Cover not available
Article published In:
Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 17:2 (2022) ► pp.220–242

The voice(s) of Julio Gómez de la Serna in Oscar Wilde’s Obras completas

ORCID logo | South China Business College (SCBC) | University of Oviedo | University of the Free State
This article studies the concepts of voice and of the translation pact with regard to Julio Gómez de la Serna’s translation of Obras completas by Oscar Wilde, first published in 1943 after Franco had established his rule of Spain. More precisely, it focuses on the two paratexts that preceded the translations and on the Spanish version of his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism. The study considers how the translator addressed Wilde’s homosexual scandal and his translation of a potentially controversial text at a time when the censorship office was imposing severe constraints on the publication of literary works. The analysis shows that Gómez de la Serna managed to circumvent these constraints while remaining loyal to the author and faithful to his work.
Keywords: Oscar Wilde, Julio Gómez de la Serna, translation pact, voice, paratexts, imaginary dialogue, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Translation studies on Wilde
  • Research questions and theoretical approach
    • The concept of voice
  • The imaginary dialogue as paratext
  • The voice of the biographer
  • The translator
  • Concluding discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.20043.val
References (46)
References
Alvstad, Cecilia. 2014. “The translation pact.” Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 23(3): 270–284. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alvstad, Cecilia and Alexandra Assis Rosa. 2015. “Voice in retranslation: An overview and some trends.” Target 27(1): 3–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alvstad, Cecilia, et al. 2017. “Introduction: Textual and contextual voices of translation.” In Textual and Contextual Voices of Translation, ed. by Cecilia Alvstad et al., 1–15. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Abellán, Manuel L. 1980. Censura y creación literaria en España (1939–1979). Barcelona: Ediciones Península. Google Scholar
Anderson, Andrew A. 1994. “Ricardo Baeza y el teatro.” Anales de la literatura española contemporánea 19 (3): 229–240. Google Scholar
Baer, Brian James. 2016. Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature. London: Bloomsbury. Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: The University of Texas Press. Google Scholar
Batchelor, Kathryn. 2018. Translation and Paratexts. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Karen. 2003. “The seven veils of Salomé. A study of Wilde’s play in Portuguese translation.” The Translator 9 (1): 1–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bouzaglo, Nathalie. 2019. “Scathing translations: Guillermo Valencia, Bernardo Arias Trujillo, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol .” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 28 (3): 341–352. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brems, Elke and Jack McMartin. 2021. “The voices of James Stratton Holmes.” In Literary Translator Studies, ed. by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 248–263. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carbonell i Cortés, Ovidi. 2019. “Translation and ideology: Spanish perspectives.” The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies, ed. by Roberto A. Valdeón and África Vidal, 118–138. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chan, Leo Tak-hung. 2010. Readers, Reading and the Reception of Translated Fiction in Chinese. Manchester: St. Jerome. Google Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew. 2009. “The name and nature of translator studies.” Hermes 421: 13–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Memes of Translation. The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davis, Lisa E. 1973. “Oscar Wilde in Spain.” Comparative Literature 25 (2): 136–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evangelista, Stefano (ed). 2010. The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe. London: Continuum. Google Scholar
Fornalczyk-Lipska, Anna. 2021. “Translators of children’s literature and their voice in prefaces and interviews.” In Literary Translator Studies, ed. by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 183–198. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fung, Chang Nam. 1998. “Faithfulness, manipulation, and ideology: A descriptive study of Chinese Translation Tradition.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 6 (2): 235–258. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gómez de la Serna, Julio. 1949 [1943]. “Gloria e infortunio de Oscar Wilde.” In Obras completas by Oscar Wilde, 11–72. Madrid: Aguilar. Google Scholar
Hermans, Theo. 2007. The Conference of the Tongues. Manchester: St. Jerome. Google Scholar
