5 COLLATING THE SOURCES: THE SPANISH TEXTS AND THEIR (LIKELY) FRENCH AND ENGLISH SOURCES

In this article, I present an abridged version of the collating process performed during the background research for this project. In order to distribute the samples extracted during

9 In order to do collation with digital humanities, certain preconditions need to be met that were not possible in this case study: first, all texts need to be OCR-scanned (and then manually corrected to expurgate misspellings and blurring); secondly, it would be necessary to develop software to contrast the texts simultaneously (following, for example, the technology used by plagiarism software, but implementing it to include several texts in parallel, and ideally, several languages – whose interlinear likely translation correspondence would need to be checked line by line). That would allow us to create precise genealogical trees that represent patterns of indirectness in translation and reception. This would prove tremendously useful for the study of plagiarism, interlingual translations, false translations and re-polished-editions marketing in translation research, as it would reveal pervading copying practices and potentially unethical trends in translation history.

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the collation evenly throughout the play, and thus strengthen the evidence, I will select examples from each act of the play; as the Third Act is longer than the others, I include an additional extract. They are displayed in the order in which they originally appear. I am also providing only examples in which there is a distinct translator wording choice that is evident in the different target languages, which points to the innovation performed by each translator, and I am thus disregarding other examples in which there is a more straightforward correspondence between all the texts. In order to simplify the collation presented here, I will only be looking at the two Spanish texts, the French text and the three most popular English translations (which are considered only to support the claim that TT2 was based in Int-En4 instead of the other two). The original Dano-Norwegian is included only as a control reference for the reader.

(2) a. Pero, ¿V. no recapacitó la superchería que cometía conmigo?

(Ibsen 1892:148) [TT1]

b. Mais, ne vous êtes-vous pas dit que vous commettiez une supercherie à mon égard ? (Ibsen 1889a:193) [Int-Fr1]

c. ¿Y no se le ocurrió a usted pensar en el fraude que cometía usted

f. But did it never occur to you that you were committing a fraud to me? (Ibsen 1910:31) [Int-En4]

g. De da ikke på, at det var et bedrageri imod mig -? (Ibsen 1880a:64) [ST]

This extract is taken from the middle of the First Act, at the end of the first conversation between Nora and Krogstad in which he threatens to expose her before her husband and the authorities. On this occasion, the translation choice is a question of terminology. The original Dano-Norwegian “bedrageriet” means literally fraud, suggesting deception. Most of the English translations literally translated the concept (except Archer’s, which chose to employ an idiom: to play someone false), as did the second Spanish translation, undoubtedly following the source closely. It is also interesting that this translation picks a verb that maintains the same root (“commit”/“cometer”) as Sharp’s. By contrast, the French term “supercherie”, even if it can denote the idea of fraud, has a less literal meaning and leans more towards the idea of deception, implying a poor performance. The first Spanish translation literally reproduces the word choice and thus further corroborates the filiation hypothesis of the genealogical tree.

(3) a. Tu padre no era un funcionario inatacable (Ibsen 1892:156) [TT1].

b. Ton père n’était pas un fonctionnaire inattaquable (Ibsen 1889a:212) [Int-Fr1].

c. La reputación de tu padre, como funcionario público, no estaba por encima de toda sospecha (Ibsen 1917:124) [TT2].

d. Your father was not, as an official, quite unimpeachable (Ibsen 1882:56) [Int-En2].

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e. Your father was not altogether unimpeachable (Ibsen 1889b:59) [Int-En3].

f. Your father’s reputation as a public official was not above suspicion (Ibsen 1910:44) [Int-En4].

g. Din fader var ingen uangribelig embedsmand (Ibsen 1880a:89) [ST]

This fragment is taken from the middle of the Second Act, from a conversation between Helmer and Nora in which she tries to convince her husband to rehire Krogstad (following his blackmail in the First Act). It is again a question of terminology, of two ways of expressing the same idea, be it through an adjective (ST, TT1, InT-Fr1, Int-En2, InT-En3) or through a sentence (TT2, InT-En4). Once again, the first Spanish translation reproduces exactly the French word choice (“inatacable”/”inattaquable”), which in turn reproduces the Dano-Norwegian “uangribelig”, which as an adjective means “untouchable” but the verb “å angripe” means “to attack”, related to “å gripe” or “to grasp”. The first two English translations use an adjective too, in this case “unimpeachable” (the fact that both use the same implies Archer at least looked at Lord’s text), which has a more abstract sense of moral reliability beyond doubt. And finally, the fourth English translation chooses to paraphrase the idea by means of a predicative (“was not above suspicion”), the meaning of which is again more abstract. The second Spanish translation reproduces almost word-for-word the sentence from Sharp’s translation (“no estaba por encima de toda sospecha”).

(4) a. ¡Ah, Torvaldo! Se necesitaría para otra cosa el mayor de los prodigios (Ibsen 1892:164) [TT1].

b. Ah! Torvald, il faudrait pour cela le plus grand des prodiges (Ibsen 1889a:279) [Int-Fr1].

c. Tendría que suceder, para que dejases de serlo, la maravilla más grande de todas (Ibsen 1917:234) [TT2].

d. The greatest miracle of all would have to happen then, Torvald (Ibsen 1882:120) [Int-En2]

e. Oh, Torvald, then the miracle of miracles would have to happen (Ibsen 1889b:122). [Int-En3]

f. Ah, Torvald, the most wonderful thing of all would have to happen (Ibsen 1910:86). [Int-En4]

g. Ak, Torvald, da måtte det vidunderligste ske (Ibsen 1880:a180) [ST].

This last example comes from the very last scene of the play, just before Nora leaves. The greatest difference between the texts is related to the translators’ choice in the wording of the subject. The Norwegian and most of the English versions used a superlative form (“det vidungerligste”/“the most wonderful”/“the greatest”), with the exception of Archer’s that preferred an emphatic hyperbole (“the miracle of miracles”). The Romance languages cannot syntactically reproduce this in one word, and so the translators had to use “the most of” (“le plus grand des”/“el mayor de”/“la más grande de”). In terms of word choice, the French and the first Spanish texts preferred “prodigy”, whereas two of the English versions preferred “miracle”. On this occasion, the second Spanish translation again followed almost word for word the fourth English text, where it was allowed by the syntax (“the most wonderful thing of all”/“la maravilla más grande de todas”). Changing the adjective

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“wonderful” for the noun “maravilla” necessitates a quantifier adjective, “más grande”, to express the superlative (“the biggest”).