All translators the translator: literature and translation in Julio Cortázar’s work

Abstract

Julio Cortázar, argentine writer and intellectual, was born at the Embassy of Argentine in Brussels on August 26, 1914, and died in Paris on February 12, 1984. His production includes poetry, short stories, essays, novels, interviews, songs and a vast correspondence. Following a systematic reading of his work, it is possible to perceive the  nterconnections between the writer’s process of creation and the job of translator that he practiced throughout his life. The present work, in this sense, seeks to highlight the importance of the translation for the writer Julio Cortázar through an analysis of his own work, interviews, especially those that were granted to Harss (2012), Prego Gadea (1985), González Bermejo (2002) and Picón Garfield (1996), as well as through other critical and biographical texts, namely those by Herráez (2011), Goloboff (1998) and Maturo (2004). As a methodological instrument, we have selected references to literary translations, to the translation or to the job of translator and to texts in which we find Cortázar’s opinion on the translation practice, relating them to each other, since they seem to be part of what could be called “constellation of figures” that intertwine. The results point to the realization of the total relevance of the translation practice in the writer’s life and work.