Customer Reviews

Relacion acerca de las antiguedades de los indios (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I went to the link shared with us by the first critic of Arrom's alleged original translation of Fray Ramon Pane's work, and indeed Fray Ramon Pane's text appears to have been translated by another scholar in 1932, in Spanish language very similar to the one Mr. Arrom subsequently employees in "his own" translation. You decide whether or not Arrom plaigarizes the Spanish translation of Fray Ramon Pane's book by visiting the website below and comparing the translations:

See link in other reviewer's post.

I must note, however, that we should still be thankful for the availability of Arrom's translation. It is good those of us who lack financial means can print the previous public domain 1932 translation for free, but it's also nice to be able to buy a bound volume. I only wish the English language translation were much cheaper to buyers. That is a real pricing weakness that prevents many to purchase the English translation.

I have not had time to closely compare both texts, so I am unsure if Arrom plagiarized the Spanish translation, or if it just so happens both translators were very faithful to the texts and offered very similarly translations independently. Arrom goes through a lot of effort to list his sources in the introduction to his translation, so it would be interesting to do a word-by-word comparison to see the truth that such an analysis would reveal. I must also add that Arrom is very well published in the field of Taino studies, and it is doubtful if ALL his books are plagiarisms, if indeed it WERE discovered that he had borrowed heavily from the extant translation of Fray Ramon Pane's text. Also, it seems the previous publication was available as a public domain text for some time, since it was published in the 1930s (and it's now 2011). I will leave it to others to figure out if a plagiarism has occured, since I am more concerned in learning from reading the book instead of pointing fingers. And again, I do not think it likely that Professor Arrom, who has so many texts on Taino art and mythology -- and has thus rendered scholars a great service by keeping these works in print -- could have plagiarized his many distinct works that must have been peer-reviewed by other scholars in the field of Taino studies.

There must be some other explanation for the similarities of the texts, and it would be good if Professor Arrom or a relative came to his defense.

I also do not think it is fair to rate a book "1" because you doubt it's author's authorship. What should be rated is the book itself. Since these accounts are the only few extant sources in Spanish, they should both be lauded and preserved. Thus I rate the text a "5" even if it did turn out that Arrom's translation was entirely or partly based on the earlier 1930s translation. We are rating the book on amazon, not the author.

Dr. Ervin Nieves

Durante el análisis historiográfico sobre la Relación de Ramón Pané hemos encontrado un texto que fue publicado en 1932 el cual es casi idéntico al escrito presentado por José Juan Arrom (primera edicción de 1974 y subsiguientes versiones). En la siguiente página Web se puede accesar el texto antes mencionado de la Relación publicado en 1932 para que el lector lo pueda comparar con el escrito que José Juan Arrom presenta como de su autoría.

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/IbrAmerTxt/IbrAmerTxt-idx?type=header&id=IbrAmerTxt.Spa0006&pview=hide