Quevedo and the multiplicity of meanings in Sueños (17th century) in translations into Portuguese, French and English

Abstract

One of the stylistic marks of Quevedo in his seventeenth - century satirical narrative is word game, it is ironic and humoristically provocative, based on the multiplicity of meanings of a word (polysemy), which provokes, in a more or less explicitly way, the laughter of the reader. Thus, in th is article, the resources applied to the polissemias are analyzed comparatively in three translations of Sueños , one for the Brazilian Portuguese, by Liliana Raquel Chwat (2006), one for the English, with the authorship of Wallace Woolsey (1976), and, fina lly, one for the French, formulated by Annick Louis and Bernard Tissier (2003). We have based our critical analysis on the reflections of Paulo Henriques Britto, Mário Laranjeira, or yet, Antoine Berman. We have found that the translation of these word games represent a real challenge for the translators who either omit them, or recreate these moods with new word games.