Women interpreting masculinity: Two English translations of Don Segundo Sombra

Abstract

This article examines two English translations of Don Segundo, a novel written by Ricardo Güiraldes. One of the so-called ‘telluric novels’ of Latin America, this work has been regarded as one of the masterpieces of the area. Don Segundo Sombra is the story of homodiegetic narrator, Fabio Cáceres, a well-educated man who narrates events that happened to him as an adolescent reaching manhood in the Argentinean Pampas. The text reflects a quintessential view of masculinity that is filled with individuals showing clear negative attitudes towards women, as well as an apparent male chauvinist point of view. The only two English translations of this work, by female translators Harriet de Onís and Patricia Owen Steiner, provide slightly but crucially different interpretations when translating this early twentieth century manly Argentine tale. The analysis conducted in this article is of a descriptive nature, and it intends to point out decisions made by the two translators in order to determine if a particular tendency can be detected. An analysis of the renditions of key passages will reveal differences in the translators’ perceptions of the gendered ideology embedded in the fictional men.