"The Red River Valley" Re-Examined

Pragmatic Ambiguity, Implicatures, and Translation1

“…Differences in the conventionalisation surrounding a given cultural product lead to diverging nuances in translation. This can be seen in imports of cultural realities from wide areas, like the United Estates, to smaller countries, like Catalonia, such as the North American ballad “Red River Valley” (see Fowke 1964). For American people this traditional song evocates a love story (about a cowboy and his loved person, supposedly), whereas for Catalan addressees the Catalan version “La vall del riu vermell” (“The valley of the red river”, see Soler i Amigó 2010) is a spiritual that is sung mostly —or at least more frequently— in funerals to say farewell to beloved ones.…”