Translation is always an approximation. A perfect translation is always impossible — there is always something that is lost, no matter how good the translator is. I think this as I re-read Julio Cortázar’s story “Usted se tendió a tu lado”. Even the title is impossible to translate. I could approximate it; and I can perhaps explain to you why this is untranslatable; but I would never be able to convey the whole effect in a practical manner. That’s because the whole premise of this story is based on the use of the personal pronoun “usted” as if it was a person. Let me explain.
Without launching into a Spanish lecture, “usted” is a second person formal pronoun — think of it like a “you sir / madam”. In Spanish, the informal second person would be “tú”; in Argentina — where Cortázar is from — “vos”1. But “usted” is formed using the conjugations of the third persons (“él” or “ella” — “he” or “she”, in English). This personal pronoun doesn’t exist in English but think about it like this: you go to a posh restaurant and the waiter asks you “would the gentleman / lady like another glass of wine?” The waiter is addressing “you” but by pretending to be talking about someone else, in order to be more polite. That’s how “usted” works in Spanish.
Take the following sentences:
“Tú corres” / “vos corrés” » informal “you run”
“Usted corre” » formal “you sir or madam run” — which coincides with “él corre” or “ella corre” » “he runs” or “she runs”
You can see that the verb endings for “usted” and “él” or “ella” are the same in Spanish — “corre” — but not in English — “run” versus “runs”.
Cortázar’s story works exactly because in Spanish “usted” can be thought of as “you sir / madam” but also as “él” or “ella”. I mean, this is not something that we do frequently: Cortázar is here de-automatising the “usted” and turning it into a character, an “ella” (“she”), in order to correspond with the grammatical person that “usted” uses to create its formal effect. And he does so also by writing using the second person “tú / vos”, addressing the reader with this person, which is not a common person to use in fiction. This is a story that depends on that alienating effect, that slowly normalises as the story progresses.
Take the title of the story then: “Usted se tendió a tu lado”. This means both “she2 laid by your side” and “you sir / madam laid by your side”. At the same time. Something that is impossible in English.
There is obviously a story to translate aside from this use of personal pronouns. And I’d probably go for that if I had to translate this story. But the whole effect here is determined by that de-automatisation of the personal pronoun “usted”, and that’s something that can’t be conveyed in a translation into English. Translation is always about loss. The question is what you can afford to lose.
Also in Uruguay, parts of Colombia and Central America. Vos was dropped mostly elsewhere.
I repeat, the anthropomorphic “usted” is a woman in this story.