Note: For the sake of clarity, I have referred to all of the characters by their original names below. Thus, although I use “Señora Capuleto” in my translation, I will refer to her here as Lady Capulet.
ACT 1, scene 1
I chose to translate this scene, because I thought it would be crucial to compare different types of Spanish as they relate both to generations and social hierarchy. In the original play, the nurse represents the lower class, Lady Capulet the upper class, and Juliet also the upper class, but of a newer generation than both the nurse and her mother. Thus, in my translation I used different types of Spanish in order to convey this same social hierarchy as it would relate to Puerto Rico. The nurse (Ama) speaks in a very informal Spanish, cursing and making socially inappropriate remarks. Juliet speaks a normal type of Puerto Rican Spanish, but one that is slightly more Americanized than her mother’s, as evident by the fact that she slips into brief Spanglish in one line of the scene. Lady Capulet has the most formal Spanish of all, which is best captured in her description of Paris’ physical features, but it should be noted that her Spanish is still distinctly a Puerto Rican or Latin American Spanish that itself has been Americanized. This is evident when she asks Juliet if she will give Paris “un chance,” which may incorrectly appear to be an English word to some readers, but that in reality is also an accepted Spanish word widely used in Latin America but perhaps not so much in other Spanish speaking places of the world. The Americanization of Spanish in some countries is thus a prime example for why Spanglish itself is not all that much different from any other language; languages change over time to reflect social and cultural changes that ultimately belong to the people, and thus – while structure and order are absolutely necessary for the survival of any language – autocratic language review boards should never restrain the growth or development of a language by deciding which words are “legitimate” or not.
Overall, I had a lot of fun translating this scene – especially the lines of the nurse – and had to rely on past experiences the most to “hear” these voices in my head. Below, I’ve written down some of the ways in which my translations diverges from the original.
Setting: We see that the play is set in San Juan, PR rather than Verona.
Writing style: The stage directions and character names are written in Spanglish for the U.S. Hispanic reader, but the scene is written in Spanish since it takes place in San Juan, Puerto Rico where most people speak fluent Spanish. Also, my translation is written in prose rather than in poetry. This modernizes the play and makes it speak to a different culture and time period than that in which the original was written. I had trouble seeing how an informal Spanglish diction could be written in a formal poetry meter, so I chose to keep it in prose. (I’m sure this feat can be done, however, so I will leave that task to much more skilled translators than myself. Maybe Prof. Stavans will take me up on this offer? :p).
Characters: Juliet is a teenager in San Juan, PR who has been more Americanized than her mother due to differences in generations. Unlike in the original play, Juliet does not demonstrate the extreme level of formal respect for her mother, as is seen in my translation of “Madam, I am here / What is your will?” to “¿Pues tell me mama, que quieres?” Also, Juliet does not consider marriage an honor, which may speak more to older cultures, but rather says that she is unsure of whether it is right for her. It is hard to imagine young girls in today’s society that call their mom’s “madam” and refer to marriage as an “honor” that they do not dream of. My translation tries to modernize some aspects of the play in order to make the classic more relatable to Hispanics today, as well as to serve as a social critique on another level. The arguable loss of respect for parents or elders in general and the loss of commitment to relationships is hopefully being shown in my translation.
The nurse speaks informal Spanish in a rather uneducated manner, which isn’t too far from the original, but definitely takes the informality to an exaggerated level. She vulgarly says that Juliet must have sucked wisdom from her “tetas” as a baby (the original says “breast”), she swears sacrilegiously when she says “¡Me cago en Dios!,” and ironically she is also religious when she says “Dios mio” and “Si Dios quiere.” These typical Puerto Rican sayings demonstrate the island’s strong religious faith, yet its paradoxical relative laxity to swearing. Also, her description of Paris as “Ricky Martin” rather than “a flower” in the original also helps to make this English classic a piece of Spanish literature. My hope is that Puerto Ricans, Hispanics, and anyone that understands Spanish culture will read those lines and laugh aloud.
