REELING AND WRITHING VI: DOÑA ROSARIO FUE AL ARMARIO

REELING AND WRITHING
or,
Miss Dermark's 2015 Advent Calendar

DAY SIX

DOÑA ROSARIO FUE AL ARMARIO
or
TRANSLATING MEANINGFUL AND RHYMING NAMES

Every single Anglophone knows Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard. The rhyme has cemented the sentence, set it in stone. When I began translating nursery rhymes into Spanish and Catalan during my adolescence, I suddenly had the epiphany of changing her surname for a Spanish given name that fit like a glove: "Doña Rosario fue al armario". There is a female name in Spanish that rhymes with "armario", "cupboard:" it's "Rosario", literally "Rosary," a Catholic-sounding and old-fashioned given name, fitting for a grandmother, or aunt, or old maid, or "beata" (devoutly Catholic but hypocritical middle-aged/old lady) born during the dictatorship.

Speaking names are also a problem to translate, and here are a pair of Dickens examples: would Mr. Fezziwig change a tad of his essence if he became "el señor Pelucón", or Mrs. Corney if she became "la señora Cursy"? The jolly shopkeeper and the hypocritical orphanage matron whose names in original English even conjure the characters themselves (even to those who watch or read A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist for the first time in their lives) in the minds of those who get to know them... Dickens was a master at giving his characters speaking names, after all, and keeping them in English is the best choice, with footnotes or an epilogue to explain the meanings of these powerful surnames.

And here are a few studies: a failure (Blâvingen into Licenea), a success (Sybill Trelawney into Sibilla Cooman), a cultural reference to trade for a pun, which succeeds (Becky Blunt into Becky Vanitas), and a comparative dilemma (Jon Snow/Nieve/Snö and other Westerosi bastards, taking into account the cases of Hot Pie/Pay Caliente/Varm-Paj/Tourte-Chaude and Gilly/Elí/Vère).


A GREAT ERROR: BLÂVINGE -> LICENEA
In one of August Strindberg's most lovely stories, the child protagonist is a soldier's daughter called Blâvinge, literally "Bluewing", after the common blue butterfly (Polyommatus icarus) ("blâvinge" is this butterfly's name in Swedish) due to her lively, energetic personality and the colour of her dress/frock. I bought myself Strindberg's short stories done into Spanish in Cádiz for Christmas, the translation by Francisco J. Uriz. The translations were excellent except for a pair of errors: one was leaving the names of royals untranslated (Karl XII instead of Carlos XII, Gustav Adolf instead of Gustavo Adolfo) in "The Golden Helmets"... and the other was naming Blâvinge Licenea, after the Spanish name of the butterfly species. Now Licenea sounds too cultured and too pompous, more like the name of a count's daughter than the one given to the child of a common soldier. I would opt myself for naming her Alazul (literally "Bluewing"), which retains the associations to the blue butterfly (albeit more subtly) and sounds more simple and childish, even sounding like the flutter of wings on a meadow wildflower.

A GREAT IMPROVEMENT: SYBILL TRELAWNEY -> SIBILLA COOMAN
But there are also translations that improve the quality of speaking names. The Fortune-Telling teacher at Hogwarts, given life by the legendary Emma Thompson (Amelia in Treasure Planet, Beatrice in Much Ado), was given in Italian a surname that even surpasses the English original one. "Trelawney" instantly recalls the local squire in Treasure Island (is it serendipity that Emma was chosen to play the role?), and, to more avid readers, the eccentric Enlightened scientist in The Cloven Viscount.

"Trelawney" is derived from a famous cry of defiance from the south-west of England, where Rowling grew up, often shouted at football matches:

"And shall Trelawney live? And shall Trelawney die? Here's ten thousand Cornishmen who ask the reason why!"

The cry is a line from The Song of the Western Men, written in 1833 by the poet and parson Robert Stephens Hawker and the unofficial Cornish national anthem. It concerns the march to London in 1688 in protest at the incarceration in the Tower of Jonathan Trelawney, Bishop of Bristol. This could be a reference to Trelawney predicting the death of one of her students every year. It is also interesting to note that Bishop Trelawney also was released and went on to live for another thirty-three years, just as Professor Trelawney's famous death predictions rarely came true.

