Fluency and the Translated Short Story

Abstract This paper will examine decisions taken in the translation of fiction, especially short stories. I begin with the very fluent translation of Mário Vargas Llosa's short story, "The Cubs", on which the author himself collaborated. I then move on the translations by the Brazilian author João Ubaldo Ribeiro of his own novels, in which he decided not to use footnotes or provide any kind of explicatory text, emphasizing the experience of "pleasure of the text" which the reader will encounter. This "thin" translation will be contrasted with the "thick" translation recommended by Kwame Anthony Appiah. The syntax and vocabulary of this kind of translation will attempt to reflect that of the original and it will be surrounded by the paratexts of footnotes and preface or postface and glossary. I then move on to examining translations from the bhasha (native) languages of South India, where the editors set out a very definite translation project, which is in favour of a foreignizing translation, which will bring the Indian Other to the reader. However, this project is at times modified because of political reasons, and, although the translations may introduce foreignized lexical items, there is never any attempt to foreignize syntax