The Unseen Faces of Translation. Insights into the English and Spanish Translations of Norman Manea’s The Hooligan’s Return

Abstract

This paper aims to determine the strategies of adapting the translated content to a specific context based on a study case of Norman Manea’s The Hooligan’s Return. An exclusive interview with the author reveals the lesser debated prospect of the ghost translator. At a closer look, the translation of a text in various languages and spaces reveals certain truths and aspects specific to the community that embraces the translated text. Therefore, besides the role of cultural mediators, translators also need to possess certain anthropological qualities, so as to transplant the fragile human experience of a text to the foreign reader. According to Lawrence Venuti, this exchange can happen through a phenomenon explained in terms of foreignization and domestication, characterized by combating racism or ethnocentrism. Starting from these two approaches, we will examine how the mechanisms of translation are applied in our case study.