Pseudotradução e Dom Quixote

Abstract

This study desires to show how a narrative technique, the pseudo translation, is used at the Cervantes book, Quixote as one of the dialogue forms with the parody of chivalry books. We also will see how the pseudo translation and Arabic pseudo sources belongs at the cervantines roots. The pseudo translation or fictitious translation presents a text as a translation, without any relation with the original text (some of them at invented languages). In reality there is no source text in another language and it is a technique used from the XII century up to today. Between the reasons to create a pseudo translation are the authority and prestige from the “original language” and/or the need to hide the name under a pseudonymous. In the case of Quixote, following the tradition of books pseudo translated, the original has a long and complicated history of how it was found and the place and original language election, Toledo and Arab, are in purpose. Till the end of the XIII century every document from Toledo that weren’t from royal origin or ecclesiastic were wrote in Arab. Even though the linguistic politic from Alfonso X, who converted the Spanish in the national language, the Jews only stopped to write in Arab at the XVI century. Cervantes rules with geniality this technique, creating a pseudo translation that plays with the verisimilitude and pure fiction, making a chivalry books parody at its minimal details.