Translating Catalan Literature into English

Until recently, translations from Catalan into English were few and far between, and tended to reflect the interest of a particular individual or group: historians, Catalanophiles, academics. Among them were the pioneering translations of King Jaume I’s Crònica (translated by John Forster, 1883), Ramon Muntaner’s Crònica (translated by Lady Goodenough, 1920-21), Ramon Llull’s Llibre d’Amic e Amat, Art de contemplació, Blanquerna and Arbre d’amor (translated by E. Allison Peers, 1923, 1925, 1926 and 1926 respectively) and Desclot’s Crònica (translated by L. Critchlow, 1929). There were also translations of urban and rural realist and naturalist texts, the most important of which were La papallona by Narcís Oller, and Mar i cel and Terra baixa by Àngel Guimerà (translated by Wallace Gillpatrick, 1916 and 1914), the latter of which was popularized in the opera Martha of the Lowlands. None of these has ever been reissued. The translations of plays by Santiago Rusiñol and Ignasi Iglésies have been lost completely.

It is difficult to see, for example, how Gerald Brenan’s interest and insight into the 15th-century poet Ausiàs March − in his 1963 work Literature of the Spanish People, which still stands today as a model of comparative literature − failed to inspire any translation of this author’s poems. Similarly, despite the numerous poems written on Catalonia and Barcelona by British poets during the Spanish Civil War, and George Orwell’s widely-read Homage to Catalonia (published in 1938, although not translated into Catalan until 1965), there was no corresponding interest in translations of Catalan literature but, instead, a few travel books and memoirs. The legacy of the 1930s was to be found in the informative works written on Catalonia by E. Allison Peers, John Langdon Davies and R. D. F. Pring-Mill, describing Catalan history, politics, life and culture.

It took the exemplary and tireless efforts of Joan Gili − himself the author of Catalan Grammar (1974) − and his Oxford-based Dolphin Book Company to produce the first wave of modern translations from Catalan: Joan Triadú, An Anthology of Catalan Lyric Poetry (1953); Josep Carner, Poems (translated by Pearse Hutchinson, 1962); Paul Russell-Gebbett, Medieval Catalan Linguistic Texts (1965); Carles Riba, Poems, Tannkas, and Savage Heart (translated by Joan Gili, 1970, 1991, 1993); Salvador Espriu, Lord of the Shadow (translated by Kenneth Lyons, 1975), and Forms and Words (translated by Joan Gili, 1980). From the early 1960s this activity was linked to the teaching of Catalan in British universities by academics such as F. Pierce, R. B. Tate, G. W. Ribbans, A. Terry, M. Wheeler and P. Polack alongside Catalan exiles and teachers living in Britain (J. M. Batista i Roca, I. González Llubera, A. Turull, J. L. Marfany) or the United States (J. M. Roca-Pons, J. Gulsoy, A. Ferran, J. M. Solà-Solé, A. Porqueras, J. M. Sobrer). This led to the appearance of a new generation of translators with an academic grounding in Catalan (A. Yates, R. Archer, N. Smith, J. Willis, S. Golden, M. A. Newman, J. Eddy, A. Bath, D. Keown, S. A. Kitts, H. Gardner). Many of the translations undertaken by this generation of translators (e.g. Joan Salvat-Papasseit and Salvador Espriu) were done under the auspices of the Anglo-Catalan Society (founded 1952) or the North American Catalan Society. This atmosphere was more open to the history of Catalan literature and saw the first major translations of classics such as Ramon Llull (Anthony Bonner, Selected Works, 1985), or Ausiàs March (Arthur Terry, Ausiàs March: Selected Poems, 1976; M. A. Conejero et al., Selected Poems, 1986-93; Robert Archer, Ausiàs March: A Key Anthology, 1992), or the 15th-century novel of chivalry Curial e Güelfa (translated by Pamela Waley, 1982) or Joaquim Ruyra (1858-1939) The Long Oar (translated by Julie Flanagan, 1994).

The general, non-specialist reader has also had access to Catalan literature through the translations brought out by commercial publishers, such as David H. Rosenthal’s translations of Mercè Rodoreda (1983, 1984, 1986), Tirant lo Blanc (1984), J. V. Foix (1988), Joan Perucho (1988), V. Andrés Estellés (1992) and Víctor Català (1992). There have been other moves to gain a wider public for a varied selection of books, authors and genres that might have international appeal. These range from L. Villalonga’s Bearn (translated by D. Bonner, 1988) to Maria Antonia Oliver’s detective story Study in Lilac (translated by Kathleen McNerney, 1987), or the poems of Salvador Espriu (translated by Magda Bogin, Selected Poems, 1989), and young prose writers such as Quim Monzó and Jesús Montcada (O’Clock, translated by Mary Ann Newman, 1986; The Towpath, translated by Judith Willis, 1994).

Special mention must be made of the American poet and critic Sam Abrams, an expert on contemporary Catalan poetry and founder of the privately published Beacon series (1984-96), in which have appeared his own translations of M. Abelló, A. Bartra, N. Comadira, P. Gimferrer, M. Manent, J. Margarit, J. Palau i Fabre, F. Parcerisas, M. Pessarrodona, J. Piera, A. Ràfols-Casamada and J. Teixidor.

If Catalan literature is to be known round the world, translation into English is now a necessity, given that English is the international language at present. But more than that, it is vital to the survival of Catalan literature in its own country. Faced with the problems any minority literature has in being recognized, especially one that lives in the shadow of a more widely-known neighbour, translation into a third language means gaining an ally and the support of another external cultural system that will help keep the immediate colonialism at bay. In political terms, it is as if the close links between a small state and a superpower stop the small state falling prey to the colonial might of their neighbour. Translation into a widely-spoken language belonging to another culture not seen as threatening creative expression in Catalan enhances the self-esteem and prestige of the cultural system of literary production in Catalan.