The Nuances of Translation

I will examine the lack of cultural equivalence in translation that I, as part of a translation team, encountered while translating various chapters from Ángel A. Rivera's novel, La rabia útil de los muertos (Una novela de zombis), and the application form for Liberty Partnerships Program (a collaboration of 46 higher education institutions across New York State to support at-risk middle and high school students in their academic, social, and emotional development.) I will discuss our process of translating the novel, and how we worked as a group, using intimacy, original and authorial intent, and cultural significance as our guiding principles when making group decisions. I will explain unexpected difficulties for translators that appear in the form of culture-based lingual inequities, such as choosing between the more literal "word" equivalent versus the potentially briefer, protracted version that better captures the significance of the original word or phrase. I will discuss the benefits of each choice, and explain how and why we ultimately decided to translate certain parts of the texts the way that we did.