I remember a lot of an undergraduate professor who repeated traduttore, traditore, Italian expression that in Portuguese means Translator, traitor. At the time I did not understand the expression in depth, but the fact is that it marked me and I often remember it.
While researching about it, I discovered A text interesting, written precisely by a translator, who tells the origin of the expression and shows how it is uncomfortable and frowned upon by translators; as it brings a negative connotation to the activity of these professionals. I was surprised by this interpretation, as I had never thought about this saying in this way, but I understand the discomfort, because it brings an idea of a bad intentionality on the part of the translator, that of distorting.
Along with this, I realize how the translator's work often goes unnoticed. It is a complex work, to which we owe the reading of so many treasures from the most diverse languages. Perhaps with the internet, we think little about it, but it seems to me a great privilege to be able to read the work of a Russian, Austrian, Indian author, when we don't know their languages.
After reading this text, I kept thinking about how I understand the expression Traduttore, traditore . When my professor repeated (I don't even know if he repeated it, or if it seems repeated today because it marked me) this phrase, he was referring to Freud's work, whose various translations arouse so much discussion and about which there are many articles. It is common to find texts, chapters, entire articles sometimes dedicated to just one word in German and the different possibilities of translation into Portuguese, with their respective advantages and disadvantages. Of course, there are problematic choices, which can greatly distort the original idea, but the fact is that when I hear the word betrayal in this context, I don't take it in a negative way.
Curiously, I realize this contradiction, psychoanalysis - which guides my clinical listening (and not only it) - takes the word seriously, we are truly interested in words, because we understand that their choice is not a random datum. On the other hand, to some extent, we don't take them so seriously, in the sense that we know that there is no univocal meaning of the words , their meaning transits, changes, according to who speaks, listens, writes or reads them. Each one does all this from a place in time and space, from a singular story, capable of modifying the meaning attributed to words. The analyst's work is a work of listening, a differentiated, fluctuating listening.
Petê Rissatti, author of the text I commented on at the beginning, writes as follows:
Like writers, who rely on the "suspension of reality" so that the reader believes in the facts he writes, whether they are more grounded in reality or extremely fanciful. The translator also counts on this ability of the reader: that he, during the reading, is convinced that the author would have written that way if he knew Portuguese, because the translator – this figure still frowned upon by many – took pains to understand, disassemble and reassemble the work in a way that emulated the original text ( Petê Rissatti ).
In an analysis, we are constantly also doing translation work, transforming, modifying, dismantling and reassembling, fictionalizing our history. To a certain extent, perhaps we are betraying the original way things happened, the facts. However, in psychoanalysis, we do not speak from the field of material reality, but from psychic reality.
In the preface to the volume "Art, literature and artists" of the Incomplete Works of Sigmund Freud, the translator Ernani Chaves states:
If it is true that the narration [Erzählung] implies a chain that provokes successive "distortions" and "mistakes", then it is a question of trying to understand what makes possible such distortions and mistakes, under which "historical truth" rests. (...) If there is a "historical truth", it only shows itself through the "distortions" and "mistakes" caused by the narrative chain. (...) See how a narrative chain is constituted, which begins with the dreamed dream, passes through the dream told, and finally through the one or those who listen to its narration and who will try to discover its "mystery". (p. 31-32).
The "mystery" of a dream becomes apparent only when we translate the dreamed dream into a told dream, and this content manifests itself in its subsequent elaboration. In other words, we only approach the mystery when we accept to risk betraying what appeared in a format that, deep down, is untranslatable. From one word to another, from one meaning to another, from one language to another, something will always be lost, betrayed, in what is untranslatable.
