Research Project: Translating Roald Dahl

Jamie Ferrell

Professor Kristin Hanson

UC Berkeley English 190: Nonsense

7 December 2017

Research Project: Translating Roald Dahl

I. Introduction

Nonsense literature is an attractive genre for translators due to the challenge it produces and the creative liberties it affords them. British children’s author Roald Dahl is one of the most famous and therefore most commonly translated nonsense authors of late; in fact, his 1982 children’s book The BFG has been translated into more languages than any of his other works. I aim to compare Dahl’s original story The BFG to Pedro Barbadillo’s Spanish translation, El Gran Gigante Bonachón. In this assessment, I will begin with an investigation into the world of translation in order to gain perspective on the field itself, from critiques of translation as a practice to critiques of Barbadillo’s specific work. The ability to be faithful to both form and meaning is a predicament in any kind of translation, but nonsense as a genre maneuvers form and meaning in a way that makes it particularly difficult to translate. Thus, after extensive close reading of the chosen work in both languages, I hope to reveal the extent to which various literary methods utilized by Roald Dahl in creating the BFG’s universe are exceptionally dependent on the English language, many of them distinctive for their deliberately muddled idioms, rhyming, and alliteration.

Rather than assess the quality of translation, I will profile Barbadillo’s strategies on a case-by-case basis regarding how they directly or indirectly render or replace the English version’s linguistic peculiarities. In addition to the given source texts, I will utilize secondary source material that profiles general translation strategies in this area, including Mona Baker’s “In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation,” which offers step-by-step translation guidelines, so as to better recognize the process of translating neologisms, puns, and spoonerisms, and subsequently evaluate the translatable nature of nonsense in the original English.

II. Summary of The BFG

The BFG, written in 1982, tells the story of an orphan named Sophie who is snatched from her bed in London in the middle of the night by a giant, named the Big Friendly Giant, or the BFG. It turns out that the BFG lives up to his name and simply took Sophie from her bed so that she would not tell other humans about him. He takes her back to Giant Country, where the two strike up a strong friendship, and it is revealed that there are nine other far more fearsome and horrible giants who sneak off at nighttime to eat humans, which they call “human beans.” The Big Friendly Giant, who the other giants belittle and abuse, subsists only on snozzcumbers, revolting cucumber-like vegetables. The BFG also has a pair of enormous ears that allow him to hear “all the secret whisperings of the world,” including dreams, which are small pulsing balls of energy that fly through the air and into people’s heads at night. He is able to catch the dreams in a butterfly net and collect them, as well as mix them together to create new ones. By night, the BFG travels to the land of humans and blows happy dreams in through the windows of sleeping children. Sophie, despondent at the other giants’ behavior and tendency to bully the BFG, cooks up a plan to tell the Queen of England and get the Royal Army to capture them all. The BFG mixes various dreams together at Sophie’s request, and the two travel to London to blow the dream mixture through the queen’s window. She wakes up, having dreamt of all nine giants eating kids from local boys’ and girls’ schools, and when Sophie and the BFG reveal themselves to her shortly thereafter, she sends the Royal Army to Giant Country. There, all nine giants are tied up in their sleep, hoisted into the air by helicopters, and carried off to live in a vast pit in London and eat snozzcumbers for the rest of their lives, for the amusement of the locals and tourists. The BFG and Sophie are celebrated as international heroes, and the BFG writes a book about their adventure, which is revealed to be the very book we have been reading: The BFG.

III. A Disclaimer: “The Translation Paradox”

Before focusing on Barbadillo’s specific translation of The BFG, it is first necessary to have an understanding of translation as a field. Tim Parks’ article “The Translation Paradox” appeared in the New York Review of Books in March of 2016. In an emphatic discussion of the importance of translation, Parks examines what he considers to be a largely overlooked issue in the field: namely, that “glory for the translator is borrowed glory,” and critics have a general attitude of “automatic congratulation” for the translator even if it is not well deserved. I will examine the main points of Parks’ argument with relation to the role and reputation of translators in general and extrapolate his points out to available information regarding Pedro Barbadillo, Spanish translator of The BFG.

