Cultural Errors in Spanish Translations of Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats…

By the Bog of Cats… (1999), a play by Marina Carr, portrays the afflicted life of Hester Swane, an Irish Traveller who is mistreated, discarded, and ultimately pushed to insanity because of betrayal, social isolation, and emotional distress. This play offers a profound exploration of Irish Travellers’ cultural identity and marginalisation among the settled community. This study explores the cultural errors in two Spanish translations of this play. To this end, I conduct a comparative analysis between Carr’s source text (ST) and the target texts (TT): Junto a la Ciénaga de los Gatos (2022q) by Melania Terrazas Gallego and Álvaro Martínez de la Puente Molina, which is the first complete translation of Carr’s play, and Patricia Novillo-Corvalán’s partial translation included in The Theatre of Marina Carr: A Latin American Reading, Interview, and Translation (2009). Until now, there has been no comparative analysis of the Spanish translations of By the Bog of Cats..., with a particular emphasis on cultural errors. The objectives of this analysis are to identify and categorise these errors. By analysing both texts, I aim to uncover the nature of the errors, their possible causes, and their impact on the final translations. Additionally, the two Spanish translations are compared to examine their linguistic and cultural similarities and differences. This comparative approach highlights key translation discrepancies in them, such as misrepresentation, omission, or over-domestication of cultural elements. The analysis also provides an overview of how cultural elements are represented in the translations and the implications of the translators’ choices on the translated texts. Finally, the study sheds light on the translation strategies employed by the translators and their role in cross- cultural mediation.