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Struggling to resolve what to me is an ambiguity

 

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  #1  
Old July 04, 2014, 04:15 PM
graviton graviton is offline
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Struggling to resolve what to me is an ambiguity

Hi! I'm brushing up on my pretty-long-ago-acquired Spanish by reading books by Spanish authors and then checking the English versions of those books. Below is a sentence where I have doubts about the translation as it appears in the English version, focused on the word "apuntar", whose meaning I checked in multiple dictionaries. The sentence in question is:

-Cuando es blanca y viene embotellada, suele tratarse de leche -respondió por fin, críptico, mas no tanto como para que el juez no apuntara una sonrisa.


There seem to be two possible translations. One is:" When it's white and comes in a bottle, it tends to be milk", he responded at last, cryptically, but not so much so that the judge didn't note a smile.

So, in this translation the person who makes the cryptic remark about the milk is the smiler.

But here's another interpretation: "“If it’s white and in a bottle, it tends to be milk,”he answered, cryptically, at last, but not so cryptically that the judge didn’t smile slightly.

So the second has the judge doing the smiling, if you interpret "apuntar" as meaning "suggests" or "hints at" which is included among the meanings in the dictionary,

But I'm very unsure of this and would like the guidance of people far more fluent than I: who's doing the smiling, the cryptic one or the judge?
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  #2  
Old July 04, 2014, 05:00 PM
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Hi Graviton,

Welcome to the forum. I'm not going to be judge of its English translation, but in the original Spanish I clearly understand it as "suggests" (just as you've mentioned).

The "cryptic one" says ironically that in order to raise a laugh on judge's face.

A pleasure.
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  #3  
Old July 04, 2014, 05:01 PM
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The first is the truer translation, except for the part in question. The cryptic answer is a well-known expression.

So, that would make the judge smile.

Last edited by Rusty; July 04, 2014 at 05:07 PM.
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Old July 04, 2014, 06:40 PM
graviton graviton is offline
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Thank you, Julvenzor for welcoming me to the forum--I'm almost embarrassed to admit how delighted I am to be able to learn from a native speaker, especially an intelligent one! I know that many nuances of Spanish language use that escape me will be instantaneously apparent to you, as in this case. Oh, the debate I had with myself, presenting arguments on behalf of each translation of "apuntar"! What a relief having you resolve it!

I hope you will be visiting this forum regularly because I would love to have your input on the interesting linguistic dilemmas I've encountered since my "Spanish relearning project" began a few weeks ago.

Hi Rusty! I found your comment that the first translation is the "truer" one intriguing. Do you mean that "apuntar" would much more often be used to mean "take note of" than "suggest", but that from the context you chose the second meaning?
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Old July 04, 2014, 07:05 PM
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Dear Graviton,

It's nothing to be grateful about: I'm the first to admit that everything (or most part) I've learnt according to English language has been due to the invaluable labour of altruist users. Yes, I also hope to stay partaking on this forum for a long time. I'm going to travel soon and wish not to suffering any problem with my internet connection.

By the way, I'm 21.
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Old July 04, 2014, 08:52 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by graviton View Post
Hi Rusty! I found your comment that the first translation is the "truer" one intriguing. Do you mean that "apuntar" would much more often be used to mean "take note of" than "suggest", but that from the context you chose the second meaning?
By truer, I was talking about the better translation of 'cuando' and 'respondió por fin, críptico'; everything but the translation of apuntar.
I don't think that 'suggest' is the right translation either. I would go with 'break' or 'appear'.

It's possible to have two different English translations, as you have discovered. This is because it's possible that either one of the two men could have smiled. It's even possible that both of them smiled, but only one smile was mentioned.

I think that the key word in the narrative is 'críptico'. The narrative states that the man took a while to respond. When he finally did, his answer was cryptic, it says, but not so much so that the judge couldn't understand it.

What was it that the judge then did?
The translator who gave us the first English version you wrote thought that it was the man who smiled and the judge noticed it. I can see that point of view.
The translator who gave us the second English version you wrote thought that it was the judge who smiled, probably because he recognized the expression being used and thought it witty or funny. I can see that point of view.

I tend to side with Julvenzor, that it was the judge who broke a smile because he thought the expression was funny, or witty. But I can't rule out that perhaps both men smiled. The judge, in that case, would have both presented and noted a smile.
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Old July 05, 2014, 12:32 AM
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Es el juez el que esbozó una leve sonrisa, porque lo que dijo la otra persona, a pesar de que fue críptico, no lo fue suficientemente críptico para que el el juez lo entendiera y de allí la leve sonrisa.
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Old July 05, 2014, 11:29 AM
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To Julvenzor: You say “It's nothing to be grateful about: I'm the first to admit that everything (or most part) I've learnt according to English language has been due to the invaluable labour of altruist users.” Exactly, Julvenzor—you're grateful to the altruists who helped you, as I am to the people in this forum who are aiding me. And while I value all contributions, I am especially pleased by those of native speakers of Spanish, and I think the following little story will illustrate why.


