ETI 306
Advanced Literary Translation
“Hills Like White Elephants”
By
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961)
 Hemingway was an American writer of novels and short stories.
Before turning to fiction, he worked as a reporter for the Kansas City
Star and served as a First World War ambulance driver before enlisting
with the Italian infantry and suffering a wound.
 After the war, he worked for the Toronto Star and lived for a time in
Paris and Key West, Fla. During the Spanish Civil War and the Second
World War, he served as a newspaper correspondent, then lived in
Cuba until 1958 and Idaho until 1961, the year of his death by suicide.
 His narratives frequently contain masculine motifs, such as bull-
fighting (Death in the Afternoon), hunting (The Green Hills of Africa),
war (A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls), and fishing (The
Old Man and the Sea). All of these motifs derive from Hemingway’s
own experiences as a traveler and an adventurer. Arguably, he was a
better short-story writer than a novelist, although it was his longer
works that built his reputation.
Ernest Hemingway
 First published in August of 1927, “Hills Like White Elephants” became
an important piece in Hemingway's second collection of short stories,
MenWithoutWomen. Hemingway wrote the story soon after the
publication of his 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, while living in Paris.
 His first major novel, The Sun Also Rises chronicled the postwar
experiences of what his friend Gertrude Stein called the "lost
generation" of WWI.
 ‘Lost Generation’ is a term for the U.S. writers of the post-WWI
generation, coined in a remark by Gertrude Stein to Ernest
Hemingway. Besides him they included Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos
Passos, e.e. cummings and others. Their ideals shattered by the war,
they felt alienated from the materialism of America in the 1920's, and
many lived bohemian expatriate lives in Paris.
Hills Like White Elephants
 MenWithoutWomen was well-received, as were Hemingway’s other early
works. He was embraced by the expatriate literary community in Paris
and received strong reviews on his work in the United States and
abroad. Although he continued to write novels and stories throughout
his career, the early short stories are often considered to be among his
finest works.
 ‘‘Hills Like White Elephants,’’ is one of Hemingway’s most
anthologized and much-discussed stories, possibly because of the way
used dialogue to convey the “meaning” of the story with no
description, very little narration, no identification of character or even
intent.
 We have no clear ideas about the nature of the discussion (abortion);
the dialogue conveys everything that we conclude about the
characters.
 The story offers a glimpse at the spare prose and understated dialogue
that represents Hemingway’s mastery of style.
Elements of fiction
Setting: a train station in the Ebro River (Zaragoza) valley of
Spain; the time is not given, but it seems to be contemporary
to the time the text was composed (1920s). The day is hot and
dry, and the scenery in the valley is barren and mostly ugly.
Characters: a man (referred to as "the American") and his
female companion (whom he calls Jig); the two characters are
a couple.
Point of view: third-person point of view that limits the
narration to what the characters say and do; it does not reveal
their thoughts, (narrator does not reveal anything about the
characters and never states what the characters is arguing
about. Readers must interpret the dialogue to infer their
backgrounds and their attitudes about the situation, and
toward one another.
Elements of fiction
Plot summary:The story, told almost entirely through
dialogue, is a conversation between a young woman, Jig, and
a man, the American, waiting for a train in Spain. As they
talk, it becomes clear that the young woman is pregnant and
that the man wants her to have an abortion. (Though it is
never stated explicitly in the text, it is made clear through
some contextual clues that Jig is pregnant and that the
‘operation’ in question is an abortion).
The American and Jig drink beer and a liquor called Anis del
Toro while waiting for the train to Madrid. Jig compares the
drink to licorice. Their conversation is, at first, ordinary
small talk, yet it quickly turns to the subject of an operation
which the American tries to convince Jig to undergo.
Elements of fiction
Plot (cont’d): After putting forward some arguments which
the American does not respond much, Jig eventually agrees
to undergo the operation but then she tries to change the
subject. The American who seems to be unsure of Jig's
intentions and mental state tries to keep on the subject. As
the train approaches, he carries their bags to the platform,
has another drink alone and then joins Jig. She smiles at him,
tells him that she is "fine", and the story ends.
