The Voices of Suspense and Their Translation in Thrillers

Ponying the Slovos: A Parallel Linguistic Analysis of A Clockwork Orange in English, French, and Spanish

“…This lack of consistency in Spanish undermines a core feature of Nadsat in the novella and potentially interferes with both the brainwashing emulation and the purposeful overlexicalisation of 'woman.' As such, our findings and evaluation conflict with Maher (2010) and are more in line with Morilla (1994), as we argue that although a fundamental feature of the novella, there are core functions of Nadsat not evident in Spanish that could have been integrated through a more creative translation process.…”

“…The lack of richness of the lexicon indicated in Table 1 is thus also reflected in a lower overall frequency of non-core Nadsat words. What this suggests about the Spanish translation is that the high proportion of core Nadsat words presents a Spanish reader with a challenge comparable to that of English readers of the original, although with a slightly reduced range of words, but that the other aspects of Nadsat, which fill out and flavour the reader's experience of the text are far less in evidence here (see also Maher 2010). Notably, while the French translation contains a number of attempts to evoke the effects of Nadsat in the source text by creating new words such as tzarrible for frequently occurring, key Nadsat words, in the Spanish text, however, such attempts are lacking; horrorshow becomes simply joroschó, a word that suggests nothing to a monolingual Spanish reader.…”

“…Martínez Portillo (2019, 148) asserts that Leal's translation involved "collaborative work with Burgess, since it was specifically carried out and prepared to retain the flavor of the original narrative". This claim is repeated in the note on the glossary appended to LNM and also by Maher (2010), but there is no documentary evidence of Burgess's involvement in the Spanish translation. This stands in contrast to the French translation; Burgess was a close friend of Georges Belmont and extensive communication between the two exists.…”

“…She finds that, with respect to gender, the Spanish translation is more representative of the treatment of Russian loan-nouns in the language as a whole than the French translation. Maher (2010) also considers the Spanish text to be superior to the Italian translation, arguing that the text is exemplary in terms of its inclusion of Russian-based words.…”

“…The Spanish-Nadsat joroschó carries none of these meanings, however. Morilla (1994) attributes the lack of inventiveness in the Spanish translation to an effort to make the text more readable for Spanish readers, and though Maher's (2010) evaluation of the Spanish translation is more positive, this critique of lack of inventiveness in the Spanish texts remains at the centre of the discussion of the Leal/Quijada Vargas translation (cf. Adcock 2017).…”