No pretende seducirnos con recetas sino devolver los efectos especiales a las ra
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06:15 Nov 24, 2011
Spanish to English translations [PRO] Social Sciences - Philosophy
Spanish term or phrase:No pretende seducirnos con recetas sino devolver los efectos especiales a las ra
I am literally half a page from finishing the translation of a book, and for some reason this phrase, which has no unusual word, is confounding me.
This sentence is referring to the author's proposal for correcting human kind's collective ills. It is part of the epilogue, and was not written by the author, but by someone else. I may be mistaken, but the grammar feels off and I am stuck with how to handle "devolver". in this instance.
Something like: He does not attempt to seduce us with remedies but return (or dial back) special effects to the essential root (or core).
I think I'm just tired, any suggestions to clear the log jam in my head would be much appreciated.
He is not aiming to entice us with formulas but to take the special effects back to...
Explanation: ...their basic roots. Or "essential", or "fundamental" (though the latter just must suggest fundamentalism, which we don't want to do). "Their" could be omitted; I'm not sure whether to include it or not.
The whole sentence (which I found on the Internet) is "No pretende seducirnos con recetas sino devolver los efectos especiales a las raíces esenciales."
The grammar is OK, but I agree it's difficult to work out what "devolver" means. In principle one could interpret it in two different ways, corresponding to the first two definitions of "devolver" in the DRAE:
(1) "Volver algo a su estado anterior": this would mean taking the "efectos especiales" back to the "raíces fundamentales".
(2) "Restituir algo a quien lo tenía antes": this would mean giving the "efectos especiales" back to the "raíces fundamentales" (implying that the "raíces" have lost their "efectos" and need to recover them.
I think it must be (1). The expression "efectos especiales" does, I think, mean "special effects". It echoes what the writer was saying in the previous paragraph, where he discussed what he has just called "recetas advenedizas": phony, superficial, packaged spirituality, New Age stuff, self-help books, and so on, "donde el buscador se publicita como predicador de efectos especiales". He seems to be referring to meretricious, showy Internet culture, where the search engine is the preacher and offers us on-screen illusions with nothing behind them. By contrast, the author of this book goes back to "raíces esenciales": the genuine wellsprings of the spiritual, if you like. These are the roots of that which has degenerated now into mere "special effects". I suggest "the special effects", with an article, precisely in order to indicate that we are talking about the "special effects" discussed a few lines earlier. You could even put "those special effects".
There are many possibilities for the first part of the sentence. "Seduce" and "recipes" would be OK, I think, if you prefer them. I like "entice" and "formulas", but it's very much a subjective decision.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 3 hrs (2011-11-24 09:26:57 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
I was considering "trace the special effects back...", but although this reads well I don't think it's precisely what the writer means; it's not a question of analysing how we got here but of going back to real values.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 3 hrs (2011-11-24 09:30:02 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
(Sorry; reading it back I see that I typed "just must suggest" in the first line instead of "just might suggest".)
Charles Davis Local time: 07:19 Works in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 4
The translation workplace 