Much is revealed about the personalities of the couple
through their tight, brittle conversation, while at the same
time, much about their relationship remains hidden. At the
end of the story it is still unclear as to what decision has or
has not been made, or what will happen to these two
characters waiting for a train on a platform in Spain.
Elements of fiction
Themes: Even though it is quite short and made up of
mostly dialogues, "Hills Like White Elephants" contains
different themes. It deals with concepts such as the conflict
between personal responsibility and hedonism, rhetorical
and psychological manipulation, coming of age, and the
dynamics of the romantic relationship and its transformation
into the notion of family.
More generally, it could also be a statement about the
intellectual, cultural and moral climate of the Roaring 20’s
and the lifestyles and attitudes of the post-WW I "Lost
Generation" of American expatriates in Europe.
Elements of fiction
Themes (cont’d)
Confronting the Future: Jig and the American have been
traveling in Europe from hotel to hotel in pursuit of
pleasure. However, Jig expresses dissatisfaction with their
nomadic existence, especially now that she is pregnant. She
apparently wants to have the baby and settle down to a
normal life, symbolized from her perspective by the
greenery and thriving grain fields on one side of the station.
He wants her to abort their baby so that they can continue
their adventures.
Inability to Communicate Effectively: Jig and the American have
difficulty articulating their feelings. Rather than bluntly
stating their views, they imply, hint, euphemize.
Elements of fiction
 Themes (cont’d)
Selfishness: The man appears to be manipulating Jig in order to maintain
a lifestyle in which she is a convenient outlet for his libido. He is even
willing to sacrifice a human life, Jig’s unborn child, so that he can
continue their joyride.
Too Much of a Good Thing: Jig and the American have apparently been
living a life of excess. Consequently, life is no longer fun for Jig. When
she samples a strong and dangerous liqueur to try to revive her interest
in their great adventure, she says disappointedly that “everything tastes
like licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited for so long, like
absinthe.” Clearly, she is ready to abandon their dissipated way of life
to settle down.
Evasion of Responsibility: The American seems unable to accept
responsibility, for whatever reason. Rather than facing the challenges
of normal life, he continually puts them off.
Analysis
Symbolism: In the beginning of the story, Jig draws a simile
by describing the hills across the barren valley as looking like
white elephants?
While Jig possibly sees the child as an extraordinary addition
to her ordinary life of drinking and mindless traveling, the
American could be seeing the baby as a white elephant and
not want to raise it because of the cost.
The symbolism of the hills and the big white elephant can be
thought of as the image of the swollen breasts and abdomen
of a pregnant woman, and might refer to the prenatal dream
of the mother of the future Buddha in which a white
elephant (in this case, a symbol of prestigious leadership)
enters her womb.
Analysis
 Some parts of the setting may symbolize the tension and
conflict surrounding the couple: the train tracks form a
dividing line between the barren expanse of land stretching
toward the hills on one side and the green, fertile farmland
on the other, symbolizing the choice faced by each of the
main characters and their differing interpretations of the
dilemma of pregnancy.
 At the end of the story, the American picks up their luggage
and carries it to the "other tracks" on the opposite side of
the station, symbolizing his sense of primacy in making the
decision to give up their child and betraying his insistence to
Jig that the decision is entirely in her hands.
Analysis
 The name Jig, given as a pet name by the lover of the female
character and the fact that her real name is never given may be
symbolically significant, too.
 Possible meanings of ‘jig’
 an old slang term for sexual intercourse,
 a vivacious Celtic dance,
 any of several different kinds of tools (whiskey measurer, fishing lure,
woodworking tool, etc.)
 ‘the jig is up’: it's all over
 All of this could imply that the American views Jig as more of a
loving object or tool than a person with feelings and values to be
respected.
Style
 Hemingway’s writing style, which is simple, direct, and unadorned
prose, stirred a great deal of comment and controversy.
 Before Hemingway, American writers were influenced by British
mannerisms. They used many adjectives one after another; strings of
adverbs, many colons and semicolons which hindered the flow of
paragraphs, and caused readers to become agitated. Then came
Hemingway with his plain style—simple and compact, with short
sentences and paragraphs devoid of verbosity and adjectives and
adverbs are few.
 Hemingway leaves himself out and says as little as possible while
letting the characters do the speaking.
