My purpose here is not to dogmatise on the rules of translation, but to indicate those I have followed, or at least tried to the best of my ability to follow, in the present instance. One which, it seems to me, cannot be too rigidly followed in translating "Don Quixote," is to avoid everything that savours of affectation. The book itself is, indeed, in one sense a protest against it, and no man abhorred it more than Cervantes. "Toda afectacion es mala," is one of his favorite proverbs. For this reason, I think, any temptation to use antiquated or obsolete language should be resisted. It is after all an affectation, and one for which there is no warrant or excuse. Spanish has probably undergone less change since the seventeenth century than any language in Europe, and by far the greater and certainly the best part of "Don Quixote" differs but little in language from the colloquial Spanish of the present day. That wonderful supper-table conversation on books of chivalry in Chap. xxxii. Part I. is just such a one as might be heard now in any venta in Spain. Except in the tales and Don Quixote's speeches, the translator who uses the simplest and plainest every-day language will almost always be the one who approaches nearest to the original.
Seeing that the story of "Don Quixote" and all its characters and incidents have now been for more than two centuries and a half familiar as household words in English mouths, it seems to me that the old familiar names and phrases should not be changed without good reason. I am by no means sure that I have done rightly in dropping Shelton's barbarous title of "Curious Impertinent" by which the novel in the First Part has been so long known. It is not a translation, and it is not English, but it has so long passed current as the title of the story that its original absurdity has been, so to speak, effaced by time and use. "Ingenious" is, no doubt, not an exact translation of "Ingenioso;" but even if an exact one could be found, I doubt it any end would be served by substituting it. No one is likely to attach the idea of ingenuity to Don Quixote.[1] "Dapple" is not the correct translation of
- ↑ "Ingenio" was used in Cervantes' time in very nearly the same way as "wit" with us at about the same period, for the imaginative or inventive faculty. Collections of plays were always described as being by "los mejores ingenios"—"the best wits." By "Ingenioso" he means one in whom the imagination is the dominant faculty, overruling reason. The opposite is the "discreto," he in whom the discerning faculty has the upper hand—he whose reason keep the imagination under due
