I’m working my way through Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and, I have to say, I’m finding it quite challenging.  Mainly, because although the narrative is straightforward enough, dialogue is written as a structural and literal translation of what the Spanish would have been.

Hence there are sentences like,

“And thee, Roderigo, can’st thou say thou hast never a woman struck?”

I found it lent a staccato feel to the flow.  Until, that is, when I was a chapter or two into it I realised it wasn’t a literal translation from Spanish at all, but that all the characters were from Barnsley.

Tha knows what I me-an?