The (Well)‎-(lll)‎ being of the translator between languages-cultures

Abstract EN

Although often denied by theoreticians and translators, to this day these two groups see translation as heir to a linguistic perspective that has dominated the field since the 1960s.

Many translators tend to compose their texts as if coming from the task of translating the meaning of one word after the other, reticent of writing a text in the target language that fails to respect the source text, or diverges from the author or her/his intentions.

Thus, the word in the source language must have primacy over that of the target language, which is a constant hostage to the language of the so-called original or source text.

This subservience is generally understood as a quality of a translator who is concerned in remaining faithful to the author, whose relation to the translator is that of an authority.

Translation in this paper will be discussed from the standpoint of this strongly-held assumption among translators, who strive to achieve the ideal of (im)possible faithfulness to the source text (or author).

On one hand, this is understood as violence against the source text (Foucault, 1975 [1977, p.

23) and on the other, as a result of difference, postulated by Derrida (1967).