Ecotranslation applied: Two Spanish translations of H. G. Wells "The Country of the Blind"

The birth of the ecological movement in the 1960s motivated the conception of a new branch of Translation Studies known as Ecotranslation. This scarcely known theoretical research framework sets off from two main notions: firstly, the representation of nature in literature and secondly, the importance of the different roles and interpretations that nature can be provided with in literary works. From these bases, the goal of our pilot study was to apply this new nature-centered approach to the translations of H. G. Wells’ short story The Country of the Blind, as rendered into Spanish by Íñigo Jáuregui (2014) and Alfonso Hernández Catá (1919). The acknowledgement that Ecotranslation derives from a general awareness towards nature, considering it as an intrinsic feature of humankind which simultaneously influences and is affected by human behavior, motivated the following analysis of the role that Wells attributed to it in his short story The Country Of The Blind, which evinced a strong correspondence between environment and society in the original text, where nature was shown to be an essential instrument to figuratively reflect social concerns. Setting off from that critical analysis we compared how two chronologically separate translators rendered the natural elements of the original story into a different language, in this case Spanish. In general terms, data confirmed that Jauregi´s translation, published in 2014, encompasses a much more literal approach to the source text, rendering Well´s original terminology into the closest equivalent expressions in Spanish. While Hernández Catá, seems to have focused his work on the idea of human control over nature, even if this decision meant altering the precise way in which Wells articulated his ideas.

El tratamiento estético de la figura de la prostituta en la lírica modernista española

This PhD thesis sets out to show, firstly, that Spanish modernist poets are lavish in their sublimation of the figure of the prostitute in their lyrical compositions. It argues that ultimately, they do not do this randomly or arbitrarily, but in response to a series of mechanisms that turn this sublimation into an investigation within the modernist movement. The need for a study such as this one seems indisputable, as not very much work has been done on this topic in Spanish literature, unlike in other literatures (particularly Latin American literature, precisely in the same turn-of-the-century period and in connection with Modernism). What little work has been published on the treatment of the figure of the prostitute in turn-of-the-century Spanish literature refers to narrative prose, notably the realist and naturalist novel, as well as the short story. Also, such work usually lacks a general theoretical framework, as it deals with one novel, one author, or in the case of greater generalisation, a specific type of novel. The study of this figure in literary texts involves studying Modernism itself, as it neatly draws together the panoply of topics so dear to Modernism, namely, the erotic, the marginal, the feminine, the cursed and Culturalism...