Hi, Sherry, I feel that readers of literature in the English-speaking world can handle both different national varieties of the language and the range of dialects and accents that exist over and above the national standard form. In practice most of us have used standard and non-standard... Everything should be up for grabs in the realm of literary language. I hope American readers will respond to my English as a literary English with a British accent in the same way I enjoy translations or novels written by North Americans. So-called mid-Atlantic Engiish is dull and lifeless in my book!

 In terms of the language in this translation I tried to avoid any modern English expressions that I thought would stick out like a sore thumb, say like 'he was sent to Coventry', but trawled colloquial and literary traditions for language to help create an 'original' sounding English. As I've said, I wanted to avoid the quaint.  

Here there is a vital difference between translations and originals. I can read Chaucer, Shakespeare or Austen in their original English although that doesn't at all mean I read them as they were read by their contemporaries. A translator today can't write like a contemporary of Rojas without descending into pastiche or self-parody. If you want a near-contemporary English, then read James Mabbe's brilliant 17th century translation.

 A 21st century translator has the option of attempting to re-create an archaic English, which is what Margaret Sayers Peden (Yale, 2009) or John Clifford (Edinburgh Festival 2004) do in theirs, or  combine old and modern in something new, and if it jars or seems jagged or shocks then all to the good. The Spanish of La Celestina is not a rounded modern fluent Spanish; it has the grammar and spellings of a national language coming into being, not one that is drilled and disciplined by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. 

Some readers might be interested to hear about issues I faced as a translator of Celestina that also touch on the cynicism that is mentioned.

Every translation involves an interpretation – it’s not simply a matter of finding equivalent meanings in dictionaries! You have to make thousands of decisions big and small and these are inevitably defined by the interpretation you bring to the book as a whole, though that can also change as part of the process…

 In this case, it was a process that involved some twelve drafts I made over a period of three years as I alternated re-drafting with other translations I was doing. As I re-read and re-wrote, I began to feel that nearly all the characters had energies and emotions that were human and endearing, however fleetingly. This is sometimes conveyed in the conversations when characters recall their past and sometimes in the detail and tone of their language.

 Celestina, for example, uses diminutives that are often used in contemporary colloquial Spanish like ‘chiquilla’ for ‘chica’ to give a friendly, affectionate touch to a conversation, to indicate friendliness. She can use two or three in a sentence. There is a limit to the number of times you can use ‘little’ or ‘small’ to translate this warmth into English. One day, I was puzzling over some ‘cuestioncillas’, and came up with the idea of an English diminutive ‘Celly’ for Celestina. Her name is never given a diminutive form by Fernando de Rojas but I felt it immediately makes her seem more humane and less forbidding when she calls herself ‘Celly’ or is called that by her friends.

 At another level, Celly and her entourage are the powerless in what is a ruthless society – with a flourishing Inquisition, powerful church and ambitious monarchy able to ride roughshod over the lives of commoners in the Spain of the 1490s. Nonetheless, they remain resilient, have a robust sense of humor and even a sense of their right to a life, even though there may not be much honor amongst these thieves and they come to a bad end.

 What made me most despair in the process of translation was the creation of a language for these characters that would reflect their liveliness and humanity. I wanted a language that sounded distinct and original but not mock Elizabethan, that would occasionally sound ‘old’ but not dated or quaint.  I would put a draft aside for three or four months and then return to it, having read around the scholarship and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Co and dug around inside my own repertoire of inner voices. It was at the beginning of the third year of re-writing that I felt the translation and the characters were beginning to flow with the kind of language I wanted for them. 

  There were Celestina’s proverbs I invented when a straight parallel in English didn’t exist such as ‘A house without males pales’ or ‘Who thinks, drinks’ or even ‘better a crumb in peace than a banquet in acrimony’. Then I came across the phrase ‘cunny is money’ in a history of brothels in the eighteenth century and thought it most appropriate for some of Celestina’s conversations with herself, as at the beginning of chapter 5 when she is feeling very pleased after winning round one of her tussle with Melibea and so she jokes that ‘Cunning wins cunny’ or that she is ‘past mistress at the cunny arts’. It’s the kind of obscene allusion Shakespeare was so fond of but plain, modern sounding and without the offensiveness of the actual ‘c’ word.

 At a more personal level, I drew on memories of conversations I had years ago with aunts and my mother who had been put into service at an early age and had no fond memories of being ‘at the beck and call’ of the ‘stuck up’ ladies Areúsa mentions.

 These few examples that give a flavor of my translation process are not simply ‘add-ons’: a lot of this language flowed spontaneously when I was in the last year of drafting. Though a translator puts in much conscious effort and research, finally there must be the pleasure of ‘letting go’ with words that will emerge, one hopes, with the humor, sadness and energy of the original.

 Peter