Translation, Interpretation, Communication in Luigi Pirandello's Lexicon

Abstract

This article proposes a study on translation problems based on some theories by Walter Benjamin, Antoine Berman, and Henri Meschonnic. In cases of alleged untranslatability, it’s necessary to reconstruct the new text, to gain another linguistic code, consisting of the synonyms of the Portuguese idiom. In this challenge, the translator seems a traitor to the original work, but it is not, because the new creation is an intertextual reinterpretation, a linguistic and stylistic re-elaboration, during which differences and similarities between the two idioms emerge. We can consider the translation a process of the relationship between the writer's original work and the reader who is the recipient. I propose the reading of some passages from the novel Il fumo and Il ventaglino, translated into Portuguese by Francisco Degani and recently published, to reflect on the encounter between two languages of neo-Latin origin; this’s a meeting between Italian and Brazilian culture, between different cultural, social, and historical contexts.