Abstract

Faithfulness and/or betrayal are considered to be inevitable in the process of translating.  To whom should the translator be faithful? To the author’s communicative intention? To the meaning of the text? To the source language? To the target language? By answering some of these questions, following a semio-pragmatic approach,  we will try to provide arguments in favour of the hypothesis that the central element in the process of translation, the only decision-maker in this complex semiosis is the translator; the author (her/his intention) and the reader (her/his response) are only peripheral. Translating a literary text is a particularly complex process of communication; the translator connects two communicative events: a first event initiated by the author of the original text, where the translator is recipient/interpreter/ reader, and a second event, initiated by the translator, in which she/he becomes the author/producer of another text. Context is another central element. Meaning is context-dependent; this makes it impossible, at least in the case of literary texts, for the same signified/meaning to be assigned two different signifiers belonging to two different signifying systems produced in different contexts. In literary texts, the meaning of words/expressions lies at the “periphery” of the signified; meaning is vague and indeterminate, it is hidden, implied, written between lines. By processing the ambiguous signs in appropriate contexts, the translator can only try to create the closest possible meaning to the one  intended by the author of the original text. We will also try to prove that the faithfulness/betrayal issue is nothing but a matter of relevance.