Alejandra L. Orozco Jiménez
One text two meanings: a linguistic comparison of “I only came to use the pone”
“All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation” George Eliot
How many times have you ever read texts without knowing you are reading a translation? When the
translation was ample you will never noticed, but what happened when the translation is not suitable? It will
not be easy to understand the text and maybe you will have to read it many times to be understandable. On the
other hand, the text could be very easy to read and understand but the meaning of the original text is different.
In this essay I’m going to write about two different linguistic meanings of one text.
When you are translating you must obey some rules depending on the topic you are working on, for example,
if you are working on literature, there are some rules you cannot follow because literature is so wide and
complicated due to the rhythms or the meter or the author’s style that you have to choose between being
faithful to the text, I mean, conserve the meaning of the text or the author’s style or in case of a poem
conserve the rhythm.
In the text I only came to use you phone I found some linguistic differences, for example in the original
version (English) it says “She was married to a cabaret magician ” and in the Spanish version it says: “Estaba
casada con un prestidigitador de salón”, prestidigitador indeed is a synonym of magician but if we are
translating into a standard Spanish so everyone can understand, it is better to say un mago rather than
prestidigitador because it is not an usual word in Spanish. Besides, in the body of the text she used the word
“mago”, and when you are translating a specific word that is important for the text, you must use the same
word in the whole text.
Moreover when it says “…and succumbed to the sound of the rain.” in Spanish it says “y se abandonó al
rumor de la lluvia” that is really different from the original text because the author wants to said that she fell
asleep with the sound of the music and in Spanish the sentence is hardly to understand because you can
interpret that she left the place when it stopped raining.
In the original we read Icy drizzle and in Spanish sereno helado, the real meaning in Spanish is “ llovizna
helada”, it is an extremely cold light rain not a serene coldness.
These differences can confuse the reader or make him/her to not understand what she/he is reading. And in
those cases, it is better to read the original text or find a better translation. But the next time you read a
translated literature book consider that is difficult to maintain all the characteristics of the book due to the
linguistic differences between English and Spanish, some words and/or phrases in both languages can have
different meanings, the aim is to find the true one and try to make the reader understand the real meaning, to
transmit the feelings the author wants to make you feel while you are reading the text.
In this little text the main idea is clear, but those strange translations make us difficult to feel what the author
is trying to convey; a deep desperation of not been able to get out from that horrible place and believe that
you are going crazy as well.
References
Márquez, G. G. (n.d.). Strange pilgrims. I only came to use your phone. Pp 71-91. April 1978
