A case of translation in bilingual tandem

Abstract

The belated introduction of minority languages ​​translation in Spanish universities encouraged the practice of bilingual translation tandems, framed by the translatological trend that understands the translator as a cultural mediator. From the Bożena Zaboklicka’s article Literary translation in bilingual tandems: theory, practice, teaching, that delves into the practice and explains the need to achieve a balance between the tendency of the native speaker of the source language to defend one's culture faithfulness and the tendency of translator of the target language to defend his own, this article aims to contribute to the study of this practice, that although widespread, has been little studied. For this purpose we take the case of the bilingual tandem formed by Helena Vidal and Jordi Bordas, who in 1968 jointly translated Maksim Gorki’s Els baixos fons from Russian into Catalan, analyzing the issues raised by the Zaboklicka’s thesis, taking into account the circumstances in which it occurred, the conflicts that emerged during the translation process, the particularities of the role of language in the original and the opinion of the translators about their experience.