Ecology and translation: Linguistic reshaping of leading characters in H. G. Wells’ The Country of the Blind

Abstract

This paper is part of a general theoretical framework which draws from two different notions of ecology: ecotranslation and eco-translatology. Ecotranslation (Badenes and Coisson 2010; 2015) refers to the practice, by critics and translators, of making the linguistic representation of nature their main focus. Eco-translatology (Hu Gengshen 2003; Xiaohua 2015) is a theoretical methodology according to which the research should focus on, first, subjective decisions taken by the translator in order to adapt to the translator’s own environment and, second, their particular choice of strategies and linguistic expressions used to (re)produce a (normally literary) text. Over the past few years, these two notions have been applied to translation, both in theory and in practice. The present study draws from the principles of ecotranslation, and (at least partially) confirms the postulates of eco-translatology. From this perspective, this paper will analyse the 1919 Spanish translation of H. G. Wells’ The Country of the Blind by Alfonso Hernández Catá. In particular, the paper tackles the translator’s adaptation of the main natural settings present in the original work, which can be said to be the symbolic protagonists of this work. With this, it will be shown that Hernández Catá is not merely a translator, but a second author, in his subtle transferral of the focus from nature to people. With this transferral, the translator displays a greater human control and turns the original story into a heroic tale. And, ultimately, this transferral forces a linguistic adaptation. Indeed, this is what this paper will focus on. The paper will put forward a detailed comparative analysis of the original and translated versions of the work. This analysis will help determine the textual strategies and verbal sub-strategies used by the author, on the one hand, and the translator, on the other, to each achieve their goals.