O silêncio: tradução ideal - da tradução total à tradução impossível

Abstract

In this article our aim is to show, by way of critical analysis of the narrator of the story “Menard, autor del Quixote”, by Jorge Luis Borges, the impossibility to achieve total equivalency of meaning in the translation process. Like a second basis for this theory, we use the translation of the first article of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America from English for Newspeak, the official language of a fictitious totalitarian state created by George Orwell in the novel 1984. We use discourse analysis as the methodology, because when we conceive the text in its subject, it stands out as significant text instead of pushing the analyst to look for some significant meaning within the text. In this way we can work with the effects of meaning brought about by the text. What the different translations presented for the story of Miguel de Cervantes and for the article of the Declaration have in common is a fact that, despite presenting opposite directions, go after the same objective - totally equivalent translations – reveal its impossibility.