Traducción amorosa en El viajero del siglo de Andrés Neuman

Sammanfattning: Traveller of the Century (2009) by Andrés Neuman is a passionate love story that reflects 19th Century Europe and furthermore it constitutes a reinterpretation of the period by the author, in which he combines the classical novel with modern literary techniques. This essay analyzes the presence of translation in the story, interpreting it as a metaphor for love, and investigates its significance for the novel as a whole. Therefore the focus lays on the relationship between the protagonists. Their encounters as well as the letters they write to each other are studied, in order to detect traces of translation and investigate the credibility of the metaphor mentioned above. For a definition and understanding of translation as a concept, the theories of Walter Benjamin are used, and it is interpreting his ideas that the representations of translation in the text are analyzed. The analysis proves that translation is a major theme in the novel and that it works as a metaphor for love. The conclusion of this essay is that Neuman’s novel can be considered a loving translation of the past, in which the similarities overcome the differences, shortening the distance between the past and the present.