Contemplar el horizonte: Dos traducciones hispanoamericanas del “Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia” de Giacomo Leopardi

Abstract

In the field of translation criticism, French theorist Antoine Berman proposes a hermeneutic approach that leads to the consideration of the translated text not as a mere exercise of linguistic transposition, but as evidence of a much more complex subjectivity that engendered it. Starting from the three fundamental concepts of Berman’s theory (“translating position”, “translation project” and “horizon of the translator”), a comparison of two translations of the poem “Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia” by Giacomo Leopardi allows us to discover the two personalities that lie behind them: the Colombian humanist Antonio Gomez Restrepo and the Mexican professor and poet Jose Luis Bernal. The aim of this paper is to seek the reasons of their translation choices within their respective historical and cultural contexts (Colombian Romanticism and the contemporary Mexican literary circle) as well as in the work of the two translators, both of them poets and holders of two opposing attitudes towards language (both foreign and native), and towards the task of translation. Submitted: 20/05/2017 Accepted: 16/03/2018 How to cite: Franzetti, R. (2018). Contemplar el horizonte: Dos traducciones hispanoamericanas del Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia de Giacomo Leopardi. Mutatis Mutandis , 11 (1), 208-233