GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW) | ||||||
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22:33 Jul 18, 2019 |
Spanish to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature | |||||||
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| Selected response from: Charles Davis Spain Local time: 23:43 | ||||||
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Discussion entries: 5 | |
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(a figure standing outside / transcending) time, place and convention Explanation: I think the only way of dealing with this, as you've suggested in your question, is to rework it completely. I can't see any way of reproducing, or even adapting, the verbal effect of the original. You could use "atemporal" for acrónico, and of course "atypical" for atípico, but I can't come up with anything comparable for atópico. And in that case I think it's better to abandon that approach completely and find another way of treating all three similarly. It's a special use of the word anyway; in Spanish atópico is a medical term too. I'm sure that the writer is using it to mean "without place", just as acrónico means "without time". The a– prefix means "non" (as in amoral, for example), and in Greek chronos means time and topos means place. So acrónica, atópica means timeless, placeless (literally): of no time and no place. Then again, atópico has surely been used to set up the wordplay with atípico. We can't preserve that either, because I really don't think we can imitate the Spanish and call him "atopical"; no one will understand it. "Timeless" would work. "Placeless" would be a bit forced. But then what do you do with atípico? I can't think of a "–less" word for that. So I offer a modest proposal to get round these problems. This is one of those cases where you have to deal with the whole phrase. |
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