcóatl, who — trying
to avoid death — hid in the water and transformed
himself into an ajolote.
21
Ezra Pound, ‘I gather the Limbs of Osiris’, in
Selected Prose 1909–1965, ed. by William Cookson
(New York: New Directions, 1973), pp. 21–43.
22
George Steiner, After Babel. Aspects of Language
and Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
23
See Ezra Pound, ‘Guido’s relations’, in The Dial
Magazine, 86.7 (1929), 559–68.
24
Gesammelte Schriften, 17 vols (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972–1991), IV (1972), 18.
25
John Johnston, ‘Translation as Simulacrum’, in
Rethinking Translation, ed. by Lawrence Venuti
(London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 54.
26
Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens (Paris: Minuit,
1969), p. 298.
27
For the German Romantic, the hermeneutical
problem resides in the ‘non-comprehension of
speech’ (‘nicht verstehens der Rede’). Where there
is comprehension, that is, where there is nothing
foreign, there is no need to interpret or clarify. F. D.
E. Schleiermacher, Über den Begriff der Hermeneu-
tik mit Bezug auf F. A. Wolfs Andeutungen und Asts
Lehrbuch (1829), in Ermeneutica, testo tedesco a
fronte, ed. by Massimo Marassi (Milan: Rusconi,
1996), p. 416.
28
Likewise, Ludwig Wittgenstein identifies the limits
of language in the fact that it is impossible to
282 LAURA ANA LISI
interpret (or translate) fully an expression without
repeating that very same expression: ‘Die Grenze
der Sprache zeigt sich in der Unmöglichkeit, die
Tatsache zu beschreiben, die einem Satz entspricht
29
(seine Übersetzung ist), ohne eben den Satz zu
wiederholen’ (‘The limit of language shows itself in
the impossibility of describing the fact which
corresponds to a sentence (which is its translation)
Notes on Contributor
Correspondence to: Laura Ana Lisi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milan,
Italy. Email: Laura.lisi@gmail.com
without repeating that very sentence’). Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen, ed. by
Georg Henrik von Wright (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1977), p. 27.
Stefano Arduini, ‘Idee per una epistemologia della
traduzione’, in Comunicazione Interpretazione
Traduzione, ed. by Susan Petrilli (Milan: Mimesis,
2006), p. 42.
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