Parks begins with the assertion that translators are only celebrated when they translate celebrated works, and that conversely, many great translations receive minimal attention if the original work also lacked public interest. He refers to the translation of The Complete Works of Primo Levi, in which ten different Italian-English translators worked on ten different segments, but for whom the highest critical praise is reserved for Levi’s most well known works. Ann Goldstein and Stuart Woolf, he says, have “monopolized critical comment” due to the relative prestige of their respective originals, while the other eight translators are scarcely publicly acknowledged. He then cites two lesser-mentioned translators of The Complete Works, Jenny McPhee and Nathaniel Rich, who offer “lively translations” of several of Levi’s lesser-known texts, which, while still admittedly erroneous, are “light-years away from the ‘ankylosed,’ cognate-rich world of Goldstein and Woolf.” Parks subsequently classifies one Levi translation by Anne Milano Appel as being “near perfect,” but whose comparatively small volume, content, and prior public perception grants it little recognition compared to the other works.

Given the range of translation quality in The Complete Works of Primo Levi, Parks later speculates on the extent to which translation quality surfaces in critical response, or in his own words, “How much, or how little, did the polish, or lack of it, of the various renderings matter?” He answers that, despite several critics finding errors in the compilation, they largely accept Goldstein’s claim in the introduction to have created a “consistently recognizable tone,” and “[their] whole attitude, like that of most other reviewers—indeed of most other reviews of any major work in translation—was one of automatic congratulation.” He believes that this automatic congratulation is a result of “default diplomacy,” or the assumption that a translation is good based on the translator’s reputation rather than their work—a reputation that comes from “borrowed glory” of the original author. Additionally, Parks stresses that publishers further glorify the reputation of a translator, regardless of the actual quality of the translation, if their project is receiving major investments or gaining commercial success. This, he says, is a result of the “diminishing importance of the written word,” and “eagerness to pat ourselves on the back for our love of culture,” notions that apply to both critics and the public alike.

With Parks’ anecdote in mind, I spent several hours attempting to research Pedro Barbadillo in both Spanish and English, but I could find virtually nothing, be it biographical information (other than a birth year of 1923), reviews mentioning him by name, or even a picture of the translator. Of the references I did find, they mostly made brief remarks about his extensive list of translated works, the most significant of which occurs in Hermann J. Real’s The Reception of Jonathan Swift in Europe:

Pedro Barbadillo…an experienced translator with a long list of works to his credit… more than thirty titles of a very heterogeneous nature, including works by Roald Dahl, Elizabeth Baquedano, and Eric Wilson, and some of them belonging to the field of ‘popular literature’, purely commercial in nature. (67).

This citation, although useful in understanding the range of Barbadillo’s work, does little to corroborate his skill as a translator, perhaps affirming Parks’ quality-versus-quantity argument, that the reputation of a translator often doubles as an evaluation of their work.

Interestingly, although critical responses to Dahl’s writing itself abound in English, there are significantly fewer available critiques in Spanish, and of those accessed, few critics remarked on the success of the translation, most of them simply championing Dahl’s skill as a children’s author and praising his imaginative plots. The most candid remark I found regarding the language itself came in a short paragraph from a post written in Spanish by Joaquín Torán on the website “Fabulantes,” based in Madrid, Spain.

Dahl obliga a sus traductores a esforzarse en su trabajo; la versión española de Alfaguara no está siempre a la altura, pues a veces los juegos de palabras planteados por el escritor, o las palabras de nueva creación que emplea el bruto gigante, no están bien plasmadas o no tienen un equivalente logrado en castellano. Pasa a menudo que las cepas de la palabra inventada se escapen totalmente al lector adulto. Eso sí, el niño que lo lea, o que se lo haga leer, sonreirá seguro. Y eso es lo que importa…

Dahl puts his translators to work: the Spanish version of Alfaguara is not always at the same level, as sometimes the plays on words given by the writer, or the made up words that the giant uses, are not well depicted or do not have an effective Spanish equivalent. Oftentimes the strains of invented words completely escape the adult reader. That said, the child that reads it, or tries to read it, will surely laugh. And that’s what is important…

