&%@#!!!

"In English, an insult to one’s parentage uses the dog as the image, while the Spanish hijo de puta is more direct, but the English equivalent whoreson is archaic and can no longer be used. In ordinary usage hijo de puta must be rendered “son of a bitch,” else we lose the emotional charge. The Portuguese is more subtle, filho da mãe  (son of your mother), innocent on the surface, but inviting all the vileness the imagination can bring to bear. I recall an episode in Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch in which the hero has pounded his thumb with a hammer as he tries to straighten a nail. “Puta que te parió,” he addresses the nail. If we leave it at that, we get a Hemingwayish “whore that bore you,” but the intent is different. My solution was to have him accuse the nail of incestuous proclivities toward its dam, which is current, ripe, and even maintains a bit of the tone of the Spanish insult. The fact that insults cannot be rendered so closely as we might like means that while words can be translated directly, cultures themselves cannot be without grotesque distortion".

Gregory Rabassa en “If This Be Treason:  
Translation and Its Possibilities”.

Photo: Paris.