¡Pero tutéame, hombre! ¡Entre nosotros dos ya no hay barreras! La traducción de las formas de tratamiento en La señorita Julie de August Strindberg

Abstract

Switching of address terms is one of the most important means of conveying alternations in status and emotion in August Strindberg's Miss Julie, written in Swedish in 1888. The aim of this essay is to study the renderings of these terms in five translations of the play into Spanish, the oldest of which is made in 1903 and the newest in 2012. Törnqvist as well as Josephson has studied the significance of the address switching in Miss Julie, and my examples are based upon their analyses. Due to differences in the systems of address, translation will inevitably influence the relationships between the characters, showing the translators' interpretations of the text. Drawing from Brown and Gilman's theory of power and solidarity, revised by Blas Arroyo, I compare the relationships in the source language text with those in the target language texts. I also define cases of address amplification as well as address reduction, according to Horton. Generally, the translations use less alternations than the source text. Some tend to emphasize asymmetric power relationships related to official social status, while others are inclined towards a more symmetric relationship than the source text.