Translation: Language article I, part 2

This entry marks my continued translation from Spanish to English of the online article, "Sobre 'pilota', 'portavoza', 'miembra' y otros femeninos." by Salvador Gutiérrez, published in El Mundo February 10, 2018. I began the translation some months back and started to share it with you, then came a hiatus from blogging. I disappeared! Actually, my medical writing and editing have been keeping me very busy, and busy is good! But I want to be more diligent about making time for these entries, which for me, keep the Spanish-English linguistic muscle alive and flexing! 

Before continuing with the article, I'm going to side-step for a moment and mention something which initially here will seem out of place. A while back I had seen a movie called Sideways. If you've never seen it, please do! It's a wonderful film about wine, life, struggle, friendship, love, truth, deception, and self-discovery. If you have seen it, then you know what a great movie it is without further explanation. Well, at one point, one of the characters in the film refers to a bottle of wine as being alive. That if it was opened on one day, it would taste different than if it was opened on any other day. I mention this here because, in many ways, I'm finding the process of translation to be very much the same. Translation is a living process. How I express what is written on the page in Spanish one day changes if I put the writing down and return to it at another time. How does it change? Well, I can't alter the meaning the original author intended, but the way I express that meaning varies as I vary. It's fluid, as I'm fluid. It changes with me. I prepared the following paragraphs 3 months ago, but I read them again today and made changes, because I'm not looking at it through the same eyes--from even as little a time as 3 months back. I leave you with this quote from Heraclitus, which best sums up this experience better than I can express it:

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

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Con la norma hemos dado, amigo Sancho. En estas situaciones, recuerdo las palabras de Emilio Alarcos en el "Prólogo" a su Gramática de la lengua española: "Conviene así que el normativismo se forre de escéptica cautela". Incluía esta afirmación después de hacer referencia al Appendix Probi, un texto normativo del siglo IV en el que se condenaban la forma de pronunciar y de escribir más de 250 palabras en el latín hablado porque se apartaban de la norma del latín clásico: "mensa non mesa", "tabula non tabla", corregía. El éxito de tales anatemas fue nulo: casi la totalidad de las formas repudiadas triunfaron en las lenguas romances. El resultado del análisis coincide siempre con la tesis de Horacio en el Arte poética: la palabras perecen o reviven "si el uso lo quiere" ("si uolet usus"). El pueblo es el dueño del idioma.

With the norm we have given, friend Sancho. In these situations, I remember the words of Emilio Alarcos in the “Prologue” to his Spanish Language Grammar: “It helps that normativism is lined with skeptical caution.” It included this affirmation after making reference to the Probi Appendix, a text of rules from the 4^th century in which condemned the manner of pronouncing and writing more than 250 words in spoken Latin because they were separated from the classical Latin rules: “mensa non mesa”, “tabula non tabla”, they corrected. The success of such exclusions amounted to nothing: almost the entire number of rejected words found their place in the romance languages.  The result of this analysis always coincides with the thesis of Horacio in Poetic Art:the words appear or relive “if their use is warranted” (“si uolet usus”). The people are the keepers of the language.

En las discusiones sobre la corrección de una forma o de una expresión lingüística conviene diferenciar dos conceptos: el sistema y la norma. El sistema es el marco formal que establece las posibilidades de variación o de combinación que permite la lengua. Muchas de esas posibilidades no están aplicadas o explotadas por el uso, a causa de diferentes razones. La norma recoge lo que en un momento dado los hablantes consideran correcto. El sistema es estable, cambia con extrema dificultad. Sin embargo, la norma es variable, tornadiza. Depende de la valoración del pueblo.

In discussions regarding the correction of a word form or a linguistic expression, it helps to differentiate between two concepts: the system and the rule. The system is the formal mark that establishes the possibilities of variation or combination that the language permits. Many of those possibilities are not applied or fully explored in through regular use, due to various reasons. What is considered “the rules” at the moment is what speakers consider correct. The system is stable, and changes only with extreme difficulty. However, the rules are variable, like a tornado’s path. They depend on the acceptance of the people.

Pongamos algunos ejemplos. El sistema de la lengua nos dice que el femenino de sustantivos de profesiones se forma morfológicamente añadiendo la desinencia -a al masculino. Sin embargo, por diversas razones (muchas veces relacionadas con la realidad social), esa posibilidad del sistema no siempre se realiza. En las Cortes de Cádiz el término diputado era masculino y solo designaba a varones, pues la mujer no podía ser elegida parlamentaria. Cuando alcanza este derecho, el término diputada, perfecta según el sistema de la lengua, chocaba con la costumbre, con la norma, por lo que se prefirió durante algún tiempo diferenciar el sexo solo a través del artículo (el diputado/la diputado). Más tarde, el uso generalizará la forma femenina y hoy decimos con toda naturalidad diputada.

We’ll give a few examples. The language system tells us that the feminine of professional nouns is formed morphologically by adding the ending “-a” to the masculine. However, for various reasons (many times related to the social climate), that suggestion of the language system is not always accomplished.  In “Las Cortes de Cádiz”, the term “diputado” was masculine and only meant for men, because a woman couldn’t be elected to parliament. When this right was achieved, the term “diputada”, perfect according to the language system, clashed with custom,  with the accepted norm, which preferred during that time to differentiate between the sexes through a change in the article (el diputado/ la diputado). Later, with use, the feminine form would become more common and today we say completely naturally “diputada”.

Reference

Gutiérrez, Salvador Ó. (2018 February 10).  Sobre 'pilota', 'portavoza', 'miembra' y otros femeninos. El Mundo. Retrieved from: www.elmundo.es/espana/2018/02/10/5a7df963ca474179478b4698.html