Hypertextuality and literary translation

Abstract

In this paper, our focus is on the hypertext as the reading-text in a strong sense; that is, as privileging the reader. The hypothesis we intend to verify is whether or not the hypertext may become a method for translation. Taking the hypertext as our starting point, we shall delineate a methodics with important implications for translative practice. Destination of the text and, therefore, its intention of being translated concerns the text's relation to language understood as a modeling device, as the 'play of musement' (Peirce), therefore capable of producing an 'infinite number of possible worlds' (Leibniz). Translatability concerns the relation between text and language. The more a text has crossed a historical-natural language in the direction of what Benjamin calls 'pure language' (this is the crossing over which makes for a literary text), not only the more is it translatable, but the more it calls for translation.