The name "Trelawney" comes from the Cornish phrase tre-lonow, homestead of groves, or tre-launow, farm in clearing. J. K. Rowling claimed that she picked the name because of her love of Cornish surnames, which she had not used in her books before. The age of the name also made it suitable, because of Trelawney's over-reliance on her ancestry when seeking to impress.

But the bishop is, anyway, far less known than the squire (and the mad scientist). Only a few people know the reference and the rest assume it's an allusion to the character from Treasure Island. Me included.

Her full Italian name is, ut supra, Sibilla Cooman. As in the Cuman sybil, the most renowned one of these ancient soothsayers, who is said to have foretold, among other things, a new Golden Age believed to be the second coming of Christ. This is a historical reference far easier to get than the bishop imprisoned in the Tower of London (Just like, to put an example: if I asked any of you not from the Plana area of Castellón Province who Tombatossals and Bufanúvols were, you would be wondering... but if I ask those of you not from my birthplace about Zeus, Iago, or Tyrion Lannister, a bell would ring in your heads). So yes, "Sybill Cooman", if Rowling had chosen that surname, would ring the right bells for most of the readership across the globe.

A CHANGE THAT WORKS PERFECTLY: BECKY BLUNT -> BECKY VANITAS
One of Ada Goth's former nannies, an ambitious social climber and ace écarté player who got fired for attempting larceny at Ghastlygorm Hall, went by the name of Becky Blunt. Pictures of her show a blond shrewd maiden in typical Regency attire. It's plain to any English speaker that she is an expy of Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair, her surname being a pun ("blunt": the opposite of "sharp"). The Spanish translation would both lose the antonyms pun and the intertextual reference to her inspiration. But Elena Gallo Krahe has taken what we see as the best option: changing Becky's surname from Blunt to Vanitas, a reference to the title of the Thackeray novel, so that, while "Becky Blunt" rings no bells to a Spanish reader, "Becky Vanitas" immediately leads the reader to realize: "It's Becky from Vanity Fair! (La feria de las vanidades, in Spanish)." A clever choice indeed, and one that retains the original reference, not losing it in translation.

DIFFERENT APPROACHES: JON SNOW OR JON NIEVE / SNÖ / SCHNEE?
In Westeros, all the lovechildren born within each region are given the same surname, a surname derived from a prominent geographical feature of the region: "Snow" in the North, "Sand" in Dorne, "Flowers" in the Reach... While most translations (Spanish, Catalan, Swedish, German, Hungarian...) translate these surnames into the target language (into Spanish, for instance, as "Nieve", "Arena", "Flores"...), French and Italian versions do not, keeping them in English ("Jon Snow" and "Ellaria Sand", for instance [remain untranslated in Italian and in French], vs. "Jon Nieve" and "Ellaria Arena").
I am not against it, I mean, but the same Frenchman, Jean Sola, who gave us impressive translations of all the place names in Westeros, from beyond the Wall to the south coast of Dorne, into French (not to mention some characters: Hot Pie as Tourte-Chaude and Gilly[-flower] as [Prime-]Vère...) could have written "Jon Neige(s)" and "Ellaria Sable(s)", as well as for all the other lovechildren in the series, and the World of Ice and Fire would make even more sense to the Francophonie, even making Westeros appear far closer to them, like in other translations of this true-to-life universe.

PS. The Hungarian version translates the lovechild surnames, but uses 1) Eastern name order (surname first), the one used in Hungary (and for instance Japan, by the way), for illegitimate children, and 2) Western order (given name first), the one employed by the rest of European cultures, for trueborn children of nobility, with 3) a few exceptions like upstarts or place-of-origin surnames, which employ Eastern order as well. 
Examples of all three cases: 1) Havas Jon, Homok Ellaria; 2) Loras Tyrell, Sansa Stark; 3) Tengerjáró Davos, Tarthi Brienne.
Could this be a reflection of ancien régime Magyar society, in which only the elite, with their Austrian and French influences, used the Western name order? In my own humble opinion, 'tis so it is.