The Intermediate Zone of Translation Part I.

Abstract

Translation is a par excellence cultural communication and translators are agents of cultural transfer by means of language. Literary texts provide the translator with a higher grade of freedom than any other type of texts because of the self-referentiality of art encoded in language. Decoding the original and creating a new body in a different referential system are individual hermeneutic acts of the translator. Deciphering an author’s world is a step closer to the heart of the source culture and an ever-open language-game. The challenges I met translating Irene Solà’s novel gave me a special insight to Catalan culture and the English, Italian and Spanish translations gave me the opportunity to study other translation strategies. This essay is the first in the series of traductography essays centred on the Catalan-Hungarian intercultural communication revealing the processes in the black-box of the translator’s mind that on the one hand can serve as a guide to Catalan culture and, on the other hand, as a basis for further translatology research.