La bêtise, un privilège français ?

Abstract

The word “bêtise” is in French polysemic and gradual and there does not seem to be an equivalent in Spanish that covers the totality of its occurrences. The problem gets patently worse when translating Flaubert: in Flaubertian French the word “bêtise” spreads, as we know, to a whole range of signifiers, and the meaning and degree of nuisance that Flaubert attributes to it change constantly according to the context. Now the study of the occurrences of “bêtise” in Argentinean editions show that what is lost at first in the translation process is precisely this repeated use of the word: “torpeza”, “estupidez”, “barbaridad”, “idiotez”, “necedad”, “tontería” are a few of the equivalences given by the translators. What are the effects of this deficiency on the Flaubertian text when it is translated into Spanish? And is it necessarily a deficiency?