WUTHERING HEIGHTS IN THE FRANCO DICTATORSHIP: ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF THE TRANSLATION BY EL BACHILLER CANSECO (1947)

Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë, has been translated into Spanish on more than one hundred occasions. The translation by El Bachiller Canseco (1947) was first published during the Franco dictatorship in an era of censorship in which the translator did not have specific training or any access to specialised monographs. This lack of training has an impact on the resulting target text; the translation did not succeed at transferring Brontë’s cultural legacy. To transfer it correctly, the historical-social context of the work would need to be studied in great detail. In the text, we are witness to the translator’s intervention, something that we can observe in the omissions, errors and examples of interpretative translation, which are non-existent in the original text. El Bachiller Canseco did not appear to know the sources of the original text, nor was he able to establish the line between his facet as a writer and translator.