. 2009. “The translator’s voice in translated narrative.” In Translation Studies. Critical Concepts in Linguistics, ed. by Mona Baker, 283–305. London: Routledge. Google Scholar
Jané-Lligé, Jordi. 2015. “Translation and censorship: Günter Grass in Franco’s Spain.” In Perspectives on Translation, ed. by Anna Baczkowska, 235–258. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Google Scholar
Kaindl, Klaus. 2014. “Going fictional! Translators and interpreters in literature and film: An introduction.” In Transfiction. Research into the Realities of Translated Fiction, ed. by Klaus Kaindl and Karlheinz Spitzl, 1–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. “(Literary) translator studies: Shaping the field.” In Literary Translator Studies, ed. by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 1–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaindl, Klaus and Spitzl, Karlheinz (eds). 2014. Transfiction: Research into the Realities of Translation Fiction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kolb, Waltraud. 2021. “‘Hemingway’s priorities were just different’: Self-concepts of literary translators.” In Literary Translator Studies, ed. by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 107–122. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kohlmayer, Rainer. 1997. “From saint to sinner: The demonization of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation and in Richard Strauss’ opera.” In Translation as Intercultural Communication, ed. by Mary Snell-Hornby, Zuzana Jettmarová, and Klaus Kaindl, 111–122. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lázaro, Alberto. 2011. “Reading Oscar Wilde in post-war Spain: The Picture of Dorian Gray under the microscope.” In Dreaming the Future: New Horizons / Old Barriers in 21st-century Ireland, ed. by María Losada Friend, José M. Tejedor Cabrero, José M. Estévez-Sáa, and Werner Huber, 43–50. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Google Scholar
Lejeune, Philippe. 1975. Le pacte autobiographique. Paris: Seuil. Google Scholar
Mateo, Marta. 2009. “El juego pragmático como eje del humor de Oscar Wilde en inglés y en español.” In Lengua, traducción, recepción: en honor de Julio César Santoyo, ed. by José L. Chamosa et al., 323–356. León: Universidad de León. Google Scholar
. 2010. “The reception of Wilde’s works in Spain through theatre performances at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.” In The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, ed. by Stefano Evangelista, 156–172. London: Continuum. Google Scholar
Merino, Raquel. 1994. Traducción, tradición y manipulación: teatro inglés en España, 1950–1990. León/Bilbao: Universidad de León/Universidad del País Vasco. Google Scholar
Munday, Jeremy. 2008. Style and Ideology in Translation. London: Routledge. Google Scholar
Pablé, Adrian. 2005. “The importance of re-naming Ernest? Italian translations of Oscar Wilde.” Target 17 (2): 297–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paloposki, Outi. 2007. “Translators’ agency in 19th-century Finland.” In Doubts and Directions in Translation Studies, ed. by Radegundis Stolze, Miriam Shlesinger and Yves Gambier, 335–345. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pegenaute, Luis. 2019. “Spanish translation history.” The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies, ed. by Roberto A. Valdeón and África Vidal, 13–43. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rabadán, Rosa. 2000. Traducción y censura inglés-español: 1939–1985. León: Universidad de León. Google Scholar
Rodríguez Navas, Ana and Nathalie Bouzaglo. 2019. “Oscar Wilde’s forgotten legacy in Latin America.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 28 (3): 321–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rojas-Lizana, Sol, Laura Tolton, and Emily Hannah. 2018. “‘Kiss me on the lips, for I love you” Over a century of heterosexism in the Spanish translation of Oscar Wilde.” International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies 6 (2): 9–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vandaele, Jeroen. 2021. “Ibsen and the Doll’s House Dictator: How Francoism Curbed Nora.” Perspectives Studies in Translation Theory and Practice 29 (1): 103–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. 1949 [1943]. Obras completas. Translated by Julio Gómez de la Serna. Madrid: Aguilar. Google Scholar
Woodsworth, Judith (ed). 2018. The Fictions of Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zaragoza Ninet, Gora, Juan J. Martínez Sierra, and José J. Ávila-Cabrera (eds.). 2015. Traducción y censura: nuevas perspectivas. Special issue of Quaderns de Filologia Estudis Literaris 201. Google Scholar
Zaro, Juan J. 2019. “Literary translation.” The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies, ed. by Roberto A. Valdeón and África Vidal, 44–58. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar