Perspectives

Studies in Translatology

ISSN: 0907-676X (Print) 1747-6623 (Online) Journal homepage: http://tandfonline.com/loi/rmps20

Women interpreting masculinity: Two English

translations of Don Segundo Sombra

Marko Miletich

To cite this article: Marko Miletich (2016) Women interpreting masculinity: Two
English translations of Don Segundo Sombra, Perspectives, 24:1, 157-172, DOI:
10.1080/0907676X.2015.1040035

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2015.1040035

Published online: 28 Aug 2015.

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 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 2016
Vol. 24, No. 1, 157–172, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2015.1040035

Women interpreting masculinity: Two English translations of

Don Segundo Sombra
Marko Miletich*

Department of Modern Languages, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA

(Received 19 May 2014; accepted 24 March 2015)

This article examines two English translations of Don Segundo, a novel written by
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Ricardo Güiraldes. One of the so-called ‘telluric novels’ of Latin America, this work
has been regarded as one of the masterpieces of the area. Don Segundo Sombra is the
story of homodiegetic narrator, Fabio Cáceres, a well-educated man who narrates
events that happened to him as an adolescent reaching manhood in the Argentinean
Pampas. The text reflects a quintessential view of masculinity that is filled with
individuals showing clear negative attitudes towards women, as well as an apparent
male chauvinist point of view. The only two English translations of this work, by
female translators Harriet de Onís and Patricia Owen Steiner, provide slightly but
crucially different interpretations when translating this early twentieth century manly
Argentine tale. The analysis conducted in this article is of a descriptive nature, and it
intends to point out decisions made by the two translators in order to determine if a
particular tendency can be detected. An analysis of the renditions of key passages will
reveal differences in the translators’ perceptions of the gendered ideology embedded
in the fictional men.
Keywords: Don Segundo Sombra; gender; Güiraldes; masculinity; literary translation;
retranslation

Introduction
This article sets out to compare and contrast translational decisions made by two
translators, Harriet de Onís and Patricia Owen Steiner, regarding their translations of the
novel Don Segundo Sombra (1926) by Ricardo Güiraldes. The analysis intends to
determine if a particular tendency by the translators can be detected. Particular
emphasis will be given to the representations of the masculine, taking into consideration
what Jeff Hearn and Michaels S. Kimmel (2006, p. 56) describe as heterosocial power
relations (power of men over women), and homosocial power relations (power of some
men over other men). The power relations constantly seen (or performed) in this novel
function to define a particular view of masculinity, defined by R. W. Connell as
hegemonic in that it proposes ‘the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is
taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women’
(2005, p. 77). The textual representations of these power relations also serve to provide
an impression of the different performances of the women and men throughout the

*Email: miletich@uta.edu

© 2016 Taylor & Francis

 158 M. Miletich

novel. The translational decisions of those textual representations, then, will provide
particular impressions of the characters’ personalities/identities/ideas for the readers of
the translations.
Gender plays an important role in fiction, because literature is ‘one of the privilege
sites for the congealing of notions of femininity and masculinity and, at the same time,
the site of their perpetual disturbance’ (Weed, 2006, p. 263). Characters from babies to
the elderly all appear as vehicles of gender identities whether showing a particular
normative behavior thought of as characteristic of their sex, questioning it, or going
against it. These portrayals influence how characters are read, viewed, and how they act,
interact, and react to each other.
The importance of gender in translation has earned prominence with the publication
of seminal texts by Simon (1996) and von Flotow (1997). More recently, several books
have delved into the subject (most notably Federici & Leonardi, 2013; von Flotow, 2011;
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Larkosh, 2011; Munday, 2007; Santaemilia, 2005). Karen Seago, for her part, examines
the translations of some of the fairy tales by the Grimm brothers and argues that they
‘introduced a more consciously socialising framework in which the representation of
male and female characters was made to conform to norms of nineteenth century gender
expectations’ (2004, p. 24).
A translator who has no qualms about intervening in translations and openly discusses
her involvement in a foreign text is Suzanne Jill Levine. Her interventions in the
translation into English of Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s La Habana Para un Infante
Difunto are conspicuously obvious. It should be noted that this novel is presented as a
collaboration, closelaboration, with the author (Levine, 1991, p. xiii), which is not the
case of any of the translations of Don Segundo Sombra. Infante’s Inferno could be
described as a semibiographical chronicle of the sexual escapades of an unnamed narrator
in Pre-Castro Havana. In this story about and adolescent’s quest to become a man through
his many experiences, the protagonist is finally swallowed by a vagina, thus regressing to
the stage before infancy (Levine, 1984, p. 90).
Suzanne Jill Levine explains her position as a woman and translator in regards to the
apparent sexism of the male narrator: ‘Where does this leave a woman as translator of
such a book? Is she not a double betrayer, to play Echo to this Narcissus, repeating the
archetype once again?’ (Levine, 1984, p. 92). Levine argues that her role as a translator is
not to repeat the sexist model shown by the narrator of Cabrera Infante’s novel. Levine
decides to ‘intervene’ in many cases and subvert, eliminate, soften or change the sexist
views of the male narrator. Although, as we shall see, de Onís does not seem to intervene
in such a calculated manner, nonetheless her translation does change the presentation of
the fictional women and men of this Argentinean tale.
In the only two English translations of Don Segundo Sombra,1 Harriet de Onís and
Patricia Owen Steiner produced their own individual interpretations of the masculinity
that permeates this work. An examination of relevant passages of the two translations will
unveil differences in the perception of the masculinities and, of course, femininities
embedded in the gender roles of the characters portrayed in this early twentieth-century
novel.2 Translations will often deal with manifestations of gender in the source texts and
may ‘exaggerate them, or ignore and obscure them’ (von Flotow, 2009, p. 124). These
manifestations of gender are depicted through translational choices, which can often show
the conscious (or unconscious) tendency a translator adopts. The examinations of these
translational choices are the basis for this analysis.
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 159

Ricardo Güiraldes and Don Segundo Sombra

Ricardo Güiraldes was born in Buenos Aires in 1886. In 1926, at the age of 40, he
finished Don Segundo Sombra, which was published that same year. He died a year later
in Paris.
Don Segundo Sombra is the story of a homodiegetic narrator, Fabio Cáceres,3 a well-
educated man who narrates events that happened to him as an adolescent reaching
manhood in the Argentinean Pampas. Fabio is a guacho (an orphan or abandoned child)
that dreams of becoming a gaucho (a cowboy of the Pampas). The whole novel can be
seen as a tribute to masculinity and is filled with a conspicuous machismo that as Mark
Millington describes:

is generally reflected in a vigorous display of physical strength, ability to withstand adverse

conditions (physical as well as social), aggressiveness, a lack of concern for risks and the
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consequence of actions, a meticulous defense of self-esteem, impose (at times violently) own
desires against desires of others, particularly women’s desires, assertion of superiority, fear of
tenderness and vulnerability, deep disdain towards women, together with the avoidance of
femininity, an absolute repression towards anything that would sidetrack heterosexuality
(Millington, 2007, p. 45, my translation).

All the above qualities permeate the novel, and the way in which masculinity is achieved
is often by contrast to femininity. Women become nearly invisible and are not part of
men’s discourse, or part of the novel, and they are not really part of the gaucho society
(Coria-Sánchez, 1998, p. 34). Women serve to establish men’s masculinity through their
submissive roles, such as maids, or as the objects of heterosexual male desire. Their place
in society is minimized throughout the text. Women are feared because of their
domesticating abilities, regarded as a threat to men’s freedom, used as an instrument of
sexual pleasure, considered untrustworthy, imagined as fearsome, and perceived as weak
due to their external expressions of feelings (Thompson, 1969, p. 34). In addition, when
the masculinity of a man is put into question, it is often with reference to a woman
(Chapter IX, p. 141; XV, p. 192; XXV, p. 294). The novel has few female characters,
whose nature is often considered enigmatic and hurtful:

[t]he only redeemable female characters are the long-lost mother of the protagonist, Fabio
Cáceres; the kindly and asexual curandera (folk healer); and Aurora, the girl whom Fabio
does little more than rape before he takes on life on the cattle trail. (Leland, 1994, pp.
180–181)

Don Segundo Sombra portrays a certain concept of the ideal men, who are thought to be
‘made from a series of absolutes: ‘They never cry, they must be the best, they must
always compete, they must be strong, they must not get emotionally involved, and they
must never retreat’ (Gutmann & Viveros-Goya, 2005, p. 119). The exclusion of women
and the ties men have with other men can be seen as falling under what Sedgwick labels
as a homosocial relation, that is, as actions that exemplify social bonds between two
members of the same sex as manifested in what can be described as ‘male bonding’
(Sedgwick, 1985, pp. 2–3). The text is rich in examples of relationships among males,
often displaying homosocial relations, as in the storytelling by Don Segundo Sombra
(Chapters X, XII, XXI), the breaking of a horse by Fabio (Chapter XV), Fabio and
Patrocinio fighting a bull (Chapter XVII), and Fabio and Raucho’s friendship
(Chapter XXVI).
 160 M. Miletich

The translators of Don Segundo Sombra

All translators, including literary translators, live in a particular time and are exposed to
the influences of their respective periods. As Esther Allen points out, just like authors,
translators ‘are the product of social structures and circunstances’ (2013, p. 101).
Translations, then, need to be considered alongside sociocultural and historical contexts.
Harriet de Onís (1895–1969) was born Harriet Wishnieff in New York City. She was
the daughter of Russian Jewish émigrés, and grew up in rural Illinois before returning to
New York City to read English at Barnard Women’s College. She learned Spanish after
the First World War when she worked as a Spanish book importer. She seems to have
picked up Portuguese later and mainly through reading. Her husband was Spanish
academic Federico de Onís, head of Spanish at Columbia University, who encouraged her
to translate. She became one of the leading translators of Latin American writing for the
prestigious publisher Alfred Knopf, a company that was a great supporter of Latin
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American literature from the 1940s onwards. De Onís translated the works of many of the
leading novelists of the mid-twentieth century, such as Cuban Alejo Carpentier and
Brazilian Jorge Amado. In addition, de Onís ‘played a crucial role in Knopf’s Latin
American project, and until the mid-sixties, when new translators began to emerge, it was
largely she who decided which novels would be translated into English’ (Rostagno, 1997,
p. 34). It appears that de Onís was in line with the anti-Communist views of the Knopfs,
who believed that the mere contact between Latin America and the United States would
help promote ‘mutual understanding through the Latin American writers who, in their
role as public intellectuals, could influence public opinion and ultimately, ideally, lessen
hostilities towards the United States’ (Cohn, 2003, p. 102).
On the other hand, Patricia Owen Steiner, who began her career as a translator with
The Banners of the Champions, an anthology of medieval Arabic poetry of Andalusia,
later focused on Argentina. In 1995, the University of Pittsburgh published her translation
of Güiraldes’ Argentine classic Don Segundo Sombra. In 1999 the University of New
Mexico Press published her Victoria Ocampo: Writer, Feminist, Woman of the World. She
has also produced many of the translations for the anthology The Argentina Reader:
History, Culture, Politics (2002), and has written a book about Argentina’s Plaza de
Mayo mothers entitled Hebe’s Story: The Inspiring Rise and Dismaying Evolution of the
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (2003).

The translations of Don Segundo Sombra

Harriet de Onís’s English version of Don Segundo Sombra was published in 19664 and
Patricia Owen Steiner’s in 1995.
It should be noted that Waldo Frank appears to have edited much of de Onís’s
translation of Don Segundo Sombra. Waldo Frank became an important figure in the
publishing world and by ‘late 1930 Frank had become the editorial advisor for the new
Farrara and Rinehart Latin American series’ (Rostagno, 1997, p. 15). In fact, in a letter to
his friend Evelyn Scott, Frank complained about de Onís’s text, which he found
‘unsatisfactory’ and added that ‘its rhythm was wrong’ (Frank, 1922). He stated that he
rewrote the English version:

I did Don Segundo Sombra’s translation because my conscience forced me to … This book is
an exquisite one, I have for a year been trying to patch it up, but its rhythm is wrong. So I
gritted my teeth and entirely rewrote it in less than three weeks. (Frank, 1922).
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 161

It is not known how many changes Waldo Frank made to de Onís’s translation; there are,
however, notable differences between the 1935 editions and the later 1966 version of de
Onis’s translation of this text. Additionally, Franks’ name does not appear in any of the
paratextual matter for the 1966 edition.
There is another case in which de Onís’s work was noticeably edited. In 1959, an
edition of the first two books of Pedro Cieza de León’s Crónica del Perú was published.
Harriet de Onís translated this work and Victor W. von Hagen was the editor. The text
was heavily changed by the editor who ‘did not perform the translational task himself, but
he used Harriet de Onís’s work to make the changes he considered appropriate’ (Valdeón,
2014, p. 188).
As for the novel discussed here, a review published in The New York Times described
Harriet de Onís’s translation as having ‘walked warily over the no-man’s land laying
between the beleaguered fortress of literal translation and the encroaching trenches of
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desperately clutching equivalents. She has kept the Spanish-American flavor without
sacrificing clarity’ (Marsh, 1935, p. BR5).5 On the other hand, a review of Owen
Steiner’s translation of Don Segundo Sombra in Choice claimed that ‘Her sensitive,
poetic prose faithfully re-creates the complex odyssey of self-reflection and remembrance
of the original’ (Sibbald, 1995, p. 624).
Both translators include a Spanish-English glossary in their translations. The glossary
by de Onís contains 20 terms, while Owen Steiner’s has 22.6 Harriet de Onís’s translation
(1966) also contains an ‘Afterword’. It provides some historical background and
biographical information, as well as some literary criticism of Don Segundo Sombra,
which she describes as a ‘fairy tale’ (p. 215) and a ‘peregrination’ (p. 219) where a ‘boy
sets out on the arduous enterprise of becoming a man’ (p. 219). Although de Onís is
aware of the issues of masculinity ever-present in the novel, she emphasizes that the text
is ‘an affirmation of faith in the positive values of the foundations, the historic and social
origins of Argentina’ (p. 220). She does not, however, discuss issues regarding her
translational decisions.
The paratextual elements in Patricia Owen Steiner’s translation are much more
extensive. They include essays written by Ernesto Sábato, Gwen Kirpatrick, Noé Jitrick,
Patricia Owen Steiner, Francine Masaiello, Beatriz Sarlo and Alberto Blasi. As Deane-
Cox points out, a large number of paratexts can often indicate the motivation for the
translation and serve as a way to legitimatize it (2014, p. 34). Owen Steiner’s own essay,
entitled ‘The Gaucho’s World’ (pp. 215–230), provides a brief history of the gauchos.
The essay also describes these men as not having a lot of time for women: they ‘formed a
tight society of men almost always on the move, and a macho undercurrent influenced
their daily lives […] The gaucho looked down on women as somehow weaker than men
and given to tears’ (p. 226). Her version also includes a brief ‘Translator’s Note’, where
Owen Steiner acknowledges all those who helped her in the translation process. She also
thanks Harriet de Onís, from whom she ‘drew insights’ (1995, p. xix). She, however, does
not discuss the translation process or particular lexical choices.

Theoretical framework
This article compares the two translations of Don Segundo Sombra from a gender
perspective. It examines how lexical choices reflect the heterosocial and homosocial
power facets present in Güiraldes’s text. The analysis examines certain key passages of
the Spanish text and discusses translational decisions with regards to the gender aspects
already mentioned (descriptions of feminine and masculine traits, sexuality, relationships
 162 M. Miletich

between women and men, and the role of women in society). These aspects are used in
the Spanish text to reinforce and describe a specific view of masculinity. This paper uses
a descriptive-contrastive approach, aiming to ‘analyze translations of the same source text
in order to identify the strategies adopted by different translators’ (Bastin, 2006, p. 113).
The comparison attempts to make ‘visible the textual presence of the translator’ (Koster,
2003, p. 33). Contrast analysis between the two translations will point out the way in
which the translators have read/interpreted this gender-rich text and how their
interpretations reflect different portrayals of certain characters in the novel as well as
characters’ ideas regarding gender.
Two renditions of the same text are often compared by means of looking at
translation shifts, a term used by Catford (1965, p. 73) to refer to structural or linguistic
changes between a source language and a target language. Although the term shift may be
problematic, it is widely used ‘[n]otwithstanding the enormous problems involved in its
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establishment, practical as well as conceptual, there is no doubt that the notion itself is
valid: shifts do occur in translations, and therefore they have their place in Translation
Studies’ (Toury, 1995, p. 84).7 The term shift will be used here to include semantic
changes that appear in the target text when compared with the source text. These
particular changes will be described as semantic shifts. The analysis concentrates on
optional shifts that are ‘deviations motivated by the translator’s expressive propensities
and his [sic] subjective idiolect’ (Popovic, 1976, p. 16). These shifts are deemed optional
(selected by the translator) as opposed to ones that may be frequently required (usually
caused by differences in, for example, syntax in two languages).8
Additionally, as we compare two versions by different translators, we are also dealing
with a translation and a retranslation. The latter can be defined as an ‘act of translating a
work that has previously been translated into the same language, or the result of such an
act’ (Tahir-Gürçaglar, 2009, p. 233).9 Retranslations, then, ‘deliberately mark the passage
of time by aiming to distinguish themselves from a previous version through differences
in discursive strategies and interpretations’ (Venuti, 2004, p. 35). It has been hypothesized
that first translations differ from the original to a higher degree than retranslations, which
appear to be more oriented towards the target culture than first translations (Desmidt,
2009, p. 671). This has been called the retranslation hypothesis, but it is also disputed, as
‘retranslations are affected by a multitude of factors, relating to publishers, intended
readers, accompanying illustrations and – not least – the translators themselves. These are
not adequately covered by the retranslation hypothesis’ (Paloposki & Koshinen, 2004, p.
34). Although Owen Steiner’s retranslation distinguishes itself from the previous version
by de Onís, it does not confirm the retranslation hypothesis since both seem to be target
culture oriented.
One way in which the retranslation by Owen Steiner seems to justify itself is through
an abundance of paratextual matter. ‘A retranslation is sometimes accompanied by a more
immediate form of intertextuality, paratexts, which signal its status as a retranslation and
make explicit the competing interpretation that the retranslator has tried to inscribe in the
foreign text’ (Venuti, 2004, p. 33). Paratexts reveal ‘the strategic (ideological, cultural,
economic, etc.) manoeuverings via which a given work presents itself to a given
readership’ (Deane-Cox, 2014, p. 26). Owen Steiner’s translation contains, in addition to
a one-page translator’s note, essays by Gwen Kirpatirck, Noé Jitrik, Francine Masiello,
Beatriz Sarlo, Alberto Blasi and two essays by Patricia Owen Steiner. All these essays
add up to 93 pages. This paratextual affluence does seem to confirm a pattern regarding
the abundance of paratextual matter in retranslations (Deane-Cox, 2014, p. 29).
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 163

Comparison of translations
To begin with, both target texts appear to be idiomatic translations, that is, they follow the
conventions of the target language in a fluent style, often referred to as domestication
(Venuti, 1995), even though the use of Spanish words throughout the text seems to
indicate a source language oriented strategy. However, the translations follow the usual
target language syntax and, overall, produce a readable, fluent text in English. The
Spanish terms are, for the most part, included in their respective glossaries. The
translations are very similar in length; both contain all the information of the source text
and maintain the same chapter order as the Spanish novel.10 Although the differences in
de Onís’s and Owen Steiner’s translations are subtle, they often appear at crucial moments
in the novel displaying the gender aspects examined here. Before studying the extracts,
let us mention that the initials RG refer to Ricardo Güiraldes’ text, DO to the translation
by de Onís and OS to the text by Owen Steiner. As already mentioned, the analysis will
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use Harriet de Onís’s (1966) version.11

The narrator and main character, Fabio Cáceres, is initially portrayed as a
mischievous young man that spends his days wandering the streets as a way to escape
from the horrible restraints imposed by two older women (his aunts). In the first chapter,
the young narrator tells the readers the way in which the people of the village
describe him:

RG Decía la gente que era un perdidito y que concluiría, cuando fuera hombre, viviendo de
malos recursos. (p. 75)12
DO The decent people called me a limb of Satan and predicted that I would come to a bad
end. (p. 11)
OS People said that I was a black sheep and I’d come to no good. (p. 9)

Fabio, first presented as a ‘lost cause’, will later become a full-grown productive member
of society. Readers of the two English texts can appreciate the significance of the
difference in the translation of the word perdidito.13 Owen Steiner translates it as ‘black
sheep’ and de Onís as ‘limb of Satan.’ Owen Steiner’s choice makes the character stand
out from others with the use of her idiom black sheep, while de Onís makes a much
stronger selection by associating the young boy with Satan. In addition, de Onís adds the
adjective decent to describe the people of the town, a word that does not appear in the
Spanish and that produces a bigger contrast between the villagers and the main character.
There is a clear intervention in the part of de Onís. As Munday points out, the translation
by de Onís ‘becomes immeasurably stronger and more sinister’ (2008, p. 63), a decision
that appears to be influenced by the translator’s religious beliefs, since she uses Christian
terminology where the source text had none (Munday, 2008, p. 63). Although de Onís’s
translation does not appear to conform to the twentieth-century gender male expectations
of males as did the translations discussed by Seago (2004), she does appear to be
conforming to norms related to her religious beliefs, as Munday points out (2008).
The expression ‘limb of Satan’ portrays Fabio Cáceres in a more diabolical way than
in the case of the choice by Owen Steiner. Thus, for de Onís the protagonist shows a
much more dangerous masculinity.
In the same paragraph Fabio meets the ‘muchachada de la mala vida’(p. 75). As a
result of this, young Fabio ends up in a casa pública [public house], a euphemism for
brothel. It is a homosocial power relation (the power of some men over other men) that
forces the young protagonist into a sexually charged situation without realizing it. In the
translations, Fabio succumbs to peer pressure after meeting the ‘town rowdies’ (p. 11) in
 164 M. Miletich

de Onís’s, while for Owen Steiner the expression is rendered as ‘girls of easy virtue’ (p.
9). Although Owen Steiner’s rendition is a possible translation, the word muchachada (in
spite of being a feminine noun in Spanish) seems to be referring to a group of muchachos,
that is, male teenagers or adolescents. The Spanish text reads: ‘… me puso en boga entre
la muchachada de mala vida, que me llevó a los boliches convidándome con licores y
sangrías a fin de hacerme perder la cabeza’, translated by Owen Steiner as ‘made me
popular with the girls of easy virtue who took me to taverns, enticing me with liquor and
sangrias to make me lose my head’. This is a very aggressive action for young women,
inconsistent with female behavior in the rest of the novel. Although both choices portray
a character giving in to peer pressure, one reflects a relationship with other males (de
Onís’s), while the other suggests a relationship with young women (Owen Steiner’s).
As we move on, in one of the key moments in the novel, Fabio meets a young woman
in the country. It is by no coincidence that her name is Aurora [Dawn], since this
encounter becomes his first close sensual/sexual experience with a female.14 This female
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character ‘functions as a vessel of initiation, a means by which Fabio enters the realm of
men’ (Leland, 1986, p. 128). It is through this young woman that the youthful Fabio
enhances his masculinity and sexuality. She serves as Fabio’s initiation rite into manhood.
At the end of Chapter V, Fabio chases the young woman to a secluded place, marking the
dawn of his masculinity, which, as Sedgwick has noted, ‘requires having obtained the
instrumental use of a woman’ (Sedgwick, 1985, p. 40). Fabio manages to pull the young
woman who has been flirting with him to the ground. The power of a man over a woman
becomes apparent in the way Fabio forces his male body into a female body, and, as
‘Fabio makes his sexual conquest of Aurora, this is part of his development into a true
macho’ (Beardsell, 1981, p. 306). The translators describe this heterosocial power relation
(power of men over women) differently.

RG Aurora se reía con tal olvido de su cuerpo que hacía rato tenazmente defendía, que pude
aprovechar aquel olvido. (p. 112)
DO Aurora laughed, forgetful now of the body she’d been defending, and I was able to do
whatever I wanted. (p. 42)
OS Aurora was laughing and so oblivious of her body, which just a while before she had
defended so tenaciously, that I was able to take advantage of her forgetfulness. (p. 36)

De Onís provides a much more sexually charged scene, while Owen seems to stay closer
to the Spanish original. The former depicts the main character as strong-willed and
powerful. His actions come out as more aggressive and less playful in de Onís’s version
than Owen Steiner’s. In addition the omission of tenazmente [tenaciously] presents a
more passive female character. During this encounter, de Onís reinforces the Christian
concept of evil when translating Aurora’s complaints, as Fabio is compared once again
with the devil/Satan, however playfully:

RG —Sonso…, sinvergüenza … decí que sos más juerte. (p. 113)

DO ‘Fool … shameless devil … just because you’re stronger’ (p. 36)
OS ‘Idiot! …The nerve of you! …Just because you’re stronger.’ (p. 42)

At the end of chapter VI, Fabio runs into Aurora a second time. She is looking for a ring
that she lost during their previous meeting.

RG Después, juntos habíamos buscado la pequeña joya y habíamos encontrado nuestros

juegos. (p. 120)
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 165

DO Then we looked together for the little trinket, and what we found was our pleasure.
(p. 47)
OS Then together we have looked for the little jewel, but all we had found were our own
games. (p. 42)

Although Owen Steiner’s rendering of juegos as ‘games’ could be interpreted as having

similar sexual connotations as the Spanish original, de Onís provides a much more clearly
sexual translation of the word as ‘pleasure’. The two translations of this very crucial
encounter are likely to produce different impressions on their readerships, as De Onís’s
becomes much more explicit.
Throughout the novel, women are shown as controlling (for example, the aunts),
objects of desire (e.g., Aurora and Paula), or magical (as is the case of the curandera
[female healer]). Minimizing the social role of women serves to expand and give
prominence to the men, and to enhance the concept of hegemonic masculinity (Connell,
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2005, p. 77). In the following passage of chapter IV, women are presented as either
constraints or as objects in order to provide men with enjoyment and pleasure. The
narrator refers to the unpleasant memories of his aunts:

RG Desagradablemente me acordé de mis tías. ¿Pa qué servían la mujeres? Pa que se

divirtieran los hombres. ¿Y las que salían fieras y gritonas? Pa la grasería seguramente, pero
les andaba con lástima. (p. 103)
DO She reminded me of my aunts. What are women for, anyway? Just for men’s pleasure.
And the mean, nagging ones? For the dump heap, except the people are too soft to send them
there. (pp. 33–34)
OS Somehow this brought back unpleasant memories of my aunts. What are women for,
anyway? To amuse men. And what about fiends and screeching hags? To the grease factory,
for sure, except that people took pity on them. (p. 28)

