Life's a Dream (La Vida es Sueño): (La Vida es Sueño)

Translator's Notes

Translator’s Notes 41 RENDERING CALDERÓN’S LA VIDA ES SUEÑO into English presents the translator with a series of difficult but unavoidable questions. Which dialect is desirable? Should archaisms be modernized or rendered into analogous English structures ? Which is the most appropriate medium, verse or prose? What constitutes a scene change? How should proper names be handled? What about wordplay? And finally, what should be done with enigmatic or disputed passages? My dissatisfaction with the various answers that previous translators have given to these questions provides the primary impetus behind this new translation of the crown jewel of classical Spanish theater. 1. DIALECT Most translators have probably spent little time consciously debating the dialect of their intended translation and have simply allowed themselves to be guided by the idiom that comes most naturally to them, that is, their native dialect. This is a reasonable principle that has guided me, too, in my rendering of Calderón into more or less standard American English. I was further motivated , however, by the fact that Calderón, although rather well-known in Britain —perhaps because of the impact of British Hispanism (especially in the wake of A. A. Parker) and the relatively high number of British translators—is still relatively unknown in the United States even at the collegiate level. Dismayed by this lacuna, comparable to leaving Sophocles or Shakespeare out of the curriculum, I have aimed primarily to produce a text that would, without Translator’s Notes HI Translator’s Notes 42 sacrificing accuracy, be as accessible as possible to the current generation of American high school and college students. This choice is reflected mainly in my handling of colloquialisms. For example, Gwynne Edwards has the play’s comic sidekick state in the first scene, “If only I could bloody move,” whereas John Clifford, in the same scene, has him remark, “It’s just someone been to the loo.”1 In contrast, I avoid terms such as bloody and loo not because they are colloquial but because their use is not widespread in American parlance. Conversely , in a different passage of the same scene, I have Bugle pronounce the more American-sounding “I’ll be damned” (p. 92). Various cultural and historical factors, of course, tend to accentuate the gap between the Spanish of Calderón and American English more than would occur , perhaps, with contemporary British English. The United States is a republic in which antiaristocratic sentiment together with veneration for democratic institutions is deeply ingrained in most citizens. Hence, notions such as the “King’s English,” the “royal we,” or the difference between a duke and a count are likely to mean little; and I have accepted such incongruities as the inevitable price of accuracy. In the great majority of cases, however, if we discount spelling (which is, of course, not registered orally), the dialectal choices I have made are minor and likely to go almost unnoticed. 2. HISTORICITY Languages vary not only geographically, as between Ireland, Britain, America, and Australia, but also chronologically. Standard contemporary British English is quite different from the English of Shakespeare—whose life ran roughly parallel to Calderón’s (the latter was sixteen when his English contemporary died)— which is, in turn, very different from the English of Chaucer two centuries earlier. And although the evolution of the Spanish language is much less pronounced than that of English and although Castilian texts from the time of Calderón are still accessible to contemporary readers with little or no specialized training, there are some significant differences. Modern translators of Calderón are thus faced with a decision regarding not only dialect but also historicity. Whereas the former question is generally resolved with little fanfare, in accordance with the translator’s native dialect, and with little consequence for reception, the second question is one that all translators must consciously Translator’s Notes 43 face and consistently wrestle with. Its answer, furthermore, is likely to have a strong impact on the play’s reception and interpretation. Because Calderón’s Spanish is roughly contemporary to the English of Shakespeare, some translators have sought to render him into an Elizabethansounding idiom. William Colford, for instance, translates the opening lines of the play as follows: Wild hippogriff, that matched the wind in flight, Dark lightning, dull-plumed bird, unscalèd fish, Brute beast that makes a mock of nature’s laws, Now wherefore art...