I took French in high school, and on the very first day of my very first French class, my teacher, a very elderly lady named Mrs. Burstein, stood in front of the class and said (I paraphrase): “Before we get underway, I want to tell you a story that doesn't make me look very good, or very smart, and in fact it embarrasses me a great deal to tell it to you, but I'm overcoming my embarrassment because it teaches a very important lesson. My whole life, since I was a tiny child, I loved France, and everything French, especially the language. And starting at about age five, entirely on my own, I immersed myself in French culture. But I grew up in a little town in Illinois, about 100 miles south of Chicago, so my French immersion was confined to books and “Learn French in 20 Lessons” language records. There were no native French speakers in Rantoul, Illinois, I can tell you that!! The highlight of my childhood came when, one rainy Saturday, my parents drove me all the way to Chicago to see a French movie that was playing in the US. While that was great, I yearned to hear French spoken in its natural habitat, by ordinary people, not actors. So my lifelong goal was to travel to France, especially Paris. But my family was poor, so that was out of the question when I was a child. Meanwhile, I studied hard, and gradually realized that I was destined to be a teacher of French to Americans. So I majored in French in college, was a straight A student, graduated with honors, and spoke—I thought—perfect French. And the summer after my graduation (scheduled to start teaching French at a school in Chicago in September), I fulfilled my lifelong dream! I flew to Paris, and I remember sitting in the hotel lobby, just listening, for the first time ever, to conversations between ordinary French people! I was in indescribable ecstasy!! I happened to be sitting near the Reservations Desk, and the clerk was constantly on the phone, so naturally I overheard many of his conversations. And suddenly in the midst of all my pleasure, there was a dark shadow. I noticed that the clerk was repeatedly using a word that I had never heard in my life! Never! In conversation after conversation, over and over again I heard him using this word, and despite all my years of studying French and getting the highest marks of anyone in French class, I didn't know what the heck he was saying! After about 15 minutes of this, my curiosity overcame my embarrassment, and I went over to the clerk, and in perfect French I said to him, “Excuse me, sir, but I hear you keep saying this word that sounds like “Dak”, and I have to confess I've never heard it before. Can you tell me what it means?” Well, the clerk looked at me incredulously, and said, “Mademoiselle, you speak such magnificent French, you sound like you were born in Paris, and you ask me what 'dak' means?” When he saw me blushing, he quickly apologized, “I'm so sorry to have embarrassed you, but I was just so surprised. 'Dak' is short for 'd'accord'; we use it like Americans use 'okay'.” So here I was, about to teach French to the kids of Chicago in the fall, and I didn't know how the ordinary Frenchman says 'okay'. Of course I knew 'd'accord', but 'dak' never appeared in any of the books I studied. And that's the point: the French language as taught in books, or in school, and the French language as it is actually spoken by Frenchman are two different things.”


Mrs. Burstein then concluded her story by saying that she was going to try to teach us French as it is actually spoken. And my own point in telling her story is to say that nothing can replace growing up speaking a language, and that's why I place such value on your contributions Julvenzor and those of other native speakers.


To Rusty: I very much appreciated and enjoyed reading your analysis. To give a little context to the quoted sentence: it appears in the opening scene of a mystery novel--the investigators have encountered a dead man hanging from a ceiling lighting fixture in the main room of an exclusive club for serious intellectuals, and the question is: murder or suicide? The judge (who is really an “investigating magistrate”, a distinctly European institution) has just walked over to the police detective and asked him “What do you think?” and the policeman gives the response about the milk that I quoted. The argument in favor of the police detective being the smiler is this: although in saying 'if it's white, and comes in bottles, it's usually milk' the detective is indicating that he's drawing the obvious conclusion, he doesn't say what conclusion appears so obvious to him. But if his words, despite being cryptic, are accompaned by a smile, that smile would indicate he's not taking the matter too seriously—in other words, it's not something awful like murder, but merely a suicide. (And in fact in a moment the reader will learn that that's exactly what the detective thinks.)So, in this interpretation, although the policeman's words are cryptic, his smile makes his overall response less so. So in this way I think the translation does make sense if you have the police detective doing the smiling.


As for the other interpretation, although I know all of you favor it (I noticed that chileno joined the group supporting it), I would ask this question: If the judge smiled because of the humorous way the police detective expressed himself, wouldn't the author have said something like, “...he replied, at last, cryptically, and the judge couldn't help smiling at the detective's colorful words even though he didn't grasp their meaning.”


But Rusty, you might then ask: could the judge have been smiling not because of the amusing figure of speech used by the detective but because in fact the judge did grasp the meaning of the policeman's words, despite their being cryptic? The answer, I think, is no, because in the next few lines you see a very sharp disagreement between the policeman and the judge, with the former believing it was suicide and the latter, murder. So if the judge was able to grasp the policeman's meaning (because, by using such a light-hearted figure of speech, it indicated the policeman must not think a murder had been committed), the judge would most definitely not have been smiling, because it would mean that the two of them were taking diametrically opposed positions in a very serious matter.


Of course, you, Rusty, and Julvenzor and chileno too, did not have all these facts that help put the sentence in context, so you were all operating at a great disadvantage.,
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  #9  
Old July 05, 2014, 02:39 PM
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To me, there is no doubt that the judge was the one who smiled.
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Old July 05, 2014, 03:36 PM
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@Graviton: I'm sorry, but I think you're confused because you're over interpreting a simple sentence. Even without the whole context, the meaning is straight forward, and we all agree that it's the judge who barely smiled.

"Apuntar" in the sense of taking notes is only used when you're actually writing something down on paper, so it doesn't fit the original sentence. The use of "apuntar una sonrisa", in the sense Julvenzor explained, is merely a description of a very faint smile; the sentence is using a figurative way of saying that the immediate reaction of the judge was a faint smile after the policeman made clear that there was something so obvious, that he preferred to express it with a cliché.
The judge is not frankly smiling in agreement, but just reacting to the policeman's joke in an instant.

The adjective "críptico" is only used here because instead of providing a straight answer containing the word "suicide", the policeman is using an obvious word play; it doesn't mean that he wanted to give a hidden message or that the judge wouldn't know what the policeman was talking about.
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