Plot: In the original, Lady Capulet wants Juliet to marry Paris because she is worried that her daughter is getting too old. In the time Romeo and Juliet was written, this may have made sense to the audience, but I doubt that many mothers today would rush their daughters into getting married before their teenage years are over. Thus, I made Lady Capulet’s main concern one that speaks better to a modern, Spanish audience: financial security. Lady Capulet wants her daughter to finally “settle in” to a stable relationship with a man that can provide for her rather than having lots of short flings, which she thinks may end with her daughter becoming pregnant without a man to provide for her. Lady Capulet’s views are certainly not in line with modern society’s (correct) conception of the individual, working, self-providing woman, but her views nonetheless do echo the voice of an older, more conservative generation – and one that is still very much prevalent in Latin America today. Furthermore, her description of the many Spanish teenage girls that are pregnant in Puerto Rico is a broad generalization, but it still conveys a desperate problem that has plagued the Caribbean island. In the United states, roughly 24.2 out of every 1000 teenage girls get pregnant; in Puerto Rico, the rate is almost double, with 43 pregnancies out of every 1000 teenage girls. My goal with alluding to this problem in my translation is not to criticize my family’s home country, but rather to make Romeo and Juliet speak to the social issues that the island faces today and hopefully make the classic more relatable for Spanish readers. I want them to understand that the classics are not just the literature of the elite; everyone has the right to own a piece of literature and adopt it as their own. Lastly, Lady Capulet says that Paris as fair skin and green eyes because, as I mention below when I discuss the white pearl in scene 4, white skin is seen as a favorable quality in Puerto Rico. I think that paradigm is changing with generations, but certainly older generations consciously or unconsciously embody subtly racist ideals.
ACT I, scene 4
My original idea, arrived at in conjunction with Professor Stavans, for translating Romeo and Juliet was to set it in New York and have the rivalry be between various Spanglish ethnic groups in order to demonstrate the varieties of Spanglish that exist. I ended up changing my idea to the one that it is now – a story about a Nuyorican-Puerto Rican feud that bears light on both the social situation of Puerto Rico as well as the prevalence of Spanglish in U.S. Latinos – but after translating Act I, scenes 3 and 5, I realized that my transadaptation would greatly benefit from including at least one scene in which I demonstrate the varieties of Spanglish. I thus chose Act 1 scene 4 – the scene in which Romeo and his friends are on their way to a ball – in order to demonstrate three distinct types of Spanglish: Chicano (spoken by Benvolio), Nuyorican (Romeo), and a confluence of different Spanglishes, but mainly a Spaniard-American and Chicano blend (spoken by Mercutio).
Because the only Spanglish that comes naturally to me is a Nuyorican one, I worked closely with Professor Stavans on the dialogue, especially the Chicano slang. The audio recorders also greatly helped to vocalize the intended accents of the characters and certainly brought them to life. Below are some notes on my choices for dialogue or slang.
Romeo: – I originally wanted to change his saying that Juliet looked like a white pearl on the ear of a black person (the original says an “ethiopian” ear) to him describing her as a white paloma that flies amongst crows. I thought this reference would be more relatable to Puerto Rico since palomas are all over the place and seen as beautiful. However, I kept the description of Juliet as a white pearl on the ear of “una morena” (black person) because the word “pearl” has a connotation not only of beauty, but also of richness – two qualities which the Juliet in my transadaptation embodies and that are integral to the plot. Furthermore, contrasting the beauty of Juliet and white pearls to the skin of a “moreno” also helps to demonstrate the penchant that many Puerto Ricans have for white skin. This is certainly not true of all Puerto Ricans, and I am only speaking from my own personal observations, but lighter skin tends to be viewed as more attractive as well as of a higher class in Puerto Rico. Thus, the white pearl on the ear of the “morena” was crucial to my play and needed to remain there.
– His reference to Miguel Cotto is one that I hope many Puerto Ricans will laugh at and be proud of. Boxing is a big phenomenon in Puerto Rico and I wanted that identity to be apparent in my translation,
Benvolio: The Mexican slang/swears that I could come up with off the top of my head and with the help of the internet were “me vale made” “vato” and “que se vayan a la verga.” Luckily Prof. Stavans was able to chime in many more, from “chingar” to “mamalón,” and helped out immensely with other non-swear slangs. If readers are interested in seeing the vast improvement from my initial vapid translation to the much-improved one, they should read and listen to the audio recordings for the scene in both Version 3 and the Final Version.
Mercutio: I included Spaniard slang, such as “tío” and “vale” for Mercutio, but also used Mexican words such as “vato” and “putazo” in his dialogue. His Spanglish shows that Spanglish, just like any other language, is a plastic one and that one type of Spanglish may thus take elements from another type of Spanglish. For example, my own Spanglish has changed dramatically since I arrived at Amherst; I use “vale” all the time, sometimes “vos” instead of “tú,” frequently say “tío,” and sometimes use an article before people’s names (e.g. “Voy a salir con la Sarah” instead of “Voy a salir con Sarah”).
ACT I, scene 5
I chose to translate sections of this scene because I wanted to draw attention to the fact that there is sometimes a bitter animosity between mainland Puerto Ricans and U.S. Puerto Ricans that is not all that different from the rivalry between the Capulets and Montagues in Romeo and Juliet. (For a first-look view at this rivalry, please see my sidebar titled “Gallery, Media, and Controversy” and click on the link under the “Nuyoricans vs. Puerto Ricans” subsection.) Nonetheless, not all Puerto Ricans feel this way, just like not all members of the rival familes in R&J shared the hatred towards the opposing family. I feel that the scene with Tybalt – a bitter opponent of the Montagues – and a member of the Capulet family – who does not see why the two families should be rivals at all – best captures this phenomenon and criticizes the existence of a Nuyorican-Puerto Rican rivalry in the first place. The big changes in my translation are listed below:
Tybalt
-Tybalt doesn’t ask a servant for a sword, but rather his little brother for a gun. The sword to gun transition isn’t too original, as several adaptations have incorporated guns into their rendition of the play. However, I chose to take out the servant here because I could not picture anyone in Puerto Rico asking a servant for a gun. First of all, servants are not that common unless if you’re upper class. Sure, the Capulets in my translation are still upper-class and have servants as well as a maid/nurse, but the servants usually only help to cook, receive guests, or clean the house. I can’t picture every Capulet – especially a young one like Tybalt – having his or her own, personal servant 24/7 that would be okay with fetching a gun. I chose the little brother in particular to take the place of the servant because, sadly, this scenario is much more likely and demonstrates just how bad Puerto Rico is in terms of gun violence. Little kids grow up with guns in their environment, just like Tybalt’s brother, and the public danger associated with gun possession and usage is one of the main reasons many families (including mine) moved out of the island in the first place.
-Tybalt calls Romeo a “maricón,” or “faggot,” which is certainly unacceptable by today’s standards in the U.S. However, political correctness is not as rampant in Puerto Rico or in many of the Caribbean islands, so I tried to capture that social dynamic in this insult. To censor language the way it actually occurs in Puerto Rico is tantamount to watering down the language of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; both preclude the reader from becoming truly absorbed in a different culture and I wanted the lines of each character to be as close to reality as possible.
Capulet
-The most obvious change is that “Capuleto” is a woman in my translation, not a man. I could only find a limited number of male actors with a Puerto Rican accent, so a female actress played Capulet instead (especially since the gender does not really matter for this character).
-Capulet goes on a long rant about why the social situation of Puerto Rico is so bad today (she alludes to gun violence being a problem) and insinuates that U.S. Puerto Ricans – which are usually seen as inferior by those on their own homeland – may actually be better in the sense that they try to improve their lives. Tybalt says that respectable Puerto Ricans would have stayed on the island and tried to fix the country’s dire situation rather than leave, but we can see that he himself is not doing much to fix the situation and may even be a cause of it as evident by the fact that he resorts to gun use to solve his problems. The original text had the member of the Capulet family simply chastise Tybalt for fear that he would ruin the party with violence, but I wanted the member of the Capulet family in my transadaptation to reprimand Tybalt for his contributions to the deplorable social situations of Puerto Rico in order to serve as a broader social commentary of the country. I also included the description of U.S. Puerto Ricans as attempting to improve their lives more than mainland Puerto Ricans in order to negate the stereotype that many Americans have of U.S. Hispanics as a lazy group of people.
The second half of my selections from this scene dealt with Romeo actually meeting Juliet. I was hesitant to translate this section because it seemed too “lovey-dovey” to me and didn’t necesarily demonstrate the rivalry between the families that I was seeking in my translated sections, but I knew that my plot would be incomplete without Romeo and Juliet actually meeting so I decided to translate it nonetheless. I truncated many lines that I thought were superfluous and tried my best to preserve a few of the slick pick-up lines and witty remarks of the two lovers in a way that is still understandable to modern readers. My main goal here though, on a second level, was to demonstrate how language can change depending on whom you speak to. Romeo normally speaks a Spanglish that is more or less equal in its use of either English or Spanish, but when he speaks to Juliet his Spanglish incorporates a higher percentage of Spanish words than English words. Similarly, Juliet speaks Spanish most of the time, but she slips into Spanglish when she tells him “De verdad sabes cómo usar God’s gift” after kissing him. My goal was to demonstrate that as much as language can be used to symbolize pride, it can also be used in a more sympathetic way in order to find a middle ground with the other person. I find this happening every day in my life, as sometimes I develop an accent that I don’t normally have when speaking with someone from another country that has a different accent from my own.
Lastly, to add on to the rivalry between Puerto Ricans and Nuyoricans that has already been seen in Tybalt and Capulet’s argument, the nurse tells Juliet that Nuyoricans are not economically suitable or even desirable to be one’s husband.