E. M. Forster retranslated: The case of A Passage to India in Spanish

Abstract

In 1924, E. M. Forster published A Passage to India, which would happen to be the last novel he wrote and the last one he published during his lifetime. Some thirty years later, in 1955, it was first translated into Spanish by Argentinian writer Juan Rodolfo Wilcock for «Sur», a publishing house based in Buenos Aires and founded by Victoria Ocampo. The novel was retranslated twice in the following fifty years: first in 1981 by Spanish translator José Luis López Muñoz, for Spanish publishing house «Alianza», and then, in 2004, by Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez, for the also Spanish newspaper ABC. In this case study, I will analyze the characteristics, publishing history, context of production and reader reception of the three existing translations of A Passage to India in Spanish. In the light of such data, I will also examine possible reasons for the retranslation of this particular E. M. Forster’s novel in the Spanishspeaking world.