When Words Collide And Meanings Get Lost

Now that I’ve done my own bit of translating 19th century Spanish to 21st century English, I personally know that something is always lost in the translation. In the case of the greatest patriotic poem of that century, ‘Adios, Patria Adorada,’ I hope the loss is not too much of a good thing.

Why did I a non-linguist translate the Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal’s ultimate poem? I didn’t feel comfortable with the translations I had read. While I couldn’t speak Spanish to save my life, I was vaguely unimpressed with what I saw when I compared those translations with the original (consulting the English-Spanish dictionary) and against each other (consulting my own English translation that I kept revising).

Both Filipinos, was Jose Rizal who was a Tagalog writing in Spanish different from a Frank Hilario who is an Ilocano writing in English? That is a question of colonialism. In the late 19th century, wasn’t Rizal a colonial of the Spanish friars, and in the early 21st century am I not a colonial of the Yankees who in the early 20th century came to my beloved Philippine Islands and welcomed themselves and stayed for 50 years?

Full essay

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 4:55 am and is filed under creative photography, creative thinking, creative writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.