Convergencias y divergencias lingüísticas con el judeoespañol castizo de un traductor nativo de inglés. El caso del Ele Toledot Bené Yisrael (Constantinopla, 1854 y 1886) del Rev. Alexander Thomson

Abstract

Despite the existence of a widespread negative impression of the Judeo-Spanish employed by Protestant missionaries, there is neither a detailed study shedding light on the different linguistic traits of the language produced by these Christians nor a research analyzing the evolution of these throughout time. In the following pages we will show the special case of the Scottish reverend Alexander Thomson (1820-1899), who translated several works from English into Judeo- Spanish in the 1850s in Constantinople and later retranslated them between the mid- 1880s and the end of that decade. Thus, we will be able to reveal how this language evolved in a non-native Judeo-Spanish speaker through his translated texts throughout three decades.