Bakartxo Arrizabalaga (2010): 'The revolt of forms' or how to translate without increasing insecurity
One of the many evils we translators stand accused of is that we force languages, because when translating from foreign languages we also transfer their moulds into the target language. And if that can occur in any language, the risk is even greater when translating from Spanish into Basque, because we Basque speakers on our home soil are translating all the time and simultaneously using both Basque and Spanish -or French-, as we are immersed in a diglossic situation. The translation work Formen matxinada (Revolt of Forms) provides a rich array of Basque language moulds alternatives for the Spanish language; it is a consolidated piece of work for creating style, and can be very enriching for translation works and in particular for those translators who translate from Spanish into Basque. And that brings us to the subtitle I have added to this article -while playing around with translated text-, in other words: how to translate without intensifying insecurity, because it a gives rise to uneasiness in any translator. The terrible fear of that insecurity when faced with the text to be translated leads us totally, insofar as we are Spanish speakers -those of us who are-, to seek all the security within Spanish and to translate in a way that is too closely connected with it; nevertheless that leads to not translating, i.e. to producing an inter-language which ends up as neither one thing nor the other. Without that, the translation of this book is suggesting with respect to the text to be translated that we should adopt a different, daring attitude instead of the usual starting point and way of translating into Basque; it is brimming with lots of resources and equivalent forms for translating into Basque Spanish moulds that frequently appear in texts to be translated.
