Translation taken to court - Aintzane Ibarzabal

Summary

During a visit by the King and Queen of Spain to Nanaria the wtiter Iñaki Antigüedad wrore an article in Basque for the newspaper Egin for which he was tried in court accused of insulting the King. In these proveedings the inquiry and the trial itself were based on tu o translations of the commentary in Basque the first made by the Basque Institute of Public Administ/ation (IVAP) and the seeond pre.venied by the Ministry of Jusliee. It was the first time that a tert w/ itten in Basque had been the subjeet of a trial. What was esen mo/e important however was the fact that the trial was based on its Spanish translation.

This article sels out to make a e omparative analysis of the linguistie use of the stylistie resorees of the three texts. To do this a series of questions are posed. whieh are esential due to the taet that both the judge and the publie prosecuto e ould only fully understand the translalions not the original.

Does a person unho has no knowledge of Basque understand the same thing when reading only the rext in Spanish?
Do the original and its translations produee the sarme efffect or sensations?
Do they all hawwe the same style or technique?
Such as il was translated would this commentary be published in a Spanishlanguage newspaper? Or expressed in a different way are these texts produced for the same reader?
In the opinion of the author of the article, doubts may be raised regarding the authentic equivalence between the original text and the translations, as these do not have the same style or the same communicative force as the text in Basque, neither are they intended for the same receiver and even the linguistic model, which the recepto/^ is assumed to have, is quite diffferent.

Later, a detailed analysis is made of the most prohlematic passages in the three texts, reaching the conclusion that the texts known to the judge and public prosecutqr d id not communicate the same message as the original, as they were only approximate versions of an explanatory nature.

Likewise, the three texts reveal vely different styles, as the original is more informal, satirical and even more colloquial, but more c oherent in itself; while the translations at times have a more cultured tone and show less internal coherency. These differences derive fiom the fact that it was the texts which were judged in reality, i.e., the translations, were not intendedfor publication in a new.vpaper column, hut to he used as an exhihit in judicial proceedings, and so, should have heen a literal expression of the original, as far as possible