Torán’s assessment of Barbadillo’s translation is quite frank in its analysis. It is not clear if Torán has read the English version and therefore has something with which to compare it, but regardless, he finds Barbadillo’s translation to be somewhat unsuccessful, at least for adult readers. Torán also makes a good point about child readers: it is true that some of the puns would go over a child’s head, but rather than clouding the storyline, it adds a layer of confusion that is fitting to the lunacy of the writing style. The underlying confusion and lack of logic in nonsense as a genre fosters an environment that permits a certain amount of perplexity. For example, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is often considered to be a kid’s book with hidden puns and logical structures that add a layer of amusement for an adult reader. In Dahl’s work, it is much the same; perhaps a child reading in Spanish would be equally as satisfied as a child reading in English, while adults reading the English version would find the puns more successful than those reading in Spanish.

This assessment of the quality of Barbadillo’s translation contrasts that of another Spanish book review from a teacher in Perú, who goes by Gaby:

…me parece que debe estar bien traducido ya que se entiende perfectamente y no he encontrado errores gramaticales al leerlo. Sí hay que tener en cuenta que en general en los libros de Roald Dahl pueden encontrarse algunos modismos o palabras que son propias del español de España, ya que las traducciones suelen ser españolas y hay palabras específicas que en américa latina no se suelen utilizar como parte del vocabulario típico, sin embargo esto no resta valor a la traducción de la obra según mi opinión.

…it appears to me that it must be well translated given that it’s perfectly understandable and I haven’t found grammatical errors in reading it. Yes, you must keep in mind that Roald Dahl’s books in general can have idioms or words that are from the Spanish of Spain, so the translations can be more Spanish and there are specific words that are not part of the typical vocabulary in Latin America, however this does not deduct value from the translation in my opinion.

It is worth noting that Gaby’s Peruvian Spanish, as opposed to Torán’s Spanish Spanish, is what she blames for the disconnect of some words and phrases in the translation. However, despite these periodic inconsistencies with the specific vocabulary not often used in Latin America, Gaby still rates the translation highly and considers it to be ‘perfectly understandable.’ Barbadillo’s publishing house, Alfaguara, is based in Madrid, so his version would likely cater to the Spanish reader. Torán, a critic also based in Spain, would therefore have more knowledge of the words and expressions chosen by Barbadillo, so it is important to keep in mind the background of the critics, as well as the country of publication, when reading reviews of the translation.

Given that there is minimal critical feedback on Barbadillo’s translations outside of these comments, I will use them to inform my own understanding of the translation to an extent, while working to take into account the other positive Spanish reviews of the book itself as potential affirmations of the translation. So far, of the few succinct and unsubstantiated comments I did manage to find regarding Barbadillo himself, it appears that despite his apparent proliferation as a translator he is almost completely unknown, and as Parks’ argument suggests, merely acknowledging his physical volume of works is the closest most critics have come to providing commentary about quality. It appears that objectivity and systematic close reading will be necessary tools in understanding Barbadillo’s strategies given that, according to Parks, his “glory” may in fact be “borrowed.” Indeed, regardless of whether it is “good” translation, it is still the only published Spanish translation, and given that an assessment of quality is fairly subjective, it will be necessary to recall the big-picture implications for nonsense as an English-dependent genre.

IV. The Theory Behind Nonsense Translation: What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?

‘Do you know Languages? What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?’

‘Fiddle-de-dee’s not English,’ Alice replied gravely.

‘Who ever said it was?’ said the Red Queen.

Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty this time. ‘If you’ll tell me what language “fiddle-de-dee” is, I’ll tell you the French for it!’ she exclaimed triumphantly.

But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said ‘Queens never make bargains.’

‘I wish Queens never asked questions,’ Alice thought to herself.

