Commented Translation of a Machado De Assis Chronic into Spanish: Between the Letter and Literalism

Abstract

In this paper, a commented translation, I address a piece of literary translation from Portuguese into Spanish in order to discuss some issues presented to this activity due to the proximity of both languages. The corpus consists of a chronic published by Machado de Assis in O Cruzeiro, in June 1878. By starting from the postulate that translation decisions are not necessarily coherent, in all cases, with the adopted strategy, I analyze the letter-meaning by exploiting the margins between the Berman concept of letter and the common sense concept of literal translation. The situations drawn from the corpus of the translation start reporting moments when the proximity between languages makes it possible to take decisions that coincide in both literal or letter translation projects. Collocations and idiom are referred to as a particular case where it is possible to perceive the tension between both strategies. The collocational profile, understood as an important attribute of the letter, is used to show how a literal translation can move away from a letter translation strategy, which happens, in the addressed examples, due either to changes of the register or the action of Berman’s deforming trends. Next is shown the case of a gain in the translation of the letter by using an idiomatic expression in Spanish to translate an idiomatic expression in Portuguese, contradicting in a sense Berman positioning about this. Sometimes the agrammatism also happens in the literal choices, even in a pair of close languages as Portuguese and Spanish, and an example on it is offered. In the conclusion it is tried to put the thoughts of Schleiermacher (2000), Ortega y Gasset (1957) and Berman (2013) in a historical perspective to maintain that the translation of the letter proposal is compatible with the hegemonic translation norm in Brazil.