"¿Sueles decir al hechicero: 'Adivina para mí'?" ‒ Funcionalidad gramatical en las traducciones al quechua de cinco confesionarios coloniales

Citation

Dedenbach-Salazar Saenz S (2018) "¿Sueles decir al hechicero: 'Adivina para mí'?" ‒ Funcionalidad gramatical en las traducciones al quechua de cinco confesionarios coloniales ["Do you say to the sorcerer: 'Prophesy for me'?" ‒ Grammatical functionality in the Quechua translation of five colonial confessionaries]. INDIANA, 35 (2), pp. 175-207. https://journals.iai.spk-berlin.de/index.php/indiana/issue/view/115

Abstract
The 16th and 17th centuries colonial Quechua Peruvian confessionaries are testimonies of the translation efforts of Spanish missionaries who had become fluent and knowledgeable in the native language. Complementing existing analyses of some semantic fields, this contribution aims at studying how they translated Spanish grammar into Quechua. This will be exemplified by using sentences from the first and sixth commandments and centre on the transmission of tense and indirect speech as well as other grammatical and syntactic challenges. After presenting the history of the origin and composition of the five confessionaries I will, embedded in the field of Translation Studies, approach the functionality of the translations, the translators’ (in)visibility as well as domestication vs. foreignisation. It becomes evident that, although no clear translation strategies or consistencies within certain religious Orders can be found and the translators are not always visible, the authors/translators had a good understanding of the Quechua language, which becomes particularly clear in their awareness of morphology and syntax. This led to a higher degree of grammaticalisation than in the Spanish original. Translation nuances reveal the authors’/translators’ familiarity with complex structures.

Keywords
functionality of translation; Quechua colonial confessionaries; translation of grammatical structures; translation studies; translators' (in)visibility;

Journal
INDIANA: Volume 35, Issue 2

People

Dr Sabine Dedenbach-Salazar Saenz

Honorary Senior Lecturer, Literature and Languages - Division