On Translation and Its Twists

a reflection on the translation process of “Darle vueltas a una ceiba”

Abstract

This article offers a reflection on the translation process of “Darle vueltas a una ceiba,” a short story by Cuban author Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Using the language of orality, the story paints an almost picturesque Havana, of its streets, its people, customs, and beliefs. Based on the idea that the translation process involves an aesthetic, ethical, and experimental activity, the reflections in this text expound on the author’s own experience with the adopted translation strategies, particularly with respect to the story’s cultural context and language, which fluctuates between vernacular, colloquial, burlesque, and ironic. The conceptual considerations in these pages are supported, above all, by three fundamental theoretical axes of literary translation theory: creative translation or transcription, as propounded by Haroldo de Campos (1962), linguistic hospitality, based on the theory of Paul Ricoeur and Antoine Berman, and the loyalty/faithfulness principle, addressed broadly by a range of translation scholars, including Humberto Eco.