Style
 When Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in
1954, his writing style was singled out as one of his foremost
achievements. The committee recognized his “forceful and
style-making mastery of the art of modern narration.”
 Hemingway has often been described as a master of dialogue;
he accomplishes the effect of the dialogues by calculated
emphasis and repetition that makes the reader remember what
has been said.
 The writing style of Hemingway, which was certainly not
spontaneous, may be due to his journalistic training. When he
worked as a journalist, he learned to report facts crisply and
succinctly. He was also an obsessive revisionist.
Translation strategy and potential problems
 A stylistic approach will be followed in the translation of the
short story, since the aspect of style appears to central in the
story.
 Possible challenges include the symbolism in the story and the
translation of some culture-specific terms.
 Also due to the lack of a traditional plot, the dialogues that
basically tell the story need to be translated very carefully.
Translating symbolism
 white elephant (beyaz fil): a valuable possession which its owner
cannot dispose of and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) exceeds
its usefulness.
The term derives from the sacred white elephants kept by Southeast
Asian monarchs in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. To possess a
white elephant was regarded as a sign that the monarch was ruling
with justice and the kingdom was blessed with peace and prosperity.
The tradition derives from tales in the scriptures which associate a
white elephant with the birth of Buddha, as his mother was reputed to
have dreamed of a white elephant presenting her with a lotus flower, a
symbol of wisdom and purity, on the eve of giving birth. Because the
animals were considered sacred and laws protected them from labor,
receiving a gift of a white elephant from a monarch was both a blessing
and a curse: a blessing because the animal was sacred and a sign of the
monarch's favor, and a curse because the animal had to be kept and
could not be put to practical use to offset the cost of maintaining it.
Numeric symbolism
The story is obviously an open text, but there are several binaries:
 the two landscapes on the two sides to the valley-fertile green side vs. barren
desert side,
 two choices for the decision, to have the abortion or not, one side of the
valley has “fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro” in stark
contrast to the white hills where there is little life,
 two railway tracks at the station, to Madrid or Barcelona, again, to have or
not have abortion; The train they initially wait for is going TOWARDS
Madrid and AWAY from Barcelona. The text states they are coming FROM
the Barcelona train/side. The abortion would presumably happen in Madrid,
the heart and capital of Spain. An abortion, as well as absinthe, at the time
would have been illegal in the U.S.
 the American not only seems to put the luggage on the other side, the fertile
side, but he also does not see the train, which is important because everyone
else can see the Madrid train that is five minutes away — but Jig’s lover looks
up for the train and sees nothing — meaning he is looking towards the other
side, towards the side that awaits the train going back to Barcelona (noabortion-train).
Translating specific vocabulary
 licorice (meyan kökü): both a sweet candy and an ingredient used in
medicine as a purgative.
 absinthe (pelin otu): a green liqueur having a bitter anise or licorice
flavor and a high alcohol content, prepared from absinthe and other
herbs, and now prohibited in many countries because of its toxicity
 Anis del toro: an alcoholic drink that is dark in color and tastes like
licorice. The name is Spanish for "The Bull's Anise"
 aniseed (anason): the aromatic seed of anise, the oil of which is used in
the manufacture of anethole, in medicine as a carminative and
expectorant, and in cookery and liqueurs for its licorice-like flavor
 dos cervezas: in Spanish, “Two beers”
 reale: old silver coin that was used in Spain and Spanish-speaking
countries
Beyaz Filden Tepeler (Tr. Bahar Çelik)
Ebro vadisi boyunca tepeler yüksek ve bembeyazdı. Bu tarafta ne bir ağaç ne de bir gölge vardı ve tren istasyonu
güneşin altında, iki demiryolu hattının tam ortasındaydı. İstasyonun hemen yanına binanın ılık gölgesi
vuruyordu ve bara açılan kapıya, sineklerin girmemesi için bambu boncuklarından dizilmiş bir perde asılıydı.
Amerikalı ve beraberindeki kız dışarıya, gölgedeki masaya oturdular. Hava çok sıcaktı ve Barselona’dan gelecek
olan hızlı trenin gelmesine henüz kırk dakika vardı. Tren iki demir yolunun birleştiği bu kavşakta iki dakika
duraklayıp Madrid’e devam edecekti.
