Don Quixote is widely considered to be the first modern novel and introduced readers to new ways in which fictional stories could be composed and communicated to their audience. But many readers of the modern age fail to grasp its convoluted history of translation. These readers pick up a copy of Don Quixote and assume that the meaning they are gleaning from the book is the same meaning understood by everyone else. In reality, every English translator has brought about a multitude of linguistic, rhetorical, and stylistic choices unique to their time-period, nation, and belief system (religious, political, or otherwise), and therefore the social and political views of a particular time period can be extracted from the choices translators throughout the centuries have chosen to insert within Don Quixote. Languages are constantly changing over time and each language is “Different not only owing to the way they carve up reality but also owing to the way they put it together again” (Ricoeur 30). Therefore, as this site will illustrate, undertaking the task of translation is no mean feat.

The book itself follows a man from a village located in the region of La Mancha, Spain, named Alonso Quixano (Quexana according to Ormsby). This man becomes disillusioned with the world around him due to reading a few too many books on chivalry and knight errantry and decides to become a knight errant himself named Don Quixote. He employs his neighbor Sancho as his squire, falls in love with an imaginary woman named Dulcinea del Toboso, and sets off in search of adventure. Parts 1 and 2 of Don Quixote recount his many exploits and adventures (both real and imaginary) that he encounters throughout his time as a knight errant.

The history of this book can be traced back to 1605 when Miguel Cervantes published his first part of Don Quixote under the name The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha but in future translations has been interpreted as The Life and Atchievements of the Renown’d Don Quixote de La Mancha or The Life and Exploits of Don Quixote de La Mancha, among others. Even something as rudimentary as the title has changed drastically; “ingenious” in the first title implies a story of an inventive or intelligent man whereas “renown’d” and “atchievements” in the second title implies a story of a famous and well-known individual and his accomplishments. The third title uses no adjectives regarding Don Quixote and “exploits” implies a more adventurous story than the others. With translators taking such liberties in regard to the title, one can see that the translations themselves will differ markedly in their content.

Cervantes’ second part was released in 1615, a year before his death and a year after the counterfeit second part written by the pseudonymous Avellaneda was released. The very first English translation was Thomas Shelton’s hastily comprised first part of Don Quixote, called The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha, released in 1612. His translation of the second part followed eight years later, in 1620. His translation was completed in 40 days and is described by John Ormsby (a 19^th century translator) as “hastily made… often very literal.” The style of the book takes a very one-dimensional viewpoint (described in the other sections of this site) of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Pança (also referred to as Panza or Pansa). His translation will be examined in further detail later on, and so will those by the following four translators.

Peter Motteux’s four volume translation – called The Life and Atchievements of the Renown’d Don Quixote de la Mancha – was released between 1700 and 1703 and retained lasting popularity up until recent years. Despite its popularity and fame, this translation is widely regarded as one of the worst English translations to come into print; called “An absolute falsification of the spirit of the book” by Ormsby, it did away with the subtle humor of the original and frequently misinterpreted rhetorical devices. However, despite its infamy, Motteux’s translation had some positive qualities; it departs from the one-dimensional attitude of Don Quixote as “Simply a brilliantly successful funny book” (Russell 312) in the 17^th century translations and includes extensive footnotes for the ease of the reader.

In 1742 Charles Jarvis’s The Life and Exploits of Don Quixote de la Mancha, contained within four volumes, was published posthumously. When searching “Don Quixote” on google, the full-text online edition that will popup first will be that of Charles Jarvis, and his translation is still widely circulated in print. Ormsby, in his Translators Preface, describes Jarvis as “A sound Spanish scholar” and “A faithful and painstaking translator.” Jarvis’ edition is criticized for how literal it tends to be, but it expands on the work done by Motteux in erasing the idea that “Cervantes had been solely concerned with social satire” (Garrido 56). This translation serves as a medium between the perceptions in the 17^th and early 18^th century of Don Quixote as strictly comedy and social satire and the 19^th century Romanticist perception of the book as “a sad and idealistic novel, instead of a comedy” (Garrido 56).

Later in the 18^th century Tobias Smollett released his translation, titled History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote, also split up into four volumes. Smollett drew heavily on the works of previous translators, and his work went through an incredible amount of reprints and editions before the end of the century. Smollett’s translation contains his own beautiful prose and as an author he was “Careful to respect the particular character and tone of the original Spanish language” (Garrido 56). However, respect for Smollett’s translation soon began to fade when it was realized that he often made “Poor choices in the use of colloquial speech and idiomatic expressions” (Garrido 71). Because Smollett depended on the Jarvis translation more so than the original Spanish text, his translation was also incredibly literal and was accused of disregarding Cervantes’ Spanish text entirely.

The final translation that will be examined throughout this site is the 19^th century translation by John Ormsby, titled Don Quixote, the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha. His edition was released in 1885, all in one volume and remains one of the most popular and well-circulated translations to this day. Ormsby’s translation contains extensive marginal annotations and a detailed analysis of all the previous translations. Some translators make it their focus to “recover the text as the other composed it” and this is certainly true of John Ormsby (Chartier). He takes into consideration the societal, cultural, and political circumstances in which the original Don Quixote was written so as to remain true to the message intended by Miguel Cervantes. His translation adhered strongly to the romanticist viewpoint of Don Quixote as a sad and idealistic novel, and is praised by many, including Joseph R. Jones who claimed that “Ormsby’s knowledge of Spanish was quite remarkable, and he produced the first truly accurate English translation of Cervantes’ great novel” (Garrido 77).

Perfect translation is hardly a realistic ambition; with each translator comes new observations and analyses, and the biases of the translators themselves greatly impact how they view other languages and books from other times. But as Chartier points out, differences between translations “Constitute its different historical incarnations” and therefore become examples of important historical value. Each language has its own idiosyncrasies, and it is impossible to perfectly retain all the rhetorical devices, puns, idioms, and other manners of expression when translating from one language to another. As Paul Ricoeur says, “Each of our words has more than one meaning… the meaning is thus defined each time through usage” (Ricoeur 26). In some cases, as Ricoeur points out, it is necessary to analyze the surrounding passages and the wider context in which a word is used in order to fully grasp its meaning – it is not enough to simply look at past translations and build on those; a faithful translator must examine the original manuscript comprehensively and as a whole. Instead of examining the exact morphological meanings and phonological roots like Jarvis did, one must examine the syntax and the semantic meaning that all of the above transmits to the reader.