Translation and the Authorial Image: the Case of Federico García Lorca’s Romancero gitano

Translation and the Authorial Image: the Case ofFederico García Lorca’s Romancero gitano — Despite Barthes’sclaim that the author is dead, leaving the scene for his work, freedfrom its all too personal origin, I would like to argue that the authorimage is far from absent in the practice of literary translation. Onthe one hand, the author’s image within a particular literary andsocial system may determine which work is translated, and evenhow it is translated. On the other hand, it seems likely that somecharacteristics of a persona will be highlighted more than others,depending on which source texts are selected for translation and onhow the author and his or her works are presented in prefaces andcommentaries accompanying the translations. Moreover, thetranslation strategy may enhance the prevailing tendencies withinreception and thus contribute to a certain perception of the authorin the target culture. In this paper I will investigate thesehypothetical connections, taking as an example the Spanish authorFederico García Lorca and a number of translations of hisRomancero gitano (1928) into French, English, and Dutch. I willexamine a possible correlation between the prevailing “folkloristic”image of Lorca in the early literary criticism, and the emphasis onromantic, naïve and mythological aspects in translations of hiswork, and conversely, the later, more complex and gloomy imagepresented of the author, and translation strategies which highlightelements that correspond to that view. RÉSUMÉ : La traduction et l’image de l’auteur : le cas du Romancero gitano de Federico García Lorca ⎯ À l’encontre del’affirmation de Barthes voulant que l’auteur soit mort, laissantplace à son œuvre, délivrée de ses origines personnelles, je soutiensque l’image de l’auteur est loin d’être absente de la pratique de latraduction littéraire. D’une part, l’image de l’auteur dans un