The Creativity of the Literary Translator and the Illusion of Translation

Abstract

Literary translation theory no longer understands the fidelity to the original and the creativity of the translator as opposing concepts. Fidelity is no longer understood as the “word by word” translation, but rather as the identification and transposition of the significant elements of the original work, while the creativity of the translator is interpreted as his/her capacity to identify said elements and find functional equivalences for them, often with linguistic and stylistic resources that are very different from those in the original. However, when misunderstood, the creativity of the translator can lead to arbitrary interventions to the original text, thus leading to the so-called illusion of translation or pseudo-translation. The note examines three examples of illusion of translation and discusses the negative consequences of the phenomenon. In addition to calling into question the responsibility of translators, the article draws attention to the responsibility of those publishing houses that publish translations without adequate editorial quality control.

Keywords

• traducción literaria
• equivalencia funcional
• ilusión de traducción
• Macbeth de W. Shakespeare
• The Power and the Glory de G. Greene