The statements are fundamental to understand the narrator-protagonist’s state of mind,

reflected in the answer to the question regarding the purpose of women: ‘¿ Pa qué servían
la mujeres?’ [What are women for?]. There are significant differences between the two
translations. Both translators render this question in the same manner ‘What are women
for, anyway?’However, the answers are quite dissimilar. To begin with ‘divirtieran’ is
rendered as ‘pleasure’ (de Onís) versus ‘amuse’ (Owen Steiner). Steiner stays closer to
the Spanish original divertirse [to have fun/a good time], while de Onís’s significant shift
(‘pleasure’) has, once more, explicit sexual connotations. De Onís uses the adverb just
(‘just for men’s pleasure’) to add emphasis to an already charged comment. On the other
hand, women who cannot provide pleasure become ‘the mean nagging ones’for de Onís,
and ‘fiends and screeching hags’ for Owen Steiner. In this case Owen Steiner’s choice
seems more forceful. The translation of the word grasería is also very different in the two
versions.15 De Onís uses ‘dump heap’ for grasería, basically discarding women as trash,
while Owen Steiner sends women ‘to the grease factory’, where, at least, they will be
productive. Also, de Onís seems to imply that people should be more aggressive as
regards women (‘people are too soft’), while Owen Steiner uses a more compassionate
choice (‘people took pity on them’), closer to the Spanish text. Women in Don Segundo
Sombra, as in La Habana Para un Infante Difunto, are the mysterious other. If women in
Infante’s Inferno are ‘essentially an archetype’ (Levine, 1984, p. 90), the same applies to
Don Segundo Sombra (the mother, the nurturer, the seductress, the deceiver). Although
the reason for de Onís’s intervention seems to be different than the ones voiced by
Levine, both serve to accentuate archetypical differences between men and women and
 166 M. Miletich

create a less sympathetic male character. The main character in de Onís’s translation
displays a much stronger dislike of women, as her choices strengthen the protagonist’s
chauvinistic personality.
Chapter XXIII, which depicts a fight between two men, provides another relevant
example of how the two translators differ in their approach. Although not explicitly
mentioned, a sexual relationship with a woman that both males happened to know in the
past seems to be the cause of the fight. It is a scene that serves to pass judgment on
women and to establish a homosocial order:

RG Yo era una criatura —dijo ceñido— y ella una perra que a cualquier palo le hacía punta.
En el pago la conocíamos por ‘la de aprender’. (p. 280)
DO ‘I was nothing but a kid,’ he said grimly. ‘And she was a bitch who went with any man
that snapped his finger at her. At the ranch we called her “the one you learn on.”’ (p. 184)
OS ‘I was only a kid,’ he said scowling, and she was a bitch who could get a rise out of any
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old stick. In those parts we knew her as ‘the one for learning’” (p. 177)

The two main differences lie in the idiomatic expressions and in the preposition at the end
of the passage. Güiraldes uses a euphemism to indicate the promiscuity of the woman (a
cualquier palo le hacía punta), which de Onís translates as ‘any man that snapped his
finger at her’, creating a more vivid and personal image while eliminating the euphemism
of the original. Owen Steiner’s choice, ‘get a rise out of any old stick’, may sound more
in line with the Spanish expression. But, although it may be argued that it maintains the
phallic imagery of the Spanish, it does not seem to be a common expression. In addition,
Owen Steiner’s ‘the one for learning’ is less strong that ‘the one you learn on’, which
emphasizes a particular dominant sexual position.
On the other hand, the masculine world of the pampas portrayed by Güiraldes appears
to show shades of homoeroticism, despite the descriptions of a truly masculine world:

where relationships are purest, deepest and least vexed, a place characterized by labor that is
both intensely physical and strongly libidinal in its emphasis in conquest: roping, riding and
breaking horses. All this is conducted, of course with the phallic hardware of the gaucho life:
the lasso, the whip, the omnipresent knife (Leland, 1994, p. 181).

In Chapter IV, two young adolescents, Horacio and Goyo, are fooling around as if they
were fighting to mark each other’s faces with some ash. The scene appears to compare the
duel to sexual activity and is reminiscent of a certain homosocial power attempting to
control other members of the same sex. After Horacio’s faced is marked, Goyo states:

RG – Sos muy pesao – decía Goyo.

–Ya te tuvo que contar tu hermana.
–¿ De cuándo comemos chancho en casa? (p. 100)
DO ‘You’re hard to take,’ said Goyo.
‘Is that what your sister said?’
‘Say, where do you get off – ’(p. 31)
OS ‘You’re pretty clumsy,’ said Goyo.
‘So your sister told you, eh?’
‘Since when did we get so personal?’ (p. 26)

Interestingly, the two translators have a very different take on the scene. The Spanish
original appears to point to a possible sexual relationship with one of the participant’s
sister as a way to boast both heterosocial (being able to possess a woman) and
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 167

homosocial power (being able to posses another man’s female relative). The translation
by de Onís (‘You’re hard to take’) is much more sexually charged and contains a double
meaning that does not clearly derive from the Spanish text, although it is possible if the
translator interpreted Goyo’s dominant position during intercourse/foreplay. Although
Owen Steiner’s translation could also be read as having a sexual connotation, the choice
‘You’re pretty clumsy’ appears to be more innocent, and the sexual innuendo much more
difficult to discern. On the other hand, de Onís’s ‘You’re hard do take’can imply
penetration. Once again, de Onís appears to have preferred a much more overt sexual
reference when compared with source text. In addition, the idiomatic expression ¿De
cuándo comemos chancho en casa? [Since when do we eat pork in our house?] has been
approached very differently. Owen Steiner has kept more of a playful tone in ‘Since when
did we get so personal?’, while de Onís appears more aggressive by translating it as ‘Say,
where do you get off – .’ It could be argued that de Onís adds a sexual innuendo that
could indicate a question regarding the location of a sexual experience, although it may
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not have been a conscious decision.

