José Martí, translator
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José Martí (1853-1895) is usually honored as the great poet, patriot and martyr of Cuban Independence, but he was also a translator of some note. Although he translated literary material for the sheer joy of it, much of the translating he did was imposed on him by economic necessity during his many years of exile in the United States. Martí learned English at an early age, and had begun to translate at thirteen. He continued translating for the rest of his life, including his time as a student in Spain, although the period of his greatest productivity was during his stay in New York from 1880 until he returned to Cuba to die on the battlefield against the Spaniards in 1895.
In New York he was what we would today call a "free-lance" as well as an "in-house" translator. He translated several books for the publishing house of D. Appleton, and did a series of translations for newspapers. As a revolutionary activist in Cuba's long struggle for independence he translated into English a number of articles and pamphlets supporting that movement.
There was clearly a dichotomy in Martí's feeling about the kind of work he was translating. Like many professionals, he undertook for money translation tasks which had little intellectual or emotional appeal for him. De la Cuesta illustrates this nicely with a quotation in which Martí reflects on his translation projects in February 1883, writing to his sister Amelia: "Anoche puse fin a la traducción de un libro de lógica que me ha parecido - a pesar de tener yo por maravillosamente inútiles tantas reglas pueriles - preciosísimo libro, puesto que con el producto de su traducción puedo traer a mi padre a mi lado."
Martí was also a diplomat in his years in exile in New York, acting as consul for several Latin America countries and conducting their business in that city as well as at various conferences in Washington. He wrote for the major newspaper La Nación of Buenos Aires, and his candid commentaries for that paper during the 1889-1890 First Inter-American Conference in Washington provide a neat counterbalance to the dry official documentation. Martí obviously had access to behind-the-scenes sources (especially from the Argentine side), and his columns were sprinkled with almost gossipy references to what the various delegations said to (and about) each other in private. His commentary on the strains between the host US delegation and the aggressively independent Argentine delegation are especially illuminating.
Martí was much involved in writing for Spanish-speaking audiences about the assassination attempt and eventual death of President Garfield in 1881. Using several New York newspapers as sources, Martí took the basic accounts and translated them, but also added personal touches which in his view were necessary to convey the appropriate emotional tone to a Latin audience. In so doing he showed his skill as a translator as well as his creative abilities as a journalist and author.
Although Martí never presented a systematic theory of translation nor did he write extensively about his approach to translation, he did jot down occasional thoughts on the subject which are of value: "yo creo que traducir es transpensar ... traducir es pensar en español lo que en su idioma ellos (los autores) pensaron ... traducir es estudiar, analizar, ahondar." His awareness of the translator's dilemma of the faithful versus the beautiful is evidenced in his belief that "la traducción debe ser natural para que parezca como si el libro hubiese sido escrito en la lengua al que lo traduces, que en esto se conocen las buenas traducciones" and "ve pues el cuidado con que hay que traducir, para que la traducción pueda entenderse y resulte elegante - y para que el libro no quede, como tantos libros traducidos, en la misma lengua extraña en que estaba."[1].
Footnote
- ^ Leonel de la Cuesta, "Martí traductor - apuntes liminares", ATA Conference Proceedings (Miami: American Translators Assocation, 1985, pp.6-7)
[edit] References
José Martí, Inside the Monster. Philip S. Foner, ed. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975, pp. 29-30.
Luis A. Baralt, ed., Martí on the USA. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966.
Christopher Abel, José Martí: Revolutionary Democrat. London: Athlone Press, 1986, p. 144-145.
José Martí, Obras Completas, Volume 6: Nuestra América. La Habana: Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1963.
José Martí, Argentina y la Primera Conferencia Panamericana, edited by Dardo Cúneo. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Transición, nd.
