In the First Soot-Gray Light: Translating Rodolfo Walsh's "Worldly Offices"

The process of translating Rodolfo Walsh's short story "Los oficios terrestres" ("Worldly Offices") into English presents numerous interpretive and stylistic challenges. This essay discusses various strategies used in the translation of Walsh's text into English. It is informed by Antoine Berman's theoretical paradigm, which rejects the Platonic figure of translation as "an embellishing restitution of meaning" in favor of "labor on the letter," a practice that seeks to go beyond semantic restitution to restore such vehicles of expression as rhythm, linguistic and discursive patterns, idioms, and the underlying signifiers that constitute the subtext. Issues addressed include representations of power and resistance, the ironic use of ecclesiastical language to satirize the oppressive authority of the Catholic Church, and the interplay of oppositions in narrative structure, theme, imagery, register, and language.