Three Spanish translations of Jonathan Swift’s "A modest proposal" Fidelity to a project for crisis

Abstract

This paper aims, on the one hand, at briefly describing the translations of eighteenth-century English literary works, and on the other hand, at studying the reception of three late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century translations of Jonathan Swift’s satirical work A modest proposal. A descriptive analysis of the target texts will examine whether there are significant differences or similarities between them, given the distinct contexts that frame each translation and the kind of reader each translator addresses. Thus, we will study the relevance of Swift’s works in Spain in the eighteenth-century and later centuries considering the impact of his translations. This will be followed by the analysis of the translation strategies of historical and cultural references in three target texts published in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These texts also show diverse forms to transfer the satirical effect of Swift’s radical project, so that we could assess the intervention of the translators during the decision-making process, which will vary depending on the target reader and on the particular purpose of the edition and, hence, of each translation.