Another example of the homosocial relationship mentioned above can be seen in
Chapter XVII. Fabio has fought a bull and has shared the experience with a character
named Patrocinio. The observation is meant to explain how the relationship among men
is made stronger when sharing danger.

RG Dos hombres suelen salir de un peligro tuteándose, como una pareja después del abrazo.
(p. 220)
DO Men come out of danger undergone together as close as a couple after they have kissed.
(p. 132)
OS Two men can become very close coming out of a dangerous fix, like a couple after their
embrace. (p. 126)

The male relationship has a homoerotic undertone since it compares the bond created
between the two men after sharing a dangerous situation with a physical heterosexual act.
While de Onís makes it more explicit, Owen Steiner opts for a less obvious reference to a
physical heterosexual relationship. The reference to tutearse, a way of informally
addressing one another, is not provided in the translation, perhaps because modern
English does not make that particular distinction regarding formal and informal forms of
address. This is dealt with by adding ‘close’ (‘as close as’ in de Onís’s version and ‘very
close’ in Owen Steiner’s).

Conclusion
Don Segundo Sombra was written by a male writer. It is a novel about men that projects a
nostalgic vision of a bygone era dominated by nature and the laws of the vanished gaucho
world. The translations discussed here were carried out by two women who often vary in
the ways in which they present the masculinity that permeates through Ricardo
Güiraldes’s text.
The texts demonstrate different interpretations of the way certain gender issues are
rendered, and how these issues are discussed, performed and described by the characters.
The article has concentrated on excerpts representing certain aspects of gender such as the
descriptions of the feminine, sexuality, the relationships between women (the aunts,
women in general, Aurora) and men, the masculine (friendship between men, Goyo), and
the role of women in society (women as pleasure givers/men as determining women’s
roles). All these elements are used in the novel to accentuate the masculine.
 168 M. Miletich

A particular pattern appears to emerge when analyzing the translations. The semantic
shifts observed, mostly in de Onís’s translation, reveal a less likable and more ‘barbaric’
protagonist. Thus, de Onís creates a bigger contrast between the initial barbarism of the
character and his final ‘civilization.’ Through the use of these shifts, Harriet de Onís’s
main character becomes more devilish, aggressive, sexually charged, and condescending
towards women (e.g. perdidito becomes limb of Satan in de Onís’s texts versus black
sheep in Owen Steiner’s; aprovechar is translated as do whatever I wanted in de Onís’s
versus take advantage in Owen Steiner’s; nuestros juegos is rendered as our pleasure in
de Onís’s versus own games in Owen Steiner’s; Pa que se divirtieran los hombres
becomes Just for men’s pleasure in de Onís’s versus To amuse men in Owen Steiner’s;
sinvergüenza is turned into shameless devil by de Onís versus The nerve of you by Owen
Steiner). In addition, a preoccupation with religion has been noted to characterize de
Onís’s translations: ‘Onís herself seems to have ocasionally resorted to adding a religious
veneer to her translations and to stereotyping certain characters’ (Munday, 2007, p. 231).
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As mentioned previously, the editor of the first translation into English, Waldo Frank,
acknowledges his intervention in de Onís’s translation. It appears, however, that the
changes in the translation may have been carried out for the sake of creating a particular
‘rhythm’ (Frank, 1922) in the English text (see note 11). The fact that Waldo Frank’s
name does not appear in the Farrar & Rinehart (1935) and Signet (1966) editions may
indicate that he had less involvement in those texts. Although both 1935 editions appear
to be very similar (there are only small changes, mostly concerning a few words), there
are significant differences between the 1935 editions and the 1966 edition used for this
analysis. Some of the examples analyzed in this article provide the most noticeable
differences between the earlier and the latter editions.
In the Constable (p. 52) and Farrar (p. 47) editions de Onís uses ‘Idiot! …The nerve
of you!’ while the Signet has ‘Fool … shameless devil’ (p. 36). This choice has already
been shown to have a particular significance. On some occasions, the Signet edition
includes additions. Although all three versions use the phrase ‘the dump heap’ when
discussing the use of women, the 1966 edition adds ‘For the dump heap, except people
are too soft to send them there’ (pp. 33–34). When discussing a particularly sexually
active woman (‘la de aprender’, p. 280), de Onís changes ‘the girl you learn on’ in
Constable and Farrar (both on p. 230) to a much more impersonal and desensitized ‘the
one you learn on’ (p. 184) in the 1966 edition. The scene where two young adolescents
are playing around and pretend to fight contains the expression ‘You’re hard to take’ (p.
31) on the Signet edition, while both the Constable (p. 37) and the Farrar (p. 33) use ‘You
weight a lot’. At the end of that same passage there also changes. Both the Constable (p.
37) and the Farrar (p. 34) have ‘Say, how do you get that way’, while the Signet has ‘Say,
where do you get off – ’(p. 31).
It would appear, then, that de Onís had a chance to make changes on her later editions
of the translations of Don Segundo Sombra, but in some cases (such as the two examples
analyzed in this article), she maintains the same translation in all three editions: ‘limb of
Satan’ (Farah and Constable, p. 9; Signet, p. 11) and ‘… as a couple after they have
kissed’ Constable (p. 185) Farrar (p. 164), and Signet (p. 132). It could be argued, then,
that although Waldo Frank may have manipulated the first translations of de Onís (1935),
she appears to be responsible for the translational choices in the 1966 Signet edition.
Certainly, both translators provide their own textual presence. A particular tendency,
however, becomes apparent when comparing the translations of the excerpts from de
Onís’s work with those by Owen Steiner. In the case of de Onís, the shifts observed
provide a different overall representation of the main character, as well as a different
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 169

