Translation by Motteux
“Come, girth Rozinante straiter, and then Providence protect thee: Thou may’st stay for me here; but if I do not return in three days, go back to our village, and from thence, for my sake, to Toboso, where thou shalt say to my incomparable lady Dulcinea, that her faithful knight fell a sacrifice to love and honour, while he attempted things that might have made him worthy to be called her adorer.”
Translation by Smollet
“Therefore straiten Rozinante’s girth, recommend thyself to God, and wait for me in this place, three days at farthest; within which time if I come not back, thou mayest return to our village, and, as the last favour and service done to me, go from thence to Toboso, and inform my incomparable mistress Dulcinea, that her captive knight died in attempting things that might render him worthy to be called her lover.”
On comparing these two translations, that of Smollet appears to me to have better preserved the ludicrous solemnity of the original. This is particularly observable in the beginning of the sentence, where there is a most humorous association of two counsels very opposite in their nature, the recommending himself to God, and girding Rozinante. In the request, “and as the last favour and service done to me, go from thence to Toboso;” the translations of Smollet and Motteux are, perhaps, nearly equal in point of solemnity, but the simplicity of the original is better preserved by Smollet.[59]
Sancho, after endeavouring in vain to dissuade his master from engaging in this perilous adventure, takes advantage of the darkness to tie Rozinante’s legs together, and thus to prevent him from stirring from the spot; which being done, to divert the Knight’s impatience under this supposed enchantment, he proceeds to tell him, in his usual strain of rustic buffoonery, a long story of a cock and a bull, which thus begins: “Erase que se era, el bien que viniere para todos sea, y el mal para quien lo fuere á buscar; y advierta vuestra merced, señor mio, que el principio que los antiguos dieron a sus consejas, no fue así como quiera, que fue una sentencia de Caton Zonzorino Romano que dice, y el mal para quien lo fuere á buscar.” Ibid.
In this passage, the chief difficulties that occur to the translator are, first, the beginning, which seems to be a customary prologue to a nursery-tale among the Spaniards, which must therefore be translated by a corresponding phraseology in English; and secondly, the blunder of Caton Zonzorino. Both these are, I think, most happily hit off by Motteux. “In the days of yore, when it was as it was, good betide us all, and evil to him that evil seeks. And here, Sir, you are to take notice, that they of old did not begin their tales in an ordinary way; for ’twas a saying of a wise man, whom they call’d Cato the Roman Tonsor, that said, Evil to him that evil seeks.” Smollet thus translates the passage: “There was, so there was; the good that shall fall betide us all; and he that seeks evil may meet with the devil. Your worship may take notice, that the beginning of the ancient tales is not just what came into the head of the teller: no, they always began with some saying of Cato, the censor of Rome, like this, of “He that seeks evil may meet with the devil.”
The beginning of the story, thus translated, has neither any meaning in itself, nor does it resemble the usual preface of a foolish tale. Instead of Caton Zonzorino, a blunder which apologises for the mention of Cato by such an ignorant clown as Sancho, we find the blunder rectified by Smollet, and Cato distinguished by his proper epithet of the Censor. This is a manifest impropriety in the last translator, for which no other cause can be assigned, than that his predecessor had preoccupied the blunder of Cato the Tonsor, which, though not a translation of Zonzorino, (the purblind), was yet a very happy parallelism.
In the course of the same cock-and-bull story, Sancho thus proceeds: “Asi que, yendo dias y viniendo dias, el diablo que no duerme y que todo lo añasca, hizo de manera, que el amor que el pastor tenia á su pastora se volviese en omecillo y mala voluntad, y la causa fué segun malas lenguas, una cierta cantidad de zelillos que ella le dió, tales que pasaban de la raya, y llegaban á lo vedado, y fue tanto lo que el pastor la aborreció de alli adelante, que por on verla se quiso ausentar de aquella tierra, é irse donde sus ojos no la viesen jamas: la Toralva, que se vió desdeñada del Lope, luego le quiso bien mas que nunca le habla querido.” Ibid.
Translation by Motteux