WUTHERING HEIGHTS IN THE FRANCO DICTATORSHIP: ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF THE TRANSLATION BY EL BACHILLER CANSECO (1947)

Ana Pérez Porras

doi:10.17561/grove.v24.a5

Abstract

Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë, has been translated into Spanish on more than one hundred occasions. The translation by El Bachiller Canseco (1947) was first published during the Franco dictatorship in an era of censorship in which the translator did not have specific training or any access to specialised monographs. This lack of training has an impact on the resulting target text; the translation did not succeed at transferring Brontë’s cultural legacy. To transfer it correctly, the historical-social context of the work would need to be studied in great detail. In the text, we are witness to the translator’s intervention, something that we can observe in the omissions, errors and examples of interpretative translation, which are non-existent in the original text. El Bachiller Canseco did not appear to know the sources of the original text, nor was he able to establish the line between his facet as a writer and translator.

Highlights

Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë, has been translated into Spanish on more than one hundred ocassions1 from an early date, prior to the academic and institutional development of translation studies around the midseventies, the translators faced a series of problems mainly due to lack of proper instruction and resources
Wuthering Heights was not known in Spain until 1921, when it began to spread with the first translation by Cebrià de Montoliu in the Atenea Publishing House
The first applications from the Archivo General de la Administración (AGA) that collect data about Cumbres Borrascosas in the Francoist period were consulted by Pajares Infante (74), and, according to his research, the translations were not subjected to any impediment by the censor system

Summary

Introduction

Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë, has been translated into Spanish on more than one hundred ocassions from an early date, prior to the academic and institutional development of translation studies around the midseventies, the translators faced a series of problems mainly due to lack of proper instruction and resources. The translation by El Bachiller Canseco (1947) is a paradigmatic example of these kinds of translations published during the Post Civil-war Period in which the translator did not have any specific training or access to specialised monographs. This lack of training had an impact on the resulting target text, since his translation did not succeed at transferring Brontë’s cultural implications. In that very year and in the following ones, a series of translations followed in what is known as the Post-civil War Period in Spain, as can be seen in the list below (Gil García 104):.

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