Two translations of a cockney girl in Shaw's Pygmalion: the works of Julio Broutá and Floreal Mazía

Abstract

Bernard Shaw has been a well-known writer in the Spanish-speaking world since Julio Broutá introduced his works in Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century. This article assesses two of the six translations of his play Pygmalion into Spanish, those of Julio Broutá (1919) and Floreal Mazía (1952), focusing specifically on the rendering of Cockney. Both target authors maintain the dialectal distinction in their works, by translating Cockney as Cheli and Lunfardo, dialects spoken by the lower classes of Madrid and Buenos Aires, respectively.