Steinbeck vs google translate

Steinbeck can get metaphorical. Makes it hard to go from language to language unless the translator gets into a theme analysis layer, making biased choices.  Steinbeck is not as compact as Bierce and Hemingway. If Steinbeck dropped his occasional metaphorical divergences , things would be much nicer, he didn't trust his reader.

So, some parts of Cannery Row I know the translator will foul up, mostly the metaphorical stuff which I do not care. Here is a Steinbeck sentence about one of his characters, in both languages:

su suela suelta solapa en la calle
his loose sole flap-flapped on the street.


Now, that extra rhythm we get in spanish is a treat, I see it more often in the translation than the original, it makes me want to set it to a beat and melody.  Translating from english comedy, like Harte makes the narrator a foreigner, fresh off the boat.  The original comedy get funnier when the word order changes for spanish.

But it works if we keep compact, do not use word to declare the theme, use an environment built of the words. Set the stage and screen play at the same time. Then keep your semantic compact to match the environment. Makes life much more fun for the reader.

Old Man and the Sea, the first part, is really just Dick and Jane at the seashore, from second grade; plus a bunch of fishing terms. Then Hemingway discovers Dick and Jan may have been at the seashore in the past, and may or may not continue at the sea shore together and Dick talk and Dick and Jane at the sea shore last year. And he does all that with connective grammar. The tenses, the person, the mood according to established rules. I doubt that Hemingway needed more than 100 stem words, when translated into spanish.

When I write from the point of view of my chihuahua I am deliberately training myself in the semantics of my neighborhood, hydrants, sidewalks, street light posts, grass, curbs, fences yards.  My dog story teaches me that stuff in spanish, I set the story within an environment that compactly contains the world I want, everything lower than three feet.