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There

This scene from Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland epitomizes a core question in nonsense translation: What ties a made-up word to a specific language? And how does one translate these words and concepts? The “brick, blick, bnick” triplet (Chomsky) is a common explanation of this issue, exemplifying how possible and impossible combinations of sounds operate in a given language. The first two words, “brick” and “blick,” are existing and possible words in present-day English, respectively, because the “br-“ and “bl-“ sounds are both permissible English lexical combinations. The third word, “bnick,” is not—it “violates a constraint of this language to the effect that initial stops can only be followed by oral sonorants” (Roca), or in other words, the “bn-“ combination falls outside of the limited number of sounds that may follow a hard “b” in English.

An understanding of what is lexically possible in a given language creates a foundation for many translators’ decisions when faced with formal constraints. Douglas L. Hofstadter discusses the translator’s dilemma in preserving form versus meaning in his 1997 book, Le Ton beau de Marot. Hofstadter elucidates the complications of lipography, in which a text is written “under the constraint that one or more letters are not allowed to be used at all,” and its ability to be translated. In this case, the preservation of a text’s form, such as that of French author Georges Perec’s La disparition, which suppresses “e”’s, had translators jumping through linguistic hoops to varying degrees of success. Hofstadter mentions Scottish translator Gilbert Adair, who made the audacious decision to translate “un loup fuit,” or “a wolf flees,” to “chipmunks run wild.” Adair did this in order to preserve the ambiguity of “fuit,” which is both a past and present tense conjugation in the French version, while still conforming to the “a”-less formal constraint he had imposed on himself to mimic the original “e”-less one. This preservation of tense and form comes at the sacrifice of content, a predicament in which Hofstadter remarks that Adair “is being shoved brutally about” but can still do “‘whatever he wants’—at least within limits—and he does it” (116).

An alternative perspective on the translation process itself comes from Czech literary theoretician Jiří Levý, who upholds two primary parts of translation theory as the “reproduction norm” and the “artistic norm,” which differ from the aforementioned form and meaning concepts. Levý defines the reproduction norm as “the requirement to capture the original faithfully” and the artistic norm as “the requirement of beauty” (60). The two norms generally operate on a case-by-case basis, not just between given translated works, but within the works themselves as translators plan the extent to which each norm is carried out in a given scene or situation. Levý’s perspective permits more creative liberties with regards to form, because the “requirement of beauty” does not necessarily depend on the original work, but rather challenges the translator to create a piece that might have been written in that language in the first place. The “reproduction norm” may be considered a simultaneous preservation of both form and meaning that contributes to the overall sense of “faithfulness.” The requirement of beauty may act as a vehicle for the reproduction, but does not necessitate as much authenticity to the original text.

A translator’s ability to replicate the source text becomes more complicated when it comes to the issue of idioms, puns, and wordplay. Mona Baker describes idioms and fixed expressions as “frozen patterns of language which allow little or no variation in form and, in the case of idioms, often carry meanings which cannot be deduced from their individual components” (67). Given the diversity of idioms and fixed expressions, which often have cultural ties or other “untranslatable” parts, Baker outlines a set of strategies for translating idioms, which decrease in precision depending on the idiom:

Using an idiom of similar meaning or form.
Using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form.
Borrowing the source language idiom.
Translation by paraphrase.
Translation by omission of a play on idiom.
Translation by omission of entire idiom. (76-85)

Baker’s list of tactics may be compared to Levý’s artistic and reproduction norms, as they both operate on a case-by-case basis depending on the given problem to be solved. Barbadillo is forced to use the majority of these solutions to some extent throughout his translation of The BFG, exemplifying the irresolute and unpredictable process necessary for the translation of nonsense literature, but he most commonly chooses option C, borrowing the source language idiom. This is one of the more common strategies for translating idioms, because even if an expression is not tied to the source language, the general meaning can still often be comprehended based on context. Baker mentions an example from the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, which implements the idiom “Out of this World” in one of its promotional pamphlets. In all versions of the leaflet (French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Japanese), the idiom is simply translated to that language, and its double meaning of ‘superb’ or ‘fantastic’ is still more or less implied and retained.

