O copista de luxo

Abstract

This is a conference by the writer and poet Fabio Morábito on translation. Unpublished, even in its original written language, it was delivered in December 2022 at the Institute of Filological Investigations of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The author’s insight scrutinizes with great lyricism the place occupied by the translator, in his connections and contrasts with imitation, theater, literary writing, memory, language acquisition, poetry, and poetic emotion. It links seemingly distant topics, such as an actor’s histrionics, the reading of a manual on commercial letters, the irrepressible laughter at a successful imitation, the path of betrayal and the stones, the warm smile of a woman, a rising young military man, a copyist monk, the ambush of a propitiatory dance, the most hidden part of the jungle, and recent translations from ancient Greek.