Spain Research Paper

Spain is a multicultural and multilingual country and the language known as “Spanish” in the general meaning is Castilian which is one of several Romance languages. The other languages spoken throughout Spain is Catalan in the North-east, Galician in the North-west, Basque, which is a non-Romace language spoken around te western French-Spainish border and historical languages of Aragon, Leon and Asturias. In the history, all these languages were spoken alongside the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin and in the middle of this language paradise, translation considerably developed.

From 711 to the 13th century, major parts of Spain were under the Islamic rule. In the spanish history, the term “Reconquista” is an attribution to the years from 718 to
In 1492 with the defeat of Islamic Kingdom of Granada, the christian unity was established to a great extent in Spain. Around this year, Castile was united with Aragon. The inquisition was established and the jews and other dissident groups such as protestants, jesuits and republicans were expelled from Spain. The geographical explorations started and Spain enlarged its territories and gained power all over the world as a colonial empire. All these developments provided advantages to the idea of Castilian superiorty to the other hispanic languages such as Catalan or Galician. The spanish empire almost gave no place to the internal
This period is matched with the rise of France as a dominant political and cultural power. This situation also had impacts on the translation activity in Europe.The english and german texts were translated into Castilian via French. Castilian translators carried out the french translation theory “Les belle infideles” in their translations and adapted the source texts to the castilian target cultural norms. In 1836, Mariano Jose Larra stated that “the correct translation of comedies should be to seek equivalences not of words but of the situations, adopting the customs of the country into which one is translating.”. French influence was also apparent in verse translation. The castilian translators rendered the verse as prose. That’s why Lord Byron entered Castilian from French not as a poet but as a writer of short stories. During this period, it was so prevalent to read French that Antonio de Capmany wrote a manual for translation from French to Castilian in