Liliana Baltra

Traduttore...Tradittore Liliana Baltra

We wanted to demystify the famous saying "traduttore... tradittore". Nobody wants to betray the author of the work they are translating; their job is to convey the same emotions, beauty and feelings of the original work in the target language (LO) to its translation into the target language (LM). The aim is to make the translation as faithful as possible to the original. It often happens that when translations are rushed, when original sources are not consulted, or when there is no native speaker who knows the language and culture of the work, errors or omissions are made. We emphasize the importance of knowing the culture of the people in which the work was conceived, the time in which it was written, the characters that inhabit it. It is also important to have a translator who is bilingual and a native speaker of the LO; and another translator who is bilingual and a native speaker of the LM. The ideal is the translator who is fluent in both languages because he/she has grown up and lived in both cultures, as is the case of the Chilean/Mapuche poets and the Spanish Ramón Buckley. Some examples of translations into Mandarin Chinese and Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people who live in southern Chile and Argentina, are included.