With the contributions of Chomsky, Hofstadter, Levý, and Baker in mind, Barbadillo’s choices as a translator may be understood on a continuum. Firstly, Roald Dahl’s writing invents a world directly out of the lexical possibilities that may be created using English constraints, producing a spectrum of neologisms, malapropisms, spoonerisms, idioms, and puns. An understanding of what is lexically impossible is therefore the impetus that drives writers like Dahl to take creative liberties in the gray area of what is lexically possible. In other words, out of the “brick, blick, bnick” triplet, Dahl’s world is created using words that fall into the lexically possible, albeit meaningless, “blick” category. Pedro Barbadillo’s translation of The BFG (El Gran Gigante Bonachón) is created with Spanish nonsense words in the place of Dahl’s English ones. Rather than imitate the specific phonetics of Dahl’s inventions, Barbadillo instead chooses to replicate his creative process within the constraints of Spanish lexicon, producing words like “pepináspero” and “gásipum” to represent “snozzcumber” and “frobscottle.” At this level, his choice is an astute one, given that the alternative option of recreating the actual sounds of Dahl’s made up words would likely change the meaning too much for them to be nearly as operable within the story.

Hofstadter’s anecdote about lipographic constraints exemplifies the dilemma of adhering too closely to a replication of form; in order to avoid this dilemma, Barbadillo loosens the physical constraints of language, allowing himself to invent new words in Spanish rather than attempting to recreate the invented English words. This allows him to do “whatever he wants” formally so as to reproduce the effect and meaning of the English version, a freedom that more or less satisfies Levy’s “requirement of beauty.” Perhaps a certain amount of disregard for the original form is what enables the retention of meaning, and as long as the “beauty” is believable in the target language, the translation is considered to be successful.

V. Close readings

Returning to Dahl’s English neologisms “snozzcumber” and “frobscottle,” which are translated to “pepináspero” and “gásipum,” respectively, we find two different methods of translation. “Snozzcumber” is clearly meant to evoke the word “cucumber,” with the prefix “snozz-” prompting most English readers to associate it with the real, disgusting word “snot.” A snozzcumber is subsequently revealed to be a repulsive cucumber-like vegetable. In the Spanish translation, Barbadillo begins with the Spanish word for cucumber, pepino, to invent the word “pepináspero,” whose suffix “-áspero” may be traced to the adjective “asperoso,” or “gritty.” This combination of references then prompts a Spanish reader to create the same mental image of a cucumber gone wrong. Therefore, although “snozzcumber” and “pepináspero” share no phonetic similarities, the effect of the made-up word is still successfully preserved.

With “frobscottle” translated to gásipum, however, the process is different. “Frobscottle” is a fizzy green soft drink, characterized by its downward-fizzing bubbles. The word “frobscottle” itself, however, is not evocative of any relevant morphemes in English, so it is necessary for the BFG to explain exactly what it is. However, Barbadillo’s version, “gásipum,” does indeed have a recognizable Spanish morpheme, “gas,” a cognate for the word “gas” in English. In Spanish, gas is used to mean or “carbonated;” for example, “agua con gas” means “carbonated water.” “Gásipum,” like “pepináspero,” does not resemble the English neologism “frobscottle” in the slightest, but it does contain a recognizable morpheme that its English counterpart does not, tying it to a real-life object, an attribute that perhaps diminishes its “nonsense” because its derivation is less arbitrary.

With these examples in mind, Barbadillo’s methods in creating other Spanish neologisms may be similarly evaluated. One of the most memorable scenes in Roald Dahl’s The BFG is when, at the Queen of England’s command, all nine man-eating giants are tied up by the Royal Army in their sleep and hoisted into the air by nine helicopters, to be carried off and forced to live miserable lives in repentance for their actions. The giants, upon waking up to find themselves trapped and flying through the air, exclaim in outrage, using made-up words that have a uniting onomatopoeic effect:

‘I is flushbunkled!’ roared the Fleshlumpeater.

‘I is splitzwiggled!’ yelled the Childchewer.

‘I is swogswalloped!’ bellowed the Bonecruncher.

‘I is goosegruggled!’ howled the Manhugger.

