Intra- and Intertextuality in Literary Translation: the Case of a Non-Contemporary Piece of Work

Abstract

Any text can be regarded as a semiotic unity composed of an intervowen net of signs which interacts with other previous texts. It is believed that translators should bear in mind, first, the inter-semiotic interactions within the text, i.e., the intratextual set of relationships, to come out with a consistent, coherent target text, and, second, the inter-semiotic interaction across the text, i.e., the intertextual set of relationships, which allows readers to perceive certain suitable intertextual links. This paper aims to analyse the intra- and intertextual network of relationships of a literary text from a contrastive point of view, comparing Henry James's original Daisy Miller and two of its current translations into Spanish. It will be argued that had the Spanish translators taken into consideration the intratextual set of relationships of the source text at the time of producing a target text, some inconsistencies could have been prevented and a more cohesive, coherent and appealing text would have ensued. It will also be argued that the translators of this nineteenth-century piece of work should allow target readers to perceive certain intertextual links between their target texts and other texts written in Spanish at the time and other translated texts of works originally written in that century in order for target readers to get an equivalent effect to that perceived by current source readers and to render a faithful image of the writer.