Javier Marías gets it wrong

In any dispute between Javier Marías and José María Aznar I would ordinarily expect to side with the former, but cannot help feeling his latest sally puts him in the wrong.

The background is a speech given by Aznar at the University of Columbia in New York in which he described Muammar Gaddafi as an 'extravagant friend'. Admittedly, this does sound an odd collocation in English. Presumably what Aznar was trying to convey was the idea of Gaddafi being an outlandish, or eccentric, or unpredictable friend, not that he is spendthrift. Ordinarily if one heard that so-and-so has an 'extravagant friend' one would assume that the friend is fond of lavish spending. To this extent I have some sympathy with Marías when he writes in El País:

..."extravagant" no significa nunca "extravagante" en español, sino siempre "despilfarrador", "dispendioso" o "derrochador". Es lo que se llama, en traducción, un "falso amigo" clásico.

 ...which in English could be translated as:

..."extravagant" never means "extravagante" in Spanish; rather it always means "spendthrift", "wasteful" or "prodigal". It is what is known in translation as a classic "false friend".

The problem is that in his eagerness to lampoon Aznar, Marías goes too far the other way.

Exhibit A for the defence comes from the Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary 2005.

extravagant /ɪk'strævəgənt/ adjetivo  

1. (lavish, wasteful) ‹person› derrochador, despilfarrador;
   ‹lifestyle› de lujo

2. ‹claim/notions› insólito;
   ‹praise/compliments› exagerado, desmesurado;
   ‹behavior/dress/gesture› extravagante

Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary © 2005 Oxford University Press

So it seems 'extravagant' does sometimes mean the same as 'extravagante', at least when it refers to someone's behaviour, dress or gesture (Aznar was presumably referring to Gaddafi's behaviour).

Exhibit B for the defence is from the British National Corpus. Many of the examples it gives of 'extravagant' could be replaced by 'spendthrift' with no difference in meaning, but not all:

His extravagant action, his grace, his poise and his enthusiasm combine to produce a perfect jumping machine, and people soon realise that they are watching something exceptional.

Marías is right to poke fun at Aznar for his dreadful English, but he does his own argument no favours by over-egging the pudding.

The nowness of now

Conversation overheard in a museum in Granada between a young boy, anxious to visit the museum shop, and his mother, recharging her batteries on a bench outside the shop:

Boy: Quiero ir a la tienda.
Mother: Ahora. Ahora vamos.
Boy: ¡Pues venga! ¡Levantate!
Mother: No, no, estoy cansada.
Boy: ¡Pero es que has dicho que ahora vamos!
Mother: Bueno, es que 'ahora' no es 'ahora mismo'. Y ahora tengo que descansar.

This is difficult to translate into English, because the concept of 'ahora' in Spanish corresponds only rather loosely to the concept of 'now' in English. A literal translation might be:

Boy: I want to go to the shop.
Mother: Now. We'll go now.
Boy: Come on then! Stand up!
Mother: No, no, I'm tired.
Boy: But you said we'll go now!
Mother: But 'now' and 'right now' are not the same thing. And now I have to have a rest.

But would anyone actually say 'We'll go now' in this context in English? A better translation might be:

Boy: I want to go to the shop.
Mother: Very soon. We'll go very soon.
Boy: Come on then! Stand up!
Mother: No, no, I'm tired.
Boy: But you said we'll go very soon.
Mother: But 'very soon' and 'right now' are not the same thing. And right now I have to rest.

This is a revealing conversation for an English speaker. In English 'now' refers to the moment of utterance ('Now I understand') or the moment immediately following utterance ('The doctor will see you now' - i.e. please go in, the doctor is waiting) or the moment immediately preceding utterance ('just now'), but it doesn't extend very much beyond this. Ahora in Spanish, at least as it is spoken in Spain, is a more flexible concept. It covers what the speaker is experiencing at this moment ('Ahora estoy cansada') but also what will or may happen in the near future ('Ahora vamos'). Quite how far into the near future it can extend is an intriguing question - it would be interesting to know if people in, say, Bilbao use ahora in the same way as people in Granada, for example.

One way of looking at the conversation above is that the boy has not yet fully realised how blurred a concept ahora is. He wants ahora always to mean en este momento, something that English speakers will sympathise with. His mother reminds him that it can be used in two distinct ways however and she does in fact use both: Ahora tengo que descansar - Right now I have to have a rest, and Ahora vamos - We'll go very soon. It is to avoid this very ambiguity inherent in ahora that ahora mismo is often used. 'Right now' is also used in English of course to emphasise to the immediacy of 'now', although arguably there is still some way to go before the nowness of now is eroded to the extent that it is in Spanish.