 |
[email protected] |
 |
3275638434 |
 |
 |
| Paper Publishing WeChat |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Cultural Errors in Spanish Translations of Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats….
Álvaro H. Díaz Yepes
Full-Text PDF
XML 85 Views
DOI:10.17265/2161-623X/2026.02.004
University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain
By the Bog of Cats… (1999), a play by Marina Carr, portrays the afflicted life of Hester Swane, an Irish Traveller who is mistreated, discarded, and ultimately pushed to insanity because of betrayal, social isolation, and emotional distress. This play offers a profound exploration of Irish Travellers’ cultural identity and marginalisation among the settled community. This study explores the cultural errors in two Spanish translations of this play. To this end, I conduct a comparative analysis between Carr’s source text (ST) and the target texts (TT): Junto a la Ciénaga de los Gatos (2022q) by Melania Terrazas Gallego and Álvaro Martínez de la Puente Molina, which is the first complete translation of Carr’s play, and Patricia Novillo-Corvalán’s partial translation included in The Theatre of Marina Carr: A Latin American Reading, Interview, and Translation (2009). Until now, there has been no comparative analysis of the Spanish translations of By the Bog of Cats..., with a particular emphasis on cultural errors. The objectives of this analysis are to identify and categorise these errors. By analysing both texts, I aim to uncover the nature of the errors, their possible causes, and their impact on the final translations. Additionally, the two Spanish translations are compared to examine their linguistic and cultural similarities and differences. This comparative approach highlights key translation discrepancies in them, such as misrepresentation, omission, or over-domestication of cultural elements. The analysis also provides an overview of how cultural elements are represented in the translations and the implications of the translators’ choices on the translated texts. Finally, the study sheds light on the translation strategies employed by the translators and their role in cross- cultural mediation.
cultural errors, Spanish translations, comparative analysis, Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats…, Irish Travellers, Irish Theatre
Álvaro H. Díaz Yepes. (2026). Cultural Errors in Spanish Translations of Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats…. US-China Education Review A, February 2026, Vol. 16, No. 2, 87-101.
Apter, E. (2006). The translation zone: A new comparative literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Baker, M. (1992). In other words: A coursebook on translation. London: Routledge.
Bassnett, S. (1993). Translation studies (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Bassnett, S. (2002). Reflections on translation. London: Routledge.
Bell, R. T. (1991). Translation and translating: Theory and practice. London: Longman.
Carr, M. (1999). By the bog of cats... London: Faber & Faber.
Catford, J. C. (1965). A linguistic theory of translation: An essay in applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cunnison, J. (1965). The theory of translation. New York: Harper and Row.
García Lorca, F. (1933). Bodas de sangre. Madrid, Spain: Espasa Calpe.
Hughes, T. (Trans.). (1996). Blood wedding by Federico García Lorca. London: Faber and Faber.
Kramer, C. F. (2018). The socially deviant (m)other in Euripides’ Medea and two modern adaptations (Master’s thesis, Stephen F. Austin State University, 2018).
Kruger, A. (2007). Cultural issues in translation: A theoretical analysis. New York: Springer.
Larson, M. (1984). Meaning-based translation: A guide to cross-language equivalence. San Francisco: University Press of America.
Levý, J. (1967). The art of translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.
Newmark, P. (2001). Approaches to translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Ní Ríordáin, C., & Schwerter, S. (2019). Speaking like a cow: Cultural errors in translation. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Nida, E. (1964). Towards a science of translation. Leiden: Brill.
Nida, E. (2004). Language and culture: A guide to translation. Hattiesburg: William Carey Library.
Novillo-Corvalán, P. (2009). The theatre of Marina Carr: A Latin American reading, interview, and translation, and the Irish Argentine dimension. Irish Migration Studies in Latin America, 7(2), 145-154.
Schleiermacher, F. (2000 [1813]). On the different methods of translating (M. B. Ellis, Trans.). In Translation theory: An anthology (pp. 42-56). Oxford: Blackwell.
Terrazas Gallego, M., & Martínez de la Puente Molina, Á. (2022a). Junto a la Ciénaga de los Gatos… Translation of By the bog of cats… by Marina Carr. Logroño: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Rioja.
Terrazas Gallego, M., & Martínez de la Puente Molina, Á. (2022b, July). The challenge of translating dialects: Marina Carr’s By the bog of cats… in Spanish. In S. Schwerter and K. Brannon (Eds.), Translation and circulation of migrant literature (Vol. 131, pp. 255-270). Berlin: Frank und Timme.