I liked Carlos Rojas' lecture, especially when he talked about linguistic tensions in "Diary of a Madman" by Lu Xun and its different translations. We've seen this in class with other translators, and in other lectures this semester. Most translators agree with Rojas: we can't cut or omit parts of the text that might be difficult to translate due to their linguistic tensions, we might risk loosing a lot by doing that. What Rojas did is that he came up with neologisms, words that the reader could recognize as English but, at the same time, they could also recognize as foreign, or difficult to grasp. He also recommended the use of footnotes that would serve to explain phrases and offer backstory and history of the text to complement the text. I agree with these recommendations and I might use them for my capstone.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Carlos Germán Bellini's poems translated by Karl Maurer and edited by his brother Christopher Maurer. I can't imagine attempting to translate Bellini because he uses such a complicated word order, syntax and diction, even for Spanish! But, Karl Maurer does an amazing job of expressing to the reader the meaning and the feel of the poem, the experience that the reader for the first time experiences, but he, at times, takes a lot of liberty when translating. I understand this, as it's very complicated to translate poetry, and the translator needs to always make up for something that will be sacrificed or lost in translation. Overall, I think he did a fantastic job and I'm looking forwards to discussing his work in class.
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