ES>EN Translation and Analysis of Peruvian Folktales
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Minnesota State University, Mankato Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects Capstone Projects 2020 Rendering 20th Century Peruvian Folklore for a 21st Century Reader: ES>EN Translation and Analysis of Peruvian Folktales and Mythology Angela Walsh Minnesota State University, Mankato Follow this and additional works at: https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds Part of the Folklore Commons, Language Interpretation and Translation Commons, and the Translation Studies Commons Recommended Citation Walsh, A. (2020). Rendering 20th century Peruvian folklore for a 21st century reader: ES>EN translation and analysis of Peruvian folktales and mythology [Master’s thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato]. Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato. https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1075/ This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects at Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato. Rendering 20th century Peruvian Folklore for a 21st century Reader: ES>EN Translation and Analysis of Peruvian Folktales and Mythology By Angela Walsh, B.A. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science In Spanish Minnesota State University, Mankato Mankato, Minnesota December 2020 i Date: 10/14/2020 Rendering a 20th century Peruvian Worldview for a 21st century Audience: ES>EN Translation and Analysis of Peruvian Folktales and Mythology Angela Walsh This thesis has been examined and approved by the following members of the student’s committee. ________________________________ Kimberly Contag, Ph.D., Professor ________________________________ Adriana Gordillo, Ph.D., Professor ________________________________ James Grabowska, Ph.D., Professor ii This thesis is dedicated to Jane Keenan, for teaching me passion for the Spanish language, as well as being an invaluable resource throughout my education. Also, in dedication to Kimberly Contag, for her guidance and encouragement throughout my time in the graduate program. iii Abstract In the 1940s José María Arguedas and Francisco Izquierdo Ríos collected oral tradition stories from three separate geographical areas of Peru. The publication of these legends, myths and Peruvian tales ( Mitos, leyendas y cuentos peruanos 1947) and its function as an historical record of cultural and national identity led Arguedas to national acclaim. However, these mythological and folk tales, legends and myths have had little attention outside of Peru and few tales have been translated into English. The thesis begins with an introduction to the challenges of translating folklore and cultural artifacts, the nature and function of tales likes these from 20th century Peru, followed by a review of the translation challenges and preferred techniques for my translation of a representative sample of the stories. The translations rely on a semantic, communicative translation method. Each translation is followed by a brief analysis of the cultural and linguistic elements that connect the story to its language and culture. Analysis yielded metaphysical, cosmological, sociological, and pedagogical functions in these stories that conveyed messages to a 20th-century Peruvian audience and helps the 21st-century readers of the translated tales in English to understand the unique world view of these stories gathered from an oral tradition. These folk tales, myths and legends contain unique cultural information about indigenous ideologies, culturally sanctioned behavior, warnings, origin stories, etc. The analysis of these stories is new and insightful since many of the technologies to connect geographical spaces and icons with the story and iv characters were not easily available until the 21st century to connect historical, geographical and cultural icons that bring renewed life and meaning into the myths, legends and stories. “Rendering 20th Century Peruvian Folklore for a 21st century Reader: ES>EN Translation and Analysis of Peruvian Folktales and Mythology” was completed by Angela Walsh at Minnesota State University, Mankato in 2020 to comply with the requirements of the Master of Science degree in Spanish. v Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Methodology ......................................................................................................... 8 Literature Review ................................................................................................ 18 Translations and Analyses ................................................................................. 46 The Coast ........................................................................................................... 46 The Mountains .................................................................................................... 55 The Jungle ........................................................................................................ 101 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 125 Glossary: .......................................................................................................... 129 Works Cited ...................................................................................................... 130 1 Introduction Translating folklore is no simple task. When I began this investigation into Mitos, leyendas y cuentos peruanos (1947) by José María Arguedas and Francisco Izquierdo Ríos in the Spring of 2019, it was not clear to me exactly how challenging the translation of Peruvian myths, legends and short stories would be. A year later, it is clear that the translation project is one that has infused my understanding of the multicultural elements that underlie these myths, legends and stories, revealing elements of original indigenous values, ideas and knowledge as well as other elements of their culture embedded in the language of the 1947 publication. My translation involves elements of the third target culture, English-speaking North Americans. My research project about myths, legends and short-stories and the translation practices necessary to rend a translation into English is, necessarily, multifaceted. For this reason, I have divided the project into sections that help to address the diverse areas of research and practice that describe the interface of a method that draws from anthropology and sociology (the function of folklore and methods of analysis) as well as theories and practices of translation. This multifaceted approach allows for highlighting the importance of folklore in the historical Peruvian context, exploration of cultural, linguistic and historical resources that improve and deepen the understanding of the source text and exploration of how to translate these socio-historical literary contexts through exploration and application of best practices for translation. 2 Folklore has many functions in society, ranging from moral lectures to upholding social structure (Bascom, 346). Folkloric tales (myths, legends, and short stories) provide more than just a form of entertainment to readers and listeners. This is why, when conducting a study of any culture it is important to take their folklore into account, as these cultural products provide a unique opportunity to experience the world through the perspective of Peruvian culture, embedded with their values and attitudes. Oral stories and literature transmit the underlying beliefs and customs that are upheld. The stories I analyze and translate in this thesis were originally oral stories collected by teachers through a survey, Arguedas and Izquierdo Ríos then compiled and translated the stories in a second language, Spanish. While it is also possible to identify aspects of a society’s identity embedded within a translated text (oral or written), some of the storytelling techniques and cultural notions may be lost in translation or transformed into cultural knowledge that may be closer to the reader’s culture than the cultures of the source text or its first translation. In translation studies, foreignism – extranjerismo – or use of source text words from the original language in the translated text to preserve a cultural and linguistic connect or accepted loan words from the source language is contrasted with creating translated text that is invisible, stand alone reading experience that uses only the language of translation to convey the essence of the source text without an foreignisms ( domesticación or domestication). As an introduction to my translation of these Peruvian myths, legends, and tales from indigenous and 3 mestizo communities, I take a look at the historical impact that José Maria Arguedas and Francisco Izquierdo Ríos’ collection of these tales had in terms of cultural history. (Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany 1992 and hybridized practices of foreignism explained in Venuti’s The Translator’s