Glossary entry

Spanish term or phrase:

catatronías

English translation:

catachronic

Added to glossary by Charles Davis
Nov 19, 2013 22:29
10 yrs ago
Spanish term

catatronías

Spanish to English Art/Literary Philosophy
This is a text about a contemporary Argentine artist:

Una cifra privada, de aquellas que habilitan los juegos temporales en las discronías y catatronías.

Thanks
Proposed translations (English)
4 +1 catachronic
Change log

Nov 24, 2013 12:47: Charles Davis Created KOG entry

Discussion

Rachel Fell Nov 21, 2013:
It's about a contemporary artist - such a commentary won't necessarily be that accessible to most readers and may well use somewhat abstruse language, surely?
Charles Davis Nov 20, 2013:
The writer chose to express this in a way that most readers will find very difficult to understand, but that educated readers with some knowledge of Greek roots like dys, cata and chronic can more or less work out with some mental effort. What's the argument for doing otherwise in the translation? Isn't it ultimately a form of dumbing down?
Charles Davis Nov 20, 2013:
I don't agree Well, I agree that hardly any readers with understand these terms. But exactly the same is true of the Spanish text. The obscurity and pretentiousness are precisely equivalent. I don't agree that we should change that. Our job is to reproduce as best we can the effect the writer is trying to achieve as well as the substance. It might be different if these terms were more widely used in Spanish than their cognate equivalents in English, but this is not so.

Quite possibly the writer has found these words somewhere, thought they sounded clever and doesn't really know what they mean. But perhaps s/he does. And although I would be hard pressed to say what "catachronic" is supposed to mean here (and for that reason I would be reluctant to paraphrase it), "dsychronic" doesn't mean "anachronistic".

I think there's a matter of principle involved here. The source text has a very particular style. It should be maintained.
Jim Tucker (X) Nov 20, 2013:
/w Karen +1
Karen Vincent-Jones (X) Nov 20, 2013:
Dis/catachrony I don't think an English-speaking readership would understand either of these words. Perhaps you could substitute a paraphrase, along the lines of 'deliberate anachronisms and temporal dislocations'. Just a thought. A literal translation would just sound too pretentious IMO
Jim Tucker (X) Nov 20, 2013:
catachronie exists in French, at least so perhaps yes. "Time mixups." Would be a good partner to discronía, "negative synchrony."
Rachel Fell Nov 20, 2013:
might it be a typo for "catacronías"? (Not that I could find either word in a short time;-) )

Proposed translations

+1
13 hrs
Selected

catachronic

This has got to be a typo; "catatronía" is not only unattested anywhere but doesn't make any sense etymologically. And I am sure that Rachel and Jim are right and that it should be "catacronías", not "catatonías". Catatonia doesn't fit the context at all, but since the sentence is about "juegos temporales", and we've already had "discronías", another "–cronía" word, referring to time, is very plausible.

As Jim says, "catachronie", though not exactly common, is a perfectly well established term in French. So although catacronía is unattested in Spanish, at least in Google, it has to be that, probably borrowed from French (or possibly Italian, where it's also found).

(All these points can be easily confirmed by Google searches.)

However, thinking about how to render the sentence as a whole, I think it would be much better to use adjectives than nouns for these terms. So instead of "dyschronies and catachronies", you would use "dyschronic and catachronic". In fact, although "catacronía" doesn't occur anywhere else in Spanish, "catacrónico" is found in a few places:
https://www.google.es/search?num=100&espv=210&es_sm=93&q="ca...

In English, similarly, "catachony/catachronies" is virtually non-existent, but "catachronic" is occasionally found, as in this master's thesis entitled "Time, Art and Resistance: Visual Art Programs in Prisons"; it also mentions "catachrony" (being "under time"), citing the American theorist Victor Gioscia:

"Gioscia (1971) describes the 'catachronic' individual as being in a mental prison, one for whom time weighs heavily, and who - not incidentally - has frequent recourse to narcotics in order to escape, momentarily, this condition. For the person suffering from catachrony, the 'epichronic' realm presents an attractive escape"
https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/5874/ubc_1997-01...

Gioscia uses the word several times in his Varieties of Temporal Experience, 1: Time Forms:
http://books.google.es/books?hl=es&id=PS4iAAAAMAAJ&focus=sea...

So I would suggest you put something like "dyschronic and catachronic temporal games" or "playing with time in a dyschronic and catachronic way". It would work better like that than with nouns, in my opinion.

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Note added at 13 hrs (2013-11-20 11:51:08 GMT)
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The alternative adjectival form "catachronistic" (contrasted with "anachronistic") is also found, as here:
http://www.utexas.edu/law/conferences/representingculture/Pa... (p. 15)

But "dyschronistic" is not used (or hardly ever), whereas "dyschronic" is reasonably common, generally in medical contexts. It would sound much better to use two terms of a similar form: "dyschronic and catachronic", rather than "dyschronic and catachronistic".
Peer comment(s):

agree Rachel Fell
3 hrs
Thanks, Rachel :)
neutral Karen Vincent-Jones (X) : I do not think this term would be comprehensible to an English-speaking reader.
6 hrs
Quite possibly not, but that is not an adequate reason for not using it in my opinion. See discussion.
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "thanks!"
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