Localisms, glossaries and orality in three untranslatable (and translated) Latin American novels

Abstract

This article discusses three literary works originally written in Latin American Spanish whose linguistic, specifically lexical, configuration (localisms, glossaries and orality) would make one think that their translation into other languages ??would be impossible. However, they were translated into other languages, including French. A review of these works is made in light of the philologicalphilosophical work of Barbara Cassin and Jacques Derrida. The translation process moves between
the “untranslatable” words, the semantic-conceptual and the untranslatable as a verbal body of such language that is used for aesthetic purposes in a literary text, although there is a considerable distance between them. The untranslatable, when it comes to translating a literary work, concerns the signifier in the horizon of the aesthetic function of language. Both the “untranslatables” and the untranslatable would be that which does not cease (not) to be translated, that which motivates an incessant work of
translation and, from this perspective, the work of the translator is thought of as a search not for the best, final and definitive translation, but for the best translation for a particular effect of reception.