interpretation regarding the opinions/representations of masculinity produced by the

narrator and other novelistic characters.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at
Austin for their assistance in accessing the Waldo Frank letter.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes
1. There are actually three editions of de Onís’s translation. One was published by Constable and
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Company (London, 1935); one by Farrar & Rinehart (New York, 1935) and one by Signet
Classic (New York, 1966).
2. This article will not discuss whether women and men translate differently. For a discussion on
that topic, see Vanessa Leonardi’s Gender and Ideology in Translation: Do Women and Men
Translate Differently? A contrastive Analysis from Italian into English.
3. In is only towards the end of the novel (Chapter XV), that readers discover that the narrator and
the main character are one and the same.
4. The first two translations by Harriet de Onís date from 1935, but I will be using the 1966
edition, since it is a more recent version and it contains an ‘Afterword’ not included in the 1935
edition.
5. There is also a review for the 1966 edition of the translation by Harriet de Onís. It is by Edward
Larocque Tinker and it appeared in The New York Times on February 13, 1966. He does not
comment on the translation.
6. Harriet de Onís’s translation also contains illustrations by Alberto Güiraldes, Ricardo
Güiraldes’ cousin.
7. Although Toury believes there is a negative connotation associated to this term, nevertheless
the term is used throughout his work, in particular in his seminal text Descriptive Translation
Studies – and Beyond. The term is also widely used when comparing different translations.
8. These are what Toury would denominate obligatory and non-obligatory shifts (Toury, 1995,
p. 57).
9. For an in-depth look at retranslation see Sharon Deane-Cox’s Retranslation: Translation,
Literature and Reinterpretation (2014). She also debunks the Retranslation Hypothesis.
10. The Farrara & Rinehart New York 1935 edition has an Introduction by Waldo Frank, and
‘Decorations’ by Howard Willard. It contains a glossary of 20 words. It has 27 seven running
chapters. The Constable & Co LTD. London 1935 edition also has an Introduction by Waldo
Frank (same one as above). It has no illustrations. It contains a glossary of 20 words (same as
above). The book, however, is divided into Book 1 with 9 chapters and Book 2 with 18 (the
total number of chapters is the same for all three edition and the same number as the Spanish
text). The Signet Classic 1966 New York edition contains no Introduction by Waldo Frank, but
an afterword by de Onís. It contains a glossary of 20 words (same as the two above). It has 27
chapters.
11. Some of the differences between the different de Onís versions appear to be stylistic and/or
lexical. Compare the very beginning of the novel. On the 1935 editions: ‘At the outskirts of the
town, some ten blocks from the village square, the old bridge throws its arch across the river,
linking the houses and gardens to the placid fields’ (Constable and London 1935, p. 3)
(Farrarah & Rinehart 1935, p. 3). ‘On the outskirts of the town, some ten blocks from the main
square, the old bridge throws its arch across the river, linking the houses and gardens to the
placid countryside’ (Signet Classic 1966, p. 7). There are other important differences between
the different editions that will be briefly discussed in the conclusion.
12. Spanish citations are taken from Don Segundo Sombra, the Cátedra Edition that appears in
Works Cited. Harriet de Onís’s translations are taken from Don Segundo Sombra: Shadows of
the Pampas (1966) that appears in Works Cited. Patricia Owen Steiner translations are taken
from Don Segundo Sombra (1995) that appears in Works Cited.
 170 M. Miletich

13. The word perdido in Spanish (in this context) means an amoral, good for nothing man. It is
curious to note that the feminine form perdida, is often used to refer to a prostitute.
14. As stated, there is mention in Chapter I of a visit to a whorehouse, but it appears that the young
protagonist was merely an observer.
15. It could be argued (although not clearly supported by the text) that even the women that cannot
provide sexual pleasure (thus helping men to form a normative masculinity) are nevertheless,
metaphorically, related to the masculine since they create candles (usually cylindrical and
elongated), which can be seen to represent phallic symbols.

Notes on contributor
Marko Miletich obtained a Ph.D. in Translation Studies from Binghamton University in 2012. He
has a Master’s Degree in Liberal Arts with a Concentration in Translation from the Graduate Center
of the City University of New York, a Master’s degree in Hispanic Civilization from New York
University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish from Hunter College. He has worked extensively as
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a professional translator and interpreter and has developed curricula for several courses in
translation as well as serving as a coordinator for Translation and Interpretation programs. He has
taught translation and interpreting courses at Hunter College, Adelphi University and Montclair
State University and several New York City hospitals. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the
Modern Languages Department at the University of Texas at Arlington.

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