MinWooYoon

Abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate the need of literal translation in Petrarch’s Canzoniere and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. It seems certain that in composing Canzoniere Petrarch employs and arranges a series of key words with special care and consistency: the phonetic nexus of laurel (lauro), gold (l’auro or l’or), breeze (l’aura), dawn (l’aurora); scattered (sparse); stone (petra); body and re-membering” (membra and rimembrar). Some translators elegantly paraphrase each key word in different forms for the sake of readability; in that case, however, much dwindled is the potential of the “intention” inherent in its literal value. In a similar way, as is the case in Don Quixote, failing to translate a work completely can preclude proper understanding and creative reinterpretation of the original text. Although seemingly inessential to the main storyline, the passages concerning the textual production of Part II in Don Quixote are of tremendous importance to account for the interaction between Part I and Part II, text and commentary, the author and quasi-authors and manuscript tradition and printing culture. Hence, the need for a complete translation of the work.

Translators inevitably and necessarily interpret; certain texts by nature require literal translation to be essential part of their interpretation. Translation should remain inchoate and embryonic and be directed toward a live revelation of the original text itself. The interpretive “depth” often makes obscure the “intention” of the original; the “seduction” of the text’s surface must be kept alive in good translation. Paradoxically, as Walter Benjamin says, literalness and freedom often go together in translation.