Journale Lucy Fricke’s Töchter: A Translation Road Trip

THE FIRST PERSON NARRATOR

By María Tellechea, translated by Sinéad Crowe


MAN IS MORE UNIVERSAL THAN WOMAN MIGHT THIN

Töchter is narrated in the first person by a female protagonist. In the following, I want to discuss how this narrative voice placed me in an unexpected dilemma, especially when it came to translating generalisations.

In theory, a female first-person narrator ought not to pose problems for Spanish translators, as in Spanish, a female speaker simply uses feminine declensions of articles, adjectives and nouns when referring to herself. But what do we do when the female narrator makes generalisations that apply to everyone, including (and especially) herself? In other words, when she makes general statements that are supposed to apply to all genders, but are clearly based on her own experience? Let’s first look at the linguistic options available to translators for dealing with such generalisations.

On the abstract level (i.e. from the perspective of comparative translation theory), Spanish offers several options for translating passages containing the German personal pronoun man. Man, a third-person singular pronoun often translated into English as one or you, is a homophone for the noun Mann (in English, man). But man is used in impersonal active sentences to make general statements. In other words, the man pronoun is used to describe actions performed not by a specific subject, but by anyone and everyone. At first glance, you might think that the Spanish pronoun uno (one) would be the right translation (though it might also be possible in certain circumstances to use the impersonal se form). Uno corresponds to a general subject (such as people) as well as to indefinite and negative pronouns such as someone (alguien) and no one (nadie).

Needless to say, it’s no coincidence that in both German and Spanish, the pronoun used to express universal experience is masculine. One of the best and consistent alternatives to uno for translating man sentences into Spanish is the second-person singular pronoun;1as I will discuss below, however, this option was not always viable in the case of Töchter.

Betty, the narrator of Töchter, interacts with and talks to the other figures, but in her interior monologues, she reflects on her own personal experiences and makes general observations about life. Some of these observations relate more to women, or even just to certain generations of women, as they are clearly based on Betty’s personal life experiences. But sometimes these observations apply to everyone, regardless of gender. Is it possible to distinguish the first type of observation from the second? And if so, could I use the feminine pronoun una for the former and the masculine pronoun uno for the latter? Would this translation strategy preserve the text’s internal coherence while staying true to the narrative voice? What impact would switching between the feminine and masculine pronouns have on readers? And if I decided to use only una to reflect the female narrative voice, would this be true to the German source at the level of both language (after all, man is used consistently throughout the German) and meaning (because as mentioned above, these generalisations are intended to apply to everyone, including the narrator)?

The following paragraph posed the greatest dilemma:

Mit jemandem zu reden, der einen längst verlassen hatte, war etwas, das man nur für sich tat. Ob es sich dabei um eine Trennung oder den Tod handelte, war fast egal, man sprach sowieso nur noch zu sich selbst. Der Verlassene wollte immer reden. Leider war er in der Regel damit allein.

English translation:

Talking to someone who left you long ago is something you do by yourself. No matter whether the other person died or dumped you, you end up talking to yourself. The one left behind always wants to talk, but unfortunately, the feeling usually isn’t mutual.

When I asked Lucy if she’d mind me using feminine pronouns for man in this paragraph, she told me to go ahead. In fact, she added, she had originally planned on using feminine forms in this paragraph but had been persuaded otherwise. Yet when I asked her about other passages in the novel with man – passages that placed me in the same interpretive dilemma – she said she’d prefer if I didn’t emphasise the gender. These passages expressed generalisations that apply to all genders, she explained, urging me to ensure that my translation reflected this. In Lucy’s view, her use of man in other passages wasn’t gendered, even though the narrator is a woman and – as the paragraph above demonstrates – is primarily speaking about herself when she refers to “the one left behind”. Indeed, Betty’s sense of abandonment is one of novel’s recurring themes.

As mentioned above, one option for translating man into Spanish is the second-person singular pronoun, which is commonly used when expressing general observations about emotions and relationships. Unfortunately, though, this option wasn’t available to me due to a moment in the chapter Ein Grab in Bellegra (A Grave in Bellegra) when the narrator uses Du (you) to address her absent father-figure in an interior monologue. In other words, as the second-personal singular pronoun refers to a character here, it can no longer be used to represent people in general.

If I were to consistently use feminine pronouns for man, I might be accused of limiting the relevance of the statements to female experience. It would also involve me foregrounding my own interpretation of the text – in other words, my view that the narrator is primarily talking about herself and other abandoned women. And if I used feminine forms in one section, would I have to do so in the rest of the novel too? Or would it be better to use a less gendered, more “neutral” option such as the impersonal se?

This translation challenge brought me to the realisation that the uno form is the most personal of the impersonal forms that can be used for generalisations such as the one described above. I realised that there are slight differences in meaning between the following sentences: cuando a uno le pasa tal cosa (when such a thing happens to one); cuando te pasa tal cosa (when such a thing happens to you); cuando a alguien le pasa tal cosa (when such a thing happens to someone); and cuando nos pasa tal cosa (when such a thing happens to us). In forcing me to reflect on these subtle differences, translating Töchter made me see – or sense – that statements with uno are simultaneously personal and general. This sense might have something to do with the fact that the pronoun uno is derived from the indefinite article un (a), which means “an individual”, “a person”.  So, if I wanted to retain the personal, human aspect of these generalisations, I would have to go for the uno option, even if this meant that female readers who identify with the narrator might not feel explicitly referred to.

As I am the text’s translator, and not its author, I decided that for the sake of the novel’s overall coherence, my strategy should be based on two insights. Firstly, the author could have used other structures for her generalisations but decided not to. Indeed, she specifically asked me not to use feminine forms for certain passages, saying that she would prefer if these passages speak to all readers. Secondly, I read five novels by Spanish authors with female first-person narrators and noticed that they always use the uno form for generalisations. Moreover, these narrators used the uno form when they were actually referring mainly to themselves.

As I was proofreading my final draft, I was reminded of something that we translators never tire of repeating: context is everything. I realised that there were a few generalisations where I was in fact able to use second-person singular pronouns without causing confusion, as these do not appear anywhere near a second-person singular pronoun referring to a character. While I used uno (and never una) in other passages, I tried to avoid unnecessary repetitions of this masculine pronoun and other related words with pronounced masculine forms.

If the narrator wasn’t female, would I have reflected on all these questions on the use of uno? Would I have seen it as a translation problem? Would I have experienced a genuine inner conflict with my feminist stance and my desire to change the male-dominated status quo at stake? I’m not sure that I would. When the narrator is male and makes a generalisation that applies to both himself and everyone else, the translator isn’t faced with a problem. Why? The answer is as obvious as it is regrettable: because we are born and we live, create and recreate in a patriarchal system, a system that is expressed in our language at the level of both grammar and semantics. This means that we always use the male form to represent a universal subject that feels, thinks or experiences a certain thing.

Translation is a unique form of reading, possibly the most thorough way to read. Its aim is to reveal all the layers of a work, from its “objective” linguistic structure, punctuation, sound and inner structure to the work’s meaning, content or message, a layer that is generally seen as subjective and therefore more susceptible to the reader-translator’s interpretation. While translating Töchter, I attempted to overturn numerous entrenched paradigms only ultimately to return to the beaten path. Yet in this process, I have brought a part of myself into the text and vice versa; after a translation like this, “one” is a changed woman.

 

(Abridged slightly for readers who do not speak German or Spanish.)

 

Drive on.

 

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