‘I is gunzleswiped!’ shouted the Meatdripper.

‘I is fluckgungled!’ screamed the Maidmasher.

‘I is slopgroggled!’ squawked the Gizzardgulper.

‘I is crodsquinkled!’ yowled the Bloodbottler.

‘I is bopmuggered!’ screeched the Butcher Boy.

(Dahl 197)

This fragment, arguably one of the most linguistically dependent parts of the novel due to its strict repetition and ubiquitous neologisms, is one of the most complex to translate, yet simplest to compare to its translation. Pedro Barbadillo’s choices in translating it to Spanish are noticeably different from the original:

¡Estoy fastirreventado! – branó Tragacarnes.

¡Y yo, furripanchoso! – gritó Mascaniños.

¡Pues yo, emperrunchado! – rugió Ronchahuesos.

¡Yo, jorogibado! – jadeó Quebrantahombres.

¡Pues yo estoy encorajifrenético! – aulló Escurrepicadillo.

¡No estaréis tan furrifierorrabiosos como yo…! – voceó Aplastamocosos.

¡Ya! ¡Pues yo reviento de iracundicólera! – se desgañitó Buche de Ogro.

¡Yo no aguanto esta perrería guisantosa y puerquicochina! – berreó Sanguinario.

¡Malditos sean los furriendemoniados guisantes humanos..! – ululó Devorador.

(Barbadillo 189-192)

Even at first glance, the difference between the English text and the Spanish text is immediately apparent: rather than recreate the repetitive list structure of Dahl’s version, Barbadillo creates a scene in which the giants are calling back and forth to each other, generally equating to sentences like “You’re not as ‘furious’ as I!” (6) and “These ‘demonic’ humans are evil!” (9). This does not appear to be a necessary change; in fact, if all of the Spanish statements followed the same form as the first (“Estoy fastirreventado!”), the scene would still make sense and successfully retain the list form of the English version. Another notable change is the giants’ grammar: in English, they all say “I is” instead of “I am,” a frequent error in their speech patterns throughout the story. However, in Barbadillo’s translation, the giants’ grammar is perfect—potential translations of their poor grammar would be “yo es” or “yo está” (“I is”), which are actually used by the BFG periodically in the Spanish version, but again, Barbadillo cleans up their grammar for this particular scene. This raises the question of why Barbadillo would change the structure so drastically when a more accurate translation of this scene actually seems quite within reach. Perhaps he simply changed it because he could—in this case, adherence to form isn’t necessarily essential to the plot, and his freedom to create so many neologisms in this scene may have inspired a change in form and sentence structure as well.

At a syntactical level, comparison of the English and Spanish neologisms brings a similarly interesting result. Many of the giants’ names are more or less translated successfully; for example, “Childchewer” is translated to “Mascaniños,” comprised of the Spanish mascar, meaning “to chew” and niños, meaning “children” (2). Others might be considered half-translations; for example, “Maidmasher” is translated to “Aplastamocosos,” created by the words aplastar, “to crush or squash,” and mocoso, a colloquial word for “brat” (6). The English choice of “maid” is potentially done in an effort towards alliteration with “masher,” so the change in Spanish to “brat” was likely made to preserve the amusing tone of the name, given that a literal translation of “maid” would be too arbitrary with no alliteration to justify it. The connotation of the name is modified, as well—“maid,” which evokes a sense of sweetness and submission, is virtually the opposite of mocoso, or “brat,” usually reserved for a misbehaved child. Consequently, unlike the original “maid,” a reader may inclined to have less sympathy for a “brat” in the hands of the giant “Brat squasher,” but it is hard to say whether this change came in an effort to deliberately change the connotation, or from the simple necessity to create a humorous tongue-twister.

Other noteworthy translations of the giants’ names are “Gizzardgulper” to “Buche de Ogro” (7) and “Butcher Boy” to “Devorador” (9). In the original English version, every time the giants’ names are listed, the Butcher Boy comes last. Being a name different from the others both formally and phonetically, it functions almost like a period on the end of a sentence, striking the reader in its unpredictability and deviance from the other names. Not only is it the only name that is not a single compound word, but it is also the only one with a human element attached in the form of “boy,” which implies his inferiority to the other giants. Barbadillo does in fact include a giant whose name differs from the others with “Buche de Ogro,” but despite its phonetic similarity to “Butcher Boy,” its meaning is slightly more similar to the English giant name “Gizzardgulper,” as buche means “gullet,” similar in form and meaning to “gizzard,” and ogro means “ogre.” Barbadillo also places “Buche de Ogro” in Gizzardgulper’s place on the list, third to last, which lacks the effect of finality of the deviant name “Butcher Boy” in the original English. “Butcher Boy” is subsequently translated to “Devorador,” simply meaning “devourer.” As is the case with any of the translated scenes, the general effect of a list of comical giant names is retained, but the intricacies of Dahl’s original, i.e., the repetition, each name’s noun-action composition, and the final placement of the one name that does not belong, are absent.

As for Barbadillo’s translation of adjectival neologisms like “flushbunkled” and “gunzleswiped,” the Spanish versions are similarly creative and amusing to say aloud. Rather than use the English morphemes like “swipe” and “flush” to inspire their Spanish equivalents, Barbadillo simply creates his own; for example, “furrifierorrabioso” (6), created from the words furioso (“furious”), fiero (“fierce”), and rabioso (“rabid” or “angry”). Another is “jorogibado” (4), created by the words joroba and giba, both meaning “hump” or “bump,” and the verb jorobar, meaning “to pester.” That being said, the Spanish neologisms are distinctly tied to real Spanish morphemes, generally meaning “annoyed” and “angry,” while the English words have fewer obvious inspirations with meaningless sounds like “bunkled” and “gunzle.” Additionally, the general tone of the collective English adjectival neologisms is one that refers to their predicament, i.e. of being trapped, confused, or captured; whereas the collective tone of the Spanish counterparts is unmistakably more emotive and angry.

As is the case with “frobscottle” translated to “gásipum,” this again brings the element of nonsense into question, as Barbadillo’s motive for creating his own neologisms using similar processes to Dahl but different inspiration and tone is frankly difficult to follow. Although the Spanish neologisms are similarly childlike and imaginative, they complicate the nonsensical effect of the original English. Many of Barbadillo’s Spanish neologisms appear marginally more sensical than their English counterparts because they are more easily recognized and pieced together at a morphemic level than are Dahl’s.

Neologisms, as pervasive hallmarks of Dahl’s writing, are evidently quite difficult to translate, but Dahl’s tendency to manipulate puns, idioms, and fixed patterns of speech poses yet another complication for Barbadillo. When it comes to translating puns, Barbadillo’s process is similar in that some translations preserve more form and some preserve more meaning. In her translation coursebook In Other Words, Mona Baker offers a short list of methods for translating puns, of which Barbadillo’s preferred method is usually “borrowing the source language idiom,” or directly translating it to the target language. In a scene near the beginning of the novel, the BFG explains to Sophie why giants like eating humans, as it turns out they all have a distinctive taste depending on their nationality. He explains:

‘Danes from Denmark is tasting ever so much of dogs,’ the Giant went on.

‘Of course,’ Sophie said. ‘They taste of great danes.’

‘Wrong!’ cried the giant, slapping his thigh. ‘Danes from Denmark is tasting doggy because they is tasting of Labradors!’

‘Then what do the people of Labrador taste of?’ Sophie asked.

‘Danes,’ the Giant cried, triumphantly. ‘Great danes!’

(Dahl 28-29)

The BFG is characterized as being discombobulated and mixing up words and expressions, so it is difficult to say whether he actually did mean to say that Danes from Denmark taste like great danes, but regardless, the play on words is completely and perfectly preserved in Barbadillo’s Spanish version:

This is one of multiple scenes in which Spanish words are similar enough to their English counterparts that a literal translation is all that is needed to retain both form and meaning. This is a best-case scenario for a translator, and a frequent occurrence in Barbadillo’s translation because there are often enough Spanish-English cognates at his disposal for a direct translation to be quite sufficient. Another example is when the BFG says, “Greeks from Greece is all tasting greasy” (Dahl 26):

The Spanish word for “grease,” grasa, is similar enough to the Spanish country name Grecia that the pun still makes sense translated even with the slant rhyme.

However this is not the case for several other moments in the scene, where Barbadillo continues to translate almost word-for-word, and the strategy of directly translating the source language idiom is not successful. The English line “He says Turks from Turkey is tasting of turkey” (Dahl 26) is translated as follows:

The literal translation of “turkey” to the Spanish word for turkey, pavo, does not retain the pun because “pavo” and “Turquía,” sound nothing alike. It’s hard to definitively say what a better strategy might have been; Barbadillo could have simply abolished the

“Turkey/turkey” line all together, or replaced it with his own pun from Spanish country names and nouns. His choice to instead translate it word for word comes from the necessity of allegiance to the original English, and in this moment we may consider Barbadillo to align more strongly with Levy’s “reproduction norm” than his “artistic norm.”

Another example of a less successfully translated play on words comes from the same scene, when the BFG says, “For instance, human beans from Wales is tasting very whooshey of fish. There is something very fishy about Wales” (Dahl 28), which is translated:

The Spanish word for “whale” is ballena, which does not bear enough resemblance to the Spanish word for “Wales,” Gales, to create a pun as strong as the “Wales/whales” comparison in English. Additionally, the sentence “There is something very fishy about Wales” is simply eliminated from the Spanish version, as there is no equivalent fixed expression available, and a direct translation would just further complicate the already lost play on words. That being said, Barbadillo still recreates the BFG’s erroneous speech patterns by inventing the word “pescadosamente,” which generally equates to “fishily.” But in comparing this neologism with Dahl’s English neologism “whooshey” from the original version, we encounter a similar situation to the other neologisms, in which Barbadillo’s replacement is more easily traced to the relevant morpheme “fish” than Dahl’s more arbitrary original.

VI. Conclusion

In the excerpts I’ve chosen, many of which were selected because of their particular relevance to the storyline, the nature of nonsense as a genre comes into question. Dahl’s work is considered to be nonsensical, in part for its imaginative, ridiculous plots, but often more so for its manipulation of language, be it made-up words or twisted expressions. Any translation must sacrifice and prioritize a certain amount of form and content so as to faithfully reproduce of the original, but with nonsense such as Dahl’s, that faithfulness is quite complex. What does it mean for a translation to be good? Must it translate the original word-for-word, or is a recreation of the general storyline, with addendums by the translator, preferable? In Barbadillo’s work, it is a mixture of both. As demonstrated, close reading of Barbadillo’s translations reveals partial authenticity to the original in some cases and glaring inconsistencies in others. Linguistically, the nonsense is more or less conveyed in Spanish, but in a slightly different way, as most of the neologisms Barbadillo creates do not have quite the same degree of arbitrariness as Dahl’s English originals, often resulting in a modified tone for the scene. That being said, regardless of the inconsistencies at a linguistic level, the overall storyline and fantasy aspect of Dahl’s work is preserved.

Translated versions of stories might be better considered as different lenses on the original; a translated story might follow the same plot points and have the same characters, but any translation should be viewed more as its own recounting of events rather than an equivalent to the original version. Nonsense in particular might simply be more imitable than replicable in a language other than its original. This considered, close study of a given work’s translation has a reflexive property; if the same story can be told differently in Spanish, what does this imply about the original English? In Dahl’s case, it is quite clear that the English language is a necessary vehicle for his specific tone and style, and Barbadillo’s work is sometimes more of a recreation rather than a translation. Therefore, nonsense’s ability to be preserved is on somewhat of a continuum, as the concepts, storylines, and characters are replicable, but the linguistic devices that create them are less so.

VII. References

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Carta, Giorgia. Theory and Practice of Translation: The Case of Children‟s Literature. In Parker, R. H., Garcia, K. G. (eds.). Thinking Translation: Perspectives from Within and Without.

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Dahl, Roald. The BFG. Scholastic, 2007.

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