Title
Equivocation and Barbarism: Hemingway’s Modernist Mistranslations
Document Type
Essay
Annotation
Examines Hemingway’s innovative employment of Spanish idiom in For Whom the Bell Tolls, arguing for the author’s ethical translation of the Spanish culture. Lonsdale analyzes Hemingway’s language construction that defamiliarizes English and enhances the expressive power of words. Contends that the author’s often criticized mistranslations, far from reflecting communication failure, extend and deepen his range of meaning in English by evoking subtly nuanced impressions. Lonsdale focuses on the novel’s interlingual use of the words barbarous and barbarism, uncovering thematic connections between Hemingway’s language and complex depiction of primitivism and modernity in his novel of civil war.
Published in
Multilingualism and Modernity: Barbarisms in Spanish and American Literature
Date
2018
Pages
85-115
Citation
Lonsdale, Laura. “Equivocation and Barbarism: Hemingway’s Modernist Mistranslations.” In Multilingualism and Modernity: Barbarisms in Spanish and American Literature, 85-115. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.