While reading through Salvador Dali's "Les Cocus du Vieil Art Moderne" I've noticed several translational choices that make me glad the copy of the manuscript I have has both the translation and original french. Thuogh I am only making my way through the second essay, there are several choices that the translator has made so far (and I assume there will be many more) which I disagree with. The first is his choice in the translation of the title. "Les Cocus du Vieil Art Moderne" literally means "The Cuckolding of Old Modern Art" where as his translation's title is the "the cuckolds of Antiquated modern art." Not a huge difference, and perhaps his choice of antiquated versus old has some specific reasoning, however, as we've noted in class, Dali was very specific about choosing his words, and so allowing interpretation could potentially provide problems down the road.
The second instance is in his translation of the phrase "Parce que les critiques du tres vieil arte moderne - venus des Europes plus ou moins centrales, doc de nulle part..." Which literally means "Becaucse the critics of very old modern art - come from more or less central europe, thus of nothing." His translation however is "Because it so happens that the critics of the very antiquated modern art - who come from more or less central eurpoe, in other words from nowhere..." I find it interesting his choice of the use of nowhere rather than nothing - as the two have very different connotations - though just now I've found online translators that translate nulle part into nowhere, so perhaps that's more reasonable than I'd originally thought. Still, interesting.
There are also a number of occurences where he changes "peinture" into "art" where the former literally means "painting." As Dali specifically uses the form "art" in the french title, one can suppose that he specifically meant painting there rather than art. The last thing for the moment is actually a note regarding both Dali and the translator, as in numbering the two types of cuckolds, dali lists them as "primo" and "secundo" which I assume would be spanish, rather than the french "premiere" and "deuxieme" however they are translated as "first" and "second" which implies that there is a lost meaning there, since, once again assuming Dali's specific choice of words the use of the spanish rather than french had a specific purpose.
Hopefully, I'll update this again later today after I find more things.
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