“Ne içsek acaba?” diye sordu kız. Şapkasını çıkarıp masanın üzerine koydu.
“Hava çok sıcak,” dedi adam.
“Bira içelim.”
Adam “Dos cervezas,” diye seslendi perdeye doğru.
“Büyük boy mu?” diye sordu kadının biri kapıdan.
“Evet, iki büyük boy.”
Kadın iki bira ve iki tane de bardakaltlığı getirdi. Bardakaltlıklarını ve bira bardaklarını masaya koyarken adama
ve kıza baktı. Kız sıra sıra tepelere doğru bakıyordu. Güneşin altında bembeyaz görünüyorlardı, kırlarsa kuru
ve kahverengiydi.
“Beyaz fillere benziyorlar” dedi kız.
“Ben hiç beyaz fil görmedim,” dedi adam ve birasından bir yudum aldı
“Görmemişsindir.”
“Görmüş olabilirim. Senin görmemiş olabileceğimi söylemen hiçbir şey kanıtlamıyor.”
Kız boncuktan yapılma sinekliğe baktı. “Üzerine bir şey yazmışlar” dedi. “Ne yazıyor?”
“Anis del Toro. Bir içki adı.”
“Denesek mi?”
Adam perdenin arkasına doğru bağırdı, “Bakar mısınız?” Barın arkasından kadın çıktı.
“Dört real(*)”
“İki Anis del Toro istiyoruz.”
BEYAZ FİLLERE BENZEYEN TEPELER (Tr. Müjde Dural)
Ebro vadisinin karşısındaki tepeler uçsuz bucaksız ve bembeyazdı, ne ağaç, ne de gölge vardı ve tren
istasyonu iki demiryolu hattının ortasındaydı. İstasyonun karşısındaki bina sıcak bir gölge veriyordu,
sinekler girmesin diye barın kapısına bambulardan yapılmış boncuklu sinekliklerden asılmıştı. Amerikalı
adam ile yanındaki kız binanın dışındaki gölgeliğe oturmuşlardı, hava çok sıcaktı ve Barselona'dan gelecek
olan expres trene daha 40 dakika vardı. Bu istasyonda iki dakika durup, Madrit'e gidecekti. Kız 'ne içsek?'
diye sordu. Şapkasını çıkartıp, masanın üzerine koymuştu.
Adam "bayağı sıcak" dedi.
"Bira içelim"
Adam kapıya doğru "Dos cervezas" diye seslendi.
Kapıdaki kadın "büyük mü olsun?" dedi.
"Evet, iki büyük"
Kadın iki büyük bardak bira ve bardak altlığı getirdi, masaya koydu, kıza ve adama baktı.
Kız tepelere bakıyordu, tepeler güneşten bembeyaz gözüküyordu, her yer kurak ve kahverengiydi.
Kız "beyaz fillere benziyorlar" dedi.
Adam birasını içerken "bir tane bile görmedim" dedim.
"Yok, sen göremezsin"
"Görebilirdim, sadece senin demen hiçbir şey kanıntlamaz"
Kız boncuklu sinekliğe baktı "Üzerine boyayla bir şey yazmışlar ne diyor?"
"Anis del toro bir tür içkidir"
"Biz de deneyelim mi?"
Adam kapıya doğru "iki anis del toro istiyoruz" diye seslendi.
Kadınsız Erkekler
Author: Ernest Hemingway
ISBN: 9752201741
Translated by: Ülkü Tamer
Publisher: Bilgi Yayınevi
Published: İstanbul, Temmuz 2006
Pages: 173
Kitap Tanıtım Yazısından:
Türkçede yayımlanmış tek yasal baskı.
Nobel Edebiyat Ödüllü Hemingway'in romanları kadar başarılı ve en az onlar kadar ünlü 14
öyküsü.
Ahmet Yurdakul'un önsözü, Ülkü Tamer'in tertemiz çevirisiyle.
Kısa, yalın cümleler kullanan, özgün sert tarzı ile bilinen ve "tragedya yazarlarının sonuncusu"
olarak tanımlanan yazarın insanı sarsan anlatım yeteneğiyle öykü